Excerpt of Chapter 8

On the night before my anniversary, I think back to how scary it was, how nothing made any sense, and how much love can cost. But now, 9 years later, I wonder if our love affair would have been different had we not paid that great price. We’ve watched our friends and families marry, their unions seeming to make all the sense in the world, and the days they pledged their love, perfect. And when they've divorced, we’ve scratched our heads and wondered if the other shoe will ever drop for us, because, more than anyone we know, we don’t make any sense whatsoever. Whatever the case, happy anniversary, Jeremy. You are what love illuminates.

                                  CHAPTER 8

After the weather had cleared, Jeremy came to pick me up. The roads had been plowed from the blizzard, but driving was still treacherous.  

My thoughts weighed me down. I still had questions, and lots of them. I shut my eyes and leaned my head back on the headrest. It appeared my only choice was to run away with Jeremy. By my parents keeping us apart, it prevented Jeremy and me from figuring out anything for ourselves, and they, including Pastor Les, exposed us for what neither of us was: promiscuous. 

I knew the choice I had to make, and just thinking about it suffocated me. I destroyed Jeremy’s trust and I desperately wanted to regain it because I loved him. I wondered if Chad was still around, whether or not he would have supported me. John was still too young. It wasn’t fair that he still had a couple more years at home. But life wasn’t fair. If there was anything I knew now it was that.

I felt Jeremy’s eyes. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing…Everything.”

He reached over and patted my knee. “I know you’re nervous, but you’re doing the right thing by pulling away from your family.”

“Do you think that God will punish us by taking our baby if we disobey him?”

Jeremy didn’t look at me, only drove and stared at the interstate. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “I don’t even know how to respond to that without dissolving into expletives.”

“So there is no question in you as to if what we are doing is wrong?”

“No,” he responded with resolve. “I don’t believe in a God like that.”

I looked back out the window. “You are fortunate to be so sure of yourself. I don’t believe God is like that either, but at the same time, if I were to miscarry this baby, I’d blame myself.”

“My God.” He grimaced. “What have they done to you?”

“They love me,” I said quietly.

“If they loved you, they wouldn’t treat you like they are.”

“People make mistakes.”

“They’re making a pretty damn big mistake.”

“My family never used to be like this. We used to be happy. We used to care about each other.” I thought of Chad and the laughter at the dinner table. Didn’t even seem real anymore.

Jeremy set his jaw. “Then if that’s true, then something unfathomable must’ve happened to them.”

We said little for the remainder of our drive until we were close to his parents’ house. I looked out my frosted window, the snow-covered terrain a blanket as vast as my doubt.

Jeremy switched on his blinker and turned onto his parents’ street. “I was thinking we could get married tomorrow instead of Wednesday like we discussed.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? You’ll already be with me. What’s two days sooner?”

I felt my chest constrict and a tear slipped down my cheek. I didn’t even know what I wanted anymore. “Because I don’t feel like a bride. I don’t have a dress or shoes. All the clothes I have are what I took with me to Paula’s house. UPS hasn’t delivered my ring yet either.” I swallowed hard. “And I haven’t shaved my legs in a week.”

“I’ll take you shopping in the morning then. We’ll get you nice dress to wear, maybe a couple of nightgowns. We can use a different ring for you until the other one arrives.” He paused. “Michaelia, I don’t care about your legs.”

I didn’t call anyone in my family to tell them about the wedding.

The next morning, Jeremy and I went to the court house and purchased a marriage license and called the first minister on the list. Jeremy took me shopping and I found a burnt orange skirt and off-white blouse. I liked them, but they weren’t bride-like. And I hated the shoes. They were open-toed wicker-chair-like platform sandals. They made me too tall and it was February and snowing. I told Jeremy I liked them because I was tired of looking and it was already afternoon. By the time we got back to the house I had barely enough time to fix my hair, much less shave my legs.

I sat at the vanity in the spare bedroom in Jeremy’s parents’ house and twisted my hair back into bobby pins and curled the ends. My roots from my last hair color showed badly, so I tried to disguise them.

I heard a soft knock at the door and Jeremy peeked in. “You ready? The minister just showed up.”

