A little something I wrote about the feeling of wanting to move back to Mississippi even though I know in my head it's not supposed to be a good place to live or raise a family.

We currently live in Northern Colorado, in an area widely considered to be one of the country's most desirable places to live.  The schools are excellent, and choices abound:  Montessori, Charter, Classical, and even school of choice within a range of specialized public schools.  The weather is good, often touted for its "300 days of sunshine" each year.  Colorado is known for its outdoor lifestyle inspired by its beautiful landscape and mountains for hiking and skiing.  The economy is booming and house prices are sky-rocketing.  An influx of people arrive each year--Colorado is clearly the place to be.

And yet, I find myself strongly suggesting to my husband that I would like to move our family--including our four young children--to my home state of Mississippi.

My husband is a great guy, but he just doesn't get it.  Truth is I may have actually already ruined my chances of convincing him due to all the stories I've enjoyed telling over the years.  Stories about growing up in the South.  I just thought they were interesting--good entertainment.  For example:  The racial riot during 7th grade (and then again in 8th).  The constant leaking sewage in my 5th grade classroom.    The myriad discipline problems and outright fights that had to be broken up by beefy math teachers.  There were the months that we went without teachers in core classes, the helpless school administration unable to woo a teacher to our poor, rural school district.  And then there were the stories about the teachers themselves--enough characters to fill a book.  And on top of it all, there was the rural atmosphere, the poverty, the oppressive heat and humidity, and all the other things Mississippi is generally known (and disparaged) for.

And so, when I tell my husband I would like to move our family down south, I suppose it should be no surprise that his response is incredulous,

"Why would you want to put our children through that?" 

Well, I've got the long answer, and the short answer.

The short answer, which is what I generally quip back: "It builds character." (I mean, I turned out fine, right? Shouldn't that be enough for him?)

The long answer?  The long answer is more complicated.  If I could make my husband understand the long answer, then I would feel I had sufficiently made my case. And then we could discuss the pros and cons and come to a mutual decision about what was best for our family--and I would accept it, whatever it was.  The problem is that the long answer is elusive, it is ambiguous and virtually untenable for those who weren't raised in the South.

It is the history: layered and nuanced, troubled and tragic.  A dark past, but one that shines a light on the present, and on the promise of a brighter future--if we but have the heart and will to make it so.  

It is the architecture:  the stately antebellum homes with their white, regal columns.  The wide porches and verandas, porch swings inviting neighbors to stop, chat, and share a sweet iced tea during the heat of the afternoon.

It is the food:  the grits (and especially cheese grits), the barbecue from the place on the corner, the gas station that serves the best chicken in town.  The cornbread, collard greens and fried okra.

It is the culture: dressing up for football games, hunting and fishing, motor boats and jet skis out on the river.   Pilgrimage in the spring, hometown parades and county fairs.  Marching band, baseball caps and pickup trucks.  And of course there's church on Sundays, and everything to the soundtrack of the Southern drawl.  

It is the landscape:  Puffy white cotton stretching over dark black earth.  Bright blue skies, iridescently green grass and slow, murky rivers.  Elegant magnolia trees with dark, smooth leaves and magnificent white blooms.  Hanging vines, dripping purple wisteria, and dark, tangled forests.  

It is the African American influence:  indomitable, vivacius...and soulful as the Delta Blues.

It is the blend of cultures: tenuous, and sometimes tense, but our reality--our blessing and our inherited responsibility.  Our burdern, but also our hope.  

It is the fireflies blinking in the twilight's dark shadows:  That is Mississippi.

It is not perfect.  There is poverty.  There is racial strife.  There is much room for improvement in the education systems and schools.  (There may not be much we can do about the heat and humidity, but air conditioning exists for a reason, ammiright?)

So why do I want my four children to grow up in Mississippi?

I've come, finally, to realize that the answer is actually quite simple.

It's because it is Home.

Gratitude

"Gratitude is a sign of maturity."--Gordon B. Hinckley


Rather than listing individual things that I am grateful for, I am writing on the broader concept of gratitude because it is something that I personally struggle with.

Although I certainly recognize in an abstract sense that I lead a very blessed life,  sometimes in practice I struggle with gratitude and I wind up complaining a lot:  My house isn't big enough for my kids to have their own rooms.  My car is always breaking down.  Our healthcare premium keeps going up.

Other times, I have moments of clarity.  One such moment happened today: My life is such that I can get in my car and drive to the store (with no concerns for my own safety), buy ingredients for two homemade pies (our contribution for the big family Thanksgiving meal), and then come home and have the time and means to prepare them.  Not only is money not an obstacle for our Thanksgiving dinner this year, but my family also has the free time and a safe environment in which to be able to observe this holiday.

