Reflection of the Day

After reading Jean Vanier's books...well, actually, after my FIL started getting worse (he's got Alzheimer's), I've been thinking lately about a situation where your health condition gets so bad that you have to depend on other people to do many or most things. If I ever reach that kind of stage, will I be able to accept it gently? I guess I'll never know until I experience it myself. Anyway, his condition also makes me reflect more about our value as human beings.

After IF, I became so confused about so many things, because IF rocked my world to the core and it made me question so many things about life in general. IF makes me question our worth: what society screams we're worth and what our true worth is in God's eyes. The pressure is sometimes overwhelming and I've seen so many people getting lost in the maze after they lose their jobs, after IF, after being sick.

IF makes me realize how blind I've been all the years before IF started: how I've judged so many people wrongly and how I've said so many wrong things to other people simply because of ignorance. How difficult it is to really understand someone else's situation because more often than not, you only see one part or a few small parts of the equation. How hard it is to actually really answer hypothetical questions because you won't really know for sure about your reaction until you experience it yourself.

How easy it is to say the wrong things to someone when you don't really understand the whole situation, yet you feel so helpless that you just have to say something to the sufferer. How words can cut someone so painfully even when you don't mean it that way. How easy to get defensive, angry, and hurt when you're really hurting inside. Basically speaking, IF opens my eyes even more to how broken we all are and how little we know about anything.

That said, IF has made me want to learn more about human beings, about their personal sufferings, about the many facets of other people's situations. Granted I can't possibly learn them all in a lifetime, but I can start by stopping to think before saying anything to someone who's hurting and researching about it whenever possible.

Let me end this post with Jean Vanier's quote:

As we approach people in pain, they reveal to us our pain and brokenness. We are not an elite. We need help. We need the help of Jesus and of sister and brothers in community; we need to talk to wise, listening, and compassionate hearts who can help us to assume all that is broken within us and to find wholeness. We become free when we accept ourselves as we are, cry out for help, and use wisely all that we are to build peace. (A Rebel for Peace, page 134-5)

A Rare Opportunity

The other day a mom friend asked me for some advice. The first time it had ever happened to me. I felt grateful for the rare opportunity 'coz it made me feel that my voice mattered. :-)

Anyhow, basically speaking she had to make a decision to stop her child to go to a certain course because she believed that the tutor wasn't too helpful for the child. The child didn't argue with her decision, but she saw the sad look on the child's face, so she was wondering if she had made the right decision. So she wanted a second opinion: mine.

When I told her what I thought about it: that she had made the right decision, I couldn't help thinking of God and humans. My friend felt sad to see the child's sad face and she would have loved to give anything to wipe the sadness away, but she also didn't want to do any harm to the child by choosing a not-too-good tutor. She wanted to give the best for the child, even though it meant breaking the child's heart a little bit.

Oftentimes when God closes a door in front of me, I feel that He is being unfair. I feel that my cries aren't heard. Maybe He also feels the same way as my friend did. Maybe it hurts Him to close the door, but He knows it's for the best.

It's true what they say: God's ways are mysterious. Some doors are closed only for a certain amount of time, some are closed forever.

Time and time again The Serenity Prayer has spoken to me so powerfully...

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

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Unexpected Stabs

The other day I heard someone say these words about someone else I knew, "If your sister spends some nights in your house later on, brace yourself and just don't take her words too seriously about your household and how you raise your kids and grandchildren. She has no kids, so she doesn't understand. As you know well, she'd give you advice and criticism about your parenting style and about how to deal with your kids and grandchildren."

For some weird reason, when I heard the words "she has no kids", I felt unexpected stabs deep inside me and it took my breath away. (side note: PMS perhaps added its weight to the melancholy I felt)

Why did I feel those stabs? Maybe because it speaks the truth that I don't want to hear - that I'm one of those who have no kids (who once longed to have kids), that I'm one of those who "they think don't understand motherhood and parenting". Maybe because the words make me feel like I'm seeing a HUGE neon sign of "You're not qualified to be in the mommy group" and that hurt 'coz deep down, I do wish I could understand mommyhood better than I do now.

Sometimes I feel helpless when a mommy friend tells me about her dilemmas with her child/children and I just don't know what to say. I can't even make her feel "better" by saying that "It's just a phase. I've been there, done that. It's gonna get better, trust me." I'd LOVE to be able to help her more, but I can't because I'm not a mommy.

Maybe now I need to grieve the loss of mommyhood. I've gotten over the idea of our future with kids, but I think in a twisted way (as though kids and mommyhood were two separate entities) I still long to understand mommyhood and I need to let it go...may heaven help me...let the healing process begin once more...

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Additional thought: Hmmm...maybe it wasn't so much having to grieve over the loss of mommyhood as to the fact that those words felt like a loud remembrance of the loss. Maybe that was more like the reason why it hurt.