“May I have five more minutes?”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

After I’d finished with my hair, I stared into the mirror at my reflection. I didn’t see anything that resembled a bride on her wedding, but a scared, mess of a girl who was about to lose everyone she loved. I dabbed a little more concealer under my eyes, took a deep breath, and got up and headed downstairs.

Cheryl, Jeremy’s mom, had decorated with candles and burnt orange and cream-colored streamers: my wedding colors. Jenny, Jeremy’s sister, had baked a peanut butter cheese cake at our request. Her husband Russ stood next to her, as did Jeremy’s brother and parents.

Jeremy stepped beside me and took my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

The minister, balding, and wearing a western-style suit, offered his hand. “My name is Bob. I’ll perform the ceremony today.”

I took his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry I was late coming down.”

“No problem. Now, where would you two like me to marry you? In the living room?”

“Sure.”

“Would you like a religious or non-religious ceremony?”

Jeremy and I glanced at one another, and I turned back to him and shrugged. “Religious, I suppose.”

We followed him into the living room, as did Jeremy’s parents and siblings, and stood in front of the minister.

As I looked at Jeremy and said my vows, I wondered if he could sense the wavering of my voice. It was unnerving knowing that the way I loved him made feel vulnerable to him. My heaviness lifted in those moments when he said his vows because I could hear his vulnerability as well.

I took out Jeremy’s ring, which I had hid from my parents, afraid that they’d take it, and slipped it on his finger. He slipped the sterling silver Celtic ring on my finger, which we’d purchased that day.

The minister smiled broadly and turned to Jeremy. “You may now kiss your bride.”

I suddenly became shy, unsure of how to kiss him with his family watching.

He kissed me and my cheeks burned.

“I thought this day would never come,” he whispered.

Jerry and Cheryl rented us a hotel suite that night. After checking in, we made our way through the corridors of the hotel and found it. Jeremy swiped the card key and pushed the door open. We dropped our overnight bags just inside the door beside the kitchen counter and looked around. The bedroom was separate from the living quarters with a wall and a gas fireplace between them. We walked into the bedroom and saw an oval Jacuzzi with a mirror surround in the corner of the bedroom.

Jeremy stepped toward it for a closer look. “We’ll have to take advantage of this tonight.” He turned around and smiled. When he saw me his face dropped. “What’s the matter?”

I looked around the room again. “It’s really nice.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

I ran my hand along the hearth, making sure to avoid his eyes. “My stomach hurts.”

He walked over to me, put his arms around me, and led me to the bed. “Why don’t you lie down and I’ll run get you some Tums? I’ve heard that heartburn is common in pregnancy.”

“It’s not heartburn.”

“What is it then?”

“I don’t know. It just hurts—like I swallowed a big ball of clay.”

Once he’d seated me, he turned to face me, frowning. “I don’t know what that means.”

I waved him away. “It doesn’t matter. What would you like to do?”

“No, no. You need to tell me what I can do for you. I don’t want you feeling terrible on our wedding night. We just got married. We should be happy.”

I forced a smile.

“What about a glass of milk. Will that help?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Jeremy grabbed the room key and his wallet. “I’ll go get you some milk.” He opened the door to leave.

“Jeremy?”

“Yeah?”

“While you’re out, could you buy me a razor?”

The Impossibility of Truly Easing One's Conscience

The statistic is that 98% of Catholic women use birth control, but I know from my mathematician cousin that one could basically make a statistic bend to almost any idea. This 98% takes into account all Catholic women, even those who don’t attend regular mass. The statistic might be more accurate if the statisticians out there did a study of the child-bearing age women who regularly attend mass, how many of them use some sort of birth control, chemical or otherwise (including sterilization). And of the women studied, how many of their husbands have undergone vasectomy. In effect, a study should take into account the couples’ use of birth control. I have the feeling that the statistic might still be quite high. One study pointed to 87% of women, ages 15-44, who attend regular mass, and who’ve had sex in the past 3 months, have used contraception. But since the article I got this information from didn’t have a clear and reputable source, I can’t in good conscience use this statistic. I Googled again and again, searching for what might be an accurate statistic, but the answer remains hidden.