It becomes evident that these blessings are rare when I consider the world at large (disposable income, abundant food, free time, safe environment), and they become even rarer when I increase the scope of my comparison to consider the inhabitants of the Earth throughout its history.

I can only imagine the pain that a mother would feel to watch her child go hungry...or to slowly watch them starve.  I can only imagine what it would be like to send my little child to a dangerous factory to work long hours, or to watch them shiver with cold at night.  I have been blessed to live in a time and place where I have been spared that pain.  And that I am grateful for.

My kids may not have their own rooms, but they do have their own beds :) . I have a very nice, though fairly old minivan.  I can go to the store without impediment and purchase items for our Thanksgiving dinner.  With the right perspective, it really is incredible.

We have all heard the phrase, "Check your privilege."  I think we could also consider the suggestion to "Check your entitlement," or "Check your gratitude."  As I have said, I am as guilty as anyone at struggling with gratitude, but what I do know is that in those moments of clarity--when I really do acknowledge what I really do have to be grateful for--in those moments, I feel blessed beyond measure.

Mormon In Mississippi

To the person who was upset that I discussed Protestantism during Sunday School:





I was raised in the only Mormon family in a Mississippi town of approximately 7,000.  Most of the rest were Southern Baptist, with a healthy dose of Methodists and Pentecostals.  Interestingly Mississippi and Alabama have the highest Protestant population percentage  (77%) with the lowest  Mormon population percentage (1%) while Utah is the opposite with the largest percentage LDS (60%) and the smallest percentage Protestant (11%)

My hometown was about 50% African American, but the school I attended growing up was 90% black.

Being the  minority in these two senses was my life experience growing up and it has, for better or for worse, intrinsically informed my viewpoints on both politics and religion.  The price that I have paid for this insight is a feeling of belonging nowhere--I am a Southerner from a South that never accepted me.  (You know, it hurt when I was a kid and it still does now that I'm the big 3-0.)



On religion:


I was raised Mormon in Mississippi.  As noted above, Mississippi, in the heart of the "Bible Belt,"has the smallest LDS population percentage of any state in the US with the largest Protestant population percentage.  As it happens, in the smaller-than-a-hamlet "community" of Bartahatchie, Mississippi, a mere 5 miles from the town I grew up in, rests "Mormon Springs", a site dedicated--complete with a monument and everything--for being the site where the Southern-convert Mormons back in the 1840s met to begin their trek westward.  I recall one summer afternoon when I was a teenager, driving out in the country back roads surrounding my small town.  A friend of mine had suggested we go "bridge jumping" out in "Bartahatchie".  Although I had never been bridge jumping, nor did I know where this "Bartahatchie" was, being that I was a teenager, this sounded like a superb idea.  As we drove through the winding country roads toward the Bartahatchie River, walls of tall trees and dense vegetation closing in on both sides, suddenly the forest gave way to a clearing,  and there in the center of it was a monument inscribed with "Mormon Springs" in large letters. I was mesmerized, and yet I forced myself to look away.  The last thing I wanted was for my friends to notice it and thus be reminded that I was Mormon, bringing on the rude comments and my own embarrassment.

 Given that I was living in what was the departing site for what few Southern converts there were in the early days of the Church before they left for some more tolerant place out West, I suppose it is no surprise that I felt as if I were living in a land forsaken by my Mormon ancestors.  It also somehow felt forsaken still by current Mormon membership.  One of the only places of major employment in my small town was the chemical plant where my dad worked as an engineer.  A couple of times during my childhood an LDS engineer happened to be hired at his company.  My parents would invite them over for dinner and instruct us kids to avoid saying disparaging things about the schools (which were pretty awful) so that maybe, just maybe, another LDS family would move into town.  Without exception, the families instead moved to the town of Columbus, choosing a thirty minute commute over what was evidently the horror of living in my poor little town.  Of course, it wasn't so much my town that was the problem for Church members, it was Mississippi in general.  My family attended the ward in West Point, Mississippi.  Assigned to this ward was the Columbus Air Force Base.  For no other reason than that evidently young pilots are not given a choice as to where they are assigned, there was a constant stream of young air force families moving in and out of our congregation.  As seems to be the custom in many wards, the young couples were always invited to speak when they first moved in.  The first things out of their mouths when they spoke from the pulpit was (to an extent that was pretty much comical) always a variant on the same:  "When they told us we were being stationed in Mississippi, we were like, "Oh NO!  Not Mississippi!!!"  And to be honest, to us long-timers, that attitude was a little hurtful.  Is it really that bad?  We love the South, we love Mississippi.  This is our home.