Baby Talk

*cross-posted with my other blog*

One of the things I dreaded when I went to Indo the other month was who was going to come up with the "baby talk". I dreaded that 'coz I would never know how to deal with them: do I tell them the truth or do I just smile and say nothing? The truth would be too complicated to tell, but I did tell "the truth" to one person who finally mentioned "baby talk".

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One neighbour, upon seeing us walk outside the house, said, "Going out? Hurry and make some babies!"

I stopped, smiled and said, "It's OK even if we'll never have babies."

You should've seen her face!!! She didn't see that coming! With a shocked look on her face, she quickly said, "DON'T SAY THAT!!!!! I'm gonna pray for you so that you'll have kids."

Deep inside I was sighing and rolling my eyes, but to her I just smiled and said, "Why, THANK YOU for your prayers."

Why is it so hard for people to understand that we're OK even though we have no babies? It seems that THEY are the ones who want US to have babies more than we do. Don't get me wrong, though, I DO appreciate them and I DO understand their wish for us, but why can't they understand that it may not be what we want anymore? It almost makes us feel that we're not "complete human beings" without kids in our life.

FYI, two relatives hugged me upon saying goodbye, rubbed my belly, and whispered, "I'm praying for you to have babies."

OK, that's all good...but my cynical mind thinks, "If God says no, no matter how many times you pray, you won't see the result that you're wishing for." That's why I asked my closest friends for God's peace beyond understanding instead of asking them to pray for us to have kids.

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One close friend told me, "You shouldn't have said that to the neighbour. You should've just smiled and said nothing."

Maybe she's right. I begin to feel that there's no use trying to make them understand our situation anyway. Oh well...

Thought of the Day

A while ago I spent time with two friends. One of them has just had an empty nest 'coz her sons have recently moved out of the house to study in the city. She said that she had then learnt to enjoy life again just with the hubby - though of course every now and then the kids come back for a visit, but still she said it was interesting to find the house "so quiet".

The other friend commented that her parents didn't seem to want to live in a house with just the two of them after their children moved out of the house. They had had plenty of foster children along the years and now that they have finally reached the age when they should retire, they opt to have a lodger.

I've just been thinking that hubby and I can be - in a twisted way - considered ourselves to be in an empty nest without actually experiencing all the things that parents do before they reach that stage. The big difference is that we don't have to go through any adjustment periods between the time when the kids are born until the time when they leave the house. We're HERE already!

That was actually an interesting thought - at least for me it is. It's like suddenly realizing, "Hey! We've been doing GREAT despite the circumstances! We don't need to wonder anymore after years of child-bearing if we can still connect with each other and if we can enjoy each other's company 'coz that's what we've been doing anyway."

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Anyway, just for the sake of recording my IF journey, the other week we had a "false alarm". My menstrual cycle is normally around 32-43 days (mostly around 36-38 days), but the other week I was wondering why my period hadn't come yet and I then looked it up my menstrual calendar and realized that it was already day 44.

My period finally came on day 47, though in between day 44 and 47, I was torn amongst so many different thoughts. At first the idea of being pregnant made me excited, esp. 'coz I could then share the news with my mother and my MIL, but then after that came a barrage of FEAR...worries about how we could work out our finance if I had to stop working, worries about how on earth we can bring up sane children in this crazy world. At the end of the day, the worries and the fear triumphed more than the joy of the thought of having kids. Maybe it also had to do with the fact that I had been thinking of our future without kids, so I'm so used to that kind of family picture already.

Funnily enough, both hubby and I felt a HUGE relief when my period finally came. Strange how I could have been so "baby-obsessed" at one time and then now I'm reaching this stage where we don't think we want babies anymore. But the most important thing of all is that both hubby and I are on the same page. Feels BRILLIANT to be on the same page with him! :-D

This Stage

I'm now at the stage where I'm not really sure anymore that I want kids - or if we are meant to be parents. Not sure if it's partly due to self-defense mechanism or not, but it's what it is. A close friend's sister is currently pregnant, but I didn't feel anything bad or painful when I heard about it. These days I can also look at pregnant bellies or small children without feeling stabs of longing.

Not sure how long this stage will last, but I'm enjoying it as much as I can. It feels BLISSFUL to be able to be in this stage.

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Soon it'll be three years since we first started to try to have kids (can't really say that we've been trying for the past year, though). Right now I can say that IF is like using a free kind of birth control without any side effects or operation and I can say this without any cynicism or sad feelings.

I just wanna be THANKFUL for God's peace of mind at this stage...to be honest, the other week I reread some of my old posts and I was surprised to read how dark they were (no wonder non-IFers can be really shocked while reading IFers thoughts or posts). At that time I never thought I could reach this stage, but I am here now, so I'm going to make the best out of it. :-D Glory to God!!!

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Quote of the Day

It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man's disposition.

~ Oswald Chambers


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