President Obama, in effort to extend liberty to all women, regardless of employment, passed a mandate to require all insurance companies to cover birth control 100%, even if the woman works for a church, or religious private school or university, or social work agency.  This mandate came on the heels of trying to pass a mandate that all organizations, religious affiliation aside, must give women the option of birth control for their health care. This was in clear defiance of separation of church and state, and the bill was shot down. Obama is said to have undermined the organizations’ rights and went straight to the sources of healthcare coverage, being the insurance companies, and passed the mandate that way. The people in these religious organizations feel slighted, and I’m not sure that I blame them, because it didn’t matter what they wanted.

I wonder though, if one can attack this issue from a different angle. Have you ever said to someone, or heard someone say to you, “I don’t agree with you, but I support you anyway”? What does this mean? Is “support” synonymous with what one believes in? For instance, a parent might “support” a child’s decision to go to college for theater, but since the child chose such an unrealistic major in the parent’s eyes, the parent will no longer pay for the child’s college tuition as originally assumed. Does the “support” that the parent agreed to offer mean emotional support? And if it does, what does that mean? Does it mean that for the 4 or 5 years that child is in college, the parent won’t rag on the child’s choice for a theater degree? Does support mean the absence of negative comments along with absence of the positive? I think I would assert that anything that someone supports with their pocket books is synonymous with what that person agrees with. And so, when an organization like the Boy Scouts back in the 90s decides to allow homosexual males to participate, people flocked together to withdraw their support (meaning their good word and their money), regardless of the many agreed upon “good” things that the organization had been doing at that point in its existence.

When I decided that I would marry Jeremy regardless of the opinions of my family, friends, and church leaders, support, emotional and physical, was withdrawn, because you see, one can only support something or someone he or she agrees with. Why is it that people in our society feel spiritually responsible for other people’s choices independent of what others might agree with? The people in the Catholic church feel that it is their spiritual responsibility to make sure that they are not contributing first hand to something that they don’t agree with. I understand that. It must be an awfully uncomfortable situation to be in, but is making sure that an organization doesn’t support birth control by paying for a government mandated insurance company really solving the issue?

The managers of that organization sign off on the employees’ checks. How can they know that the money given to the employee isn’t used to pay for chemical birth control, a diaphragm or cervical cap, or sterilization at the person’s medical clinic, or for a box of condoms at the nearest Piggly Wiggly? That would be contributing first hand to the use of birth control, wouldn’t it? But is ignorance really an excuse, knowing that a possible 87% Catholic women who regularly attend mass use birth control? And that’s assuming that all of an organization’s employees regularly attend mass. Should any religious organization that is against blood transfusions, narcotics, stimulants of any sort, and immunizations be able to stipulate coverage by the insurance company services that are almost always covered by companies in certain situations. And even then, how do the people who sign the checks of the employees of those organizations know that their employees aren’t paying out-of-pocket for these services, and thus, the organization is contributing first hand to something that is frowned upon by the agreed upon beliefs of the organization? I’ll ask again, why do we take it upon ourselves to be spiritually responsible for the choices of the many? I would assert that unless more control is exercised over the people employed by these organizations, it is impossible to know unless every cent the employee makes will be accounted for. With that in mind, is ignorance still an excuse?

My first response when I heard about the birth control mandate was, “Of course, with the separation of church and state, we must allow the organizations do what they want.” But if I were to commit wholly to this idea, things like young girls being given in plural marriages and female castration would be protected under the letter of the law.

I would assert that easing one’s conscience either way is an impossibility, and maybe loosening the reigns of control might be a more humane thing to do. If we are a nation that truly believes in freedom, we will need to learn to sit with reality that we won’t ever be able to fully reconcile our beliefs to everyone, and that there will be some who’ll disagree, but that doesn’t mean we should exercise more control in order to ease our own consciences. 

A Personal Account: Practicing NFP

After I parked my car, I got out and took in the sight huge stone building, the largest Catholic Church in Rapid City. I sighed heavily, and turned to retrieve my 8-week-old son from his car seat. Sleeping soundly as newborns do, he melted into my chest when I held him close, adjusted the heavy winter blankets tightly around him, and patted his little diapered butt. Here goes nothing, I thought to myself and made my way to the narrow stairway that descended to a basement entrance.

