Shameful

I go to a monthly bible study here in town at a different church for moms of young children. I really enjoy the topics and seeing friends in my group. Every session has a speaker on issues we face with raising our kids. I know it is almost too taboo to ever admit that being a mother is too hard some days. It's honesty! Especially at church, it is easy to look around and think that everyone else has the picture perfect life. Our speaker this session was a women's counselor. She focused on one thing- feelings and how an excess or abundance of a certain feeling has consequences. We all have what calls "wells" of past hurts. We fill up our well from our earliest memory on. With hurts from elementary school to high school, college, young adulthood and beyond. One interesting tidbit she shared is that when she runs womens' groups at her office, she gets them to admit that in the first 10 minutes, everyone has already "sized" the women next to her and across from her. "She's skinnier than I am, her kids are probably straight-A geniuses that don't need discipline, her husband makes $200K+ a year, etc." She calls this shame. We shame ourselves immediately and run these horrible thoughts through our heads.

I think infertility and the triplet experience has drilled a few hundred feet in my pain well. I look around and immediately judge other women. "I bet it only took them 2 cycles to get pregnant. She was never looked at with disdain by a doctor who pronounced her barren with maybe a 5% chance of a biological baby. They never had to pay thousands of dollars to unnaturally make babies in a petri dish!! She didn't have to give herself shots in the stomach, hip and thighs. She will never know the fear of a high risk pregnancy or know that you have no choice but a C-section, period. She probably gained 25 pounds of baby weight and then lost it in 6 weeks. She isn't living with separated ab muscles. In fact, it's obvious she doesn't because she goes to the Y for 2 hours a day while her BABY happily entertains his or herself in the nursery." You see how toxic this is?! Maybe this person didn't have infertility, but they've had SOMETHING very painful happen to them.  And although I always lecture everyone that a baby does not make happiness, I did sort of buy into this belief.  Seriously, what else would I worry about once I had kids?? Ha!! Crystal balls would be handy.

One pastor who has really brought me closer to God is Joyce Meyer. Our church does not have female pastors and it is something I agree with. But there is certainly a place for teaching because men don't understand how we think and feel with shame in our lives. As a woman with a history of horrible abuse, Joyce Meyer is an example of someone who has triumphed over a deep well of pain. She always says that it is so dumb to demand God explain everything because we deserve to know why we are suffering. Firstly, because it's God and He owes us nothing. Secondly, because He knows that we would always choose to avoid the suffering that He uses to refine us and make us better people. Isn't that the truth??!!

So maybe as I go to church on Sunday and face the nursery full of moms of singletons in Nordstrom-bought outfits, I will try not to shame myself into thinking I am second class compared to their perfect existences.  Maybe they look at me and see something that gets them. I've had many women call me "super mom" and other words like that.  Maybe it looks like I do this painlessly.  I was in the bank the other day and the teller and I were talking about the triplets. She looked and me and said that her friend (who is a twin mom) has it so easy and always displays perfect organization with her kids. I wanted to laugh in her face and ask her how many tearful days and nights her friend had experienced or what she had to sacrifice in her life to make sure the kids kept their schedules. Maybe it seems easy to me.  But believe me, this does not come natural.