My nurse midwife had given me the names of Tiffany and Joseph, a couple who taught the Sympto Thermal Method (STM) of natural family planning (NFP). Not to be confused with the highly unreliable rhythm method, STM is a type of NFP that uses charts to track temperatures and self-cervical examinations and mucus patterns. I had never envisioned myself as an NFP enthusiast, but being a dedicated breast-feeding woman, and after having had previous complications with taking progesterone-only chemical birth control (irregular bleeding for 5 months before I finally threw in the proverbial towel) while nursing my first child, I knew I needed to find other options for birth control while I nursed my second.

My midwife had given me a couple of options: one medical professional who taught NFP and Tiffany and her husband, both devout Catholics, who taught STM NFP with all the Catholic jargon peppered in it. For whatever reason, but probably because of my unquenchable thirst for curiosity, I chose the latter. I wanted exposure to another way of thinking—whether or not I agreed with it. And so it was, that once a week for the next several weeks, I learned all about how to track my cycles, when it was safe participate in coitus, and when I was most at risk for pregnancy. And, of course, what the pope said about acceptable coitus practices, which must always include ejaculation inside the vagina, no exceptions.  Any ejaculation otherwise, even if in the presence of the man’s wife, is considered the sin of Onan and overtly sinful. God had killed Onan for “spilling his seed,” so it is considered a sin that is particularly grave. Oral coitus is permissible as long as it is during foreplay, but be warned, this coitus practice will often make women feel degraded. How about if the couple is experiencing fertility problems and the man needs his semen analyzed? Poke holes in a condom and then have coitus! I mean, every nit picking thing had really been thought through by someone!

Joking aside though, I’ve gotta hand it to the Catholics. They don’t go halfway on their doctrine. Scientifically speaking, the definition of life is when cells begin to divide, so we know that any birth chemical birth control is an abortificant, either by its primary way of functioning or its secondary. The most widely used combination of estrogen and progesterone pill or patch, once the woman has been taking it for a while, suppresses ovulation as its primary mode of functioning; however, if ovulation does occur its secondary mode of functioning is to flush the blastocyst (after fertilization, the grouping of developing cells) from the uterus, and thus, preventing implantation. No one knows how often fertilization occurs in this scenario, nor can one predict it. The progesterone-only pill, Depo Provera shot, and most IUDs (hormones one can use while nursing) prevent fertilization by making the uterine lining too thick for implantation as its primary mode for functioning. Who knows? Fertilization could occur every single month and a woman would never know it.

So here’s what I don’t understand: why are most Christians so opposed to the highly controversial Plan B, but not the regular chemical birth control? It works the exact same way. Seriously. Plan B is a higher dose of hormones to speed up the body’s process in not allowing the blastocyst to attach to the uterus after it has taken the 5 day or so journey of traveling down one of the fallopian tubes into the uterus. I had an acquaintance once who was totally disgusted with society about the legalization of the abortificant, Plan B. She had gone on a rant about it, about how her husband, a pharmacist, refuses to dispense it and makes other pharmacists do it instead. About how society is Godless and selfish.

I looked at her for a few moments as she nursed her 4-month-old. “You take progesterone-only birth control so that you can nurse, right?” I asked.

“Yeah…”

“Then what’s the difference?”

“The pill is not an abortificant. My husband knows all about it and he says that it isn’t.” she said with an air of incredulity.

I just stared at her, slack-jawed, not really knowing what else to say. Clearly she didn’t care know the truth. She (or maybe it was her husband, but I won’t point fingers) wanted to have an easy guilt-free sex life, one where cumbersome barrier methods didn’t fizzle the mood or decrease the sensation. I wanted to ask her, “Do you always make it a practice not to educate yourself and read the inserts in your prescription medication?” but didn’t.

One would think the Catholics' objection to birth control would end here, where chemical birth control is labeled as an abortificant, but no, they take it one step further in that any ejaculate not put directly into the vagina is sinful and considered outside of God’s plan; therefore, the only acceptable form of birth control would consist of abstinence for 7 to 10 days out of the month while the woman is in her most fertile time. What a bummer really, because the times where a woman is feeling particularly amorous are the times she can’t be with her husband for fear of getting pregnant. That means, for the rest of the woman’s fertile years, unless she wants to get pregnant, she must avoid sex almost every time she is in the mood. I found this particularly frustrating during my bout with natural family planning, but since I had no allegiance to Catholicism’s teachings, barrier methods were implemented into my sex life for at least a week out of every month during the time I was nursing my second and third children. The problem with NFP is that I was always thinking about pregnancy. I had to take my temp and check for other signs of fertility and chart them every single day. I never got a break. Ever. I couldn’t imagine the life of a devout Catholic woman. I was only 23 when I used NFP the first time. That meant I had at least 25 years of temperatures, and charting mucus patterns and the state of my cervix. The only break I would have would be during pregnancy, which of course cut out almost an entire year of charting. I’ve gotta say, pregnancy looked pretty damn appealing after a while.

I practiced NFP for a year after my second child was born, at which point we decided to have a third. Then I practiced NFP 15 months after my third child was born, until we knew for sure we wanted no more babies, then Jeremy then went under the knife. I’ve got to say, it is absolutely heavenly not having to worry about pregnancy, barrier methods, or taking hormones that, for me, screwed with my cycle. I am absolutely certain that sterilization, whether tubal litigation or vasectomy, is God’s gift to any committed couple whose family is complete, but that’s just me.

An Inclusive Look at Music

       For years now, I’ve headed down a road that is unfamiliar to me—one laced in doubt, wonder, and ill-founded fear, but it hasn’t been until this past year that I’ve really come to explore these tendencies in myself, figuring that if faith is anything worth possessing, it will survive what some would call my “downward spiral”. It’s put me in an odd place in my faith—one where the things from which I used to find inspiration, don’t quite have the same appeal in my life anymore. Case in point? Music.

       Jeremy has this saying that he derived from a man by the name of Miguel De Unamuno. “We are our wish to be what we wish ourselves to be.” Unamuno made the example in terms of immortality, but really, we could take this idea into other aspects of our life. “We are never anything, only our wish to be something.” For example, I am not a good wife and mother; I am my wish to be a good wife and mother. I am not a good writer; I am my wish to be a good writer. I am not a person of faith; I am my wish to be a person of faith.

       I got back into music a little over two years ago. We had been going to this church for a while, but I’d never told anyone that I could sing. I didn’t want people to know me that way by that point in my life. One evening, however, there was a man there who was learning how to play guitar. He tried to show Jeremy and me the song he was learning, but his guitar was out of tune, and since he didn’t have a tuner, he struggled to tune it on his own.

       “May I?” I asked.

       Puzzled, he handed his guitar over and I tuned it by ear.

       “So you play?”

       I held the guitar back out to him. “Used to.”

       He pushed it back toward me. “Let’s hear it.”

      After that night, I began playing on Sunday mornings for the regular church services, but there were very few times when I felt like I had any real inspiration. You see, I was not a church musician anymore; I was my wish to be a church musician again, always wondering what might have happened had I not gotten pregnant out of wedlock and been kicked out of my church unless I repented. There was this unresolved aspect of that part of my life—the life that had seemed to stretch out before me until I screwed up and it was snatched away.

       When I began playing music again, I cringed at the song choices that other musicians would bring to the table. Lyrics were such as these: “I’m coming back to the heart of worship when it’s all about you, it’s all about you, Jesus,” “Lord I’m yielding all I am to you. You have captivated me, and I come to give my devotion,” “I sing a simple song of love to my Savior, to my Jesus”. I guess what I’m saying is that the worship music movement tends to be an affirmation of what we want faith to be, rather than what it really is—or at least what it really is to me. The post-modern philosopher and theologian, Peter Rollins calls these “Jesus is my boyfriend” lyrics. These lyrics say everything about what we hope our relationship to God to be, not what our relationship to God really is. A person like me can’t sing these lyrics without the suffocating feeling of being disingenuous. They sound like entrapment, too empty, and too simple—almost like if I don’t see Jesus this way, I’m less than spiritual. It could be said that a person who sings modern worship music is not theologically sound; it is that when that person sings modern worship music, it is that person's wish to be theologically sound. 

       A fellow musician said to me last week that he feels like that if music is geared to where people as a whole can sing along to it, and it is easily understood, then it is stifling. As I thought about what he said, I had the thought that this idea frees up the performer to do music that has intense meaning to him or her, without gearing it to a crowd of people as a whole, and in turn, it becomes inspirational to the people individually as they experience it. Music can be poetry, having diverse meaning from one person to the next, yet without beholding to one particular meaning. This makes music expansive, inclusive, individualistic, and communal.