In the town I grew up in, the First Baptist Church was the epicenter of all social activities.  If you didn't attend, there was not a whole lot of hope for you socially as a teenager.  The youth minister was fully engaged in creating social opportunities:  there were breakfasts at McDonalds before school on Wednesdays, there were movies on the weekends, and let's not forget Fifth Quarter!  After the football games the youth were invited back to the First Baptist Church gym for additional games and social time.  I felt constantly left out by my peers as a child and teenager, but my family continued doing our thing, driving 30 minutes (and we were some of the lucky ones) to Church every week, known by the entire town as "that big Mormon family."


I remember at one point when I was in Junior High attending some sort of activity at the local Methodist church. I was standing with a group of kids, some who I knew well, some who I barely knew because they attended the private school, and the youth minister asked me what religion I was.  I opened my mouth to speak and before I could answer the entire group of kids (remember, some of them I did not know very well), answered, "She's Mormon!"  That was a bit overwhelming to me--the whole town knew me as part of "that big Mormon family;" they knew I was different, and they weren't going to forget it.

The moments of ridicule associated with my being a Latter-day-saint were heartbreakingly frequent, but here are a few jewels that I remember:

Once I was dating a nonmember. (Okay, that happened more than once.   To those members that thought it was a bad idea that I dated nonmembers as a teenager, here was my response back then:  If I wanted to date a member in my county, there is only one option, and he's my brother.  In retrospect I could have *gasp* just not dated, but that really didn't seem like an option at the time, haha.) Anyway, I was dating a nonmember and a mutual friend told the guy I was dating, "Don't get attached to her, she's going to hell."  I don't remember who told me that this was said, but it was quite upsetting to hear that a supposed good friend of mine believed that.


Another time I was with a group of friends at the Railroad Festival in the next town over, and the unmistakable white shirts/dark suits/black name tags walked by several paces away.  Under his breath I hear the friend next to me mutter, "D*** church of the devil!"

Of course there were the usual quips by guys in high school, accompanied by a smirk and a group of giggling guys, "Bethany how many wives does your dad have?"  or "Bethany, when you get married are you going to let your husband have more than one wife?"  It cut me to my adolescent soul--and they smirked and giggled.   Then there were the usual, though inexplicable jokes about sacrificing goats, etc.

If I could get by a few months without my religion being brought up at all, that was the best.  I tried to lay low--if I didn't bring it up, maybe no one else would either.   Obviously in retrospect I can think of a dozen retorts, of endless ways that I could have been intelligent and valiant and courageous and stood up for myself and put those mean kids in their places while at the same time educating them about my religion.  I could have seen any of those instances as a teaching opportunity.  But I was a teenager.

The Protestant churches in my area had "Mormon Week"--it was an actual thing, where members of the congregation were educated about the evils of the Mormon Church.  Films were shown, pamphlets were distributed.  My mother told me that it was because our Church was so wonderful that this was done because the pastors were scared that the Mormon Missionaries would steal their congregation.  The anti-Mormon sentiments that I was subjected to tended to be rejuvenated following Mormon Week.

By the time I was 16 I finally had enough confidence to begin to respond to some of the mean remarks. I even had my best friend and the guy I was dating receive the first missionary discussion (the first discussion was as far as it went).  As I matured I was able to overcome some of the "trauma" enough to begin to share the Gospel that was, even at a young age, very real to me and of great importance.  My testimony had always been strong, but I was finally strong enough to begin to share it.

When I was a junior in high school, I overheard my two best friends talking about me being Mormon and that I was going to hell. One said, shaking her head, "I just try not to think about it."  I knew that both of these friends were drinking, sleeping around.  I was doing home-study seminary, praying daily, attending church, refraining from drinking and smoking, maintaining my standards of chastity.  I understood that their Truth was that they "were saved"and I was not.  This bothered me a bit but by then I was used to it.


If I was going to put up with this I needed to believe in my religion.  I needed to have a strong testimony, and I needed to understand why my Church was different from the Baptist and Methodist churches.  My teenage life could have been in many ways easier if I could have just attended one of those other churches, or at least denied my own religion.  I could have tried turning over to the Baptist Church.  The Youth Minister did a good job of inviting me to the social gatherings, and sometimes I went.  When he realized I was Mormon, he got a strange glint in his eye, and I could see the wheels turning.   It is pretty easy to believe that he wanted to convert me--in fact at one point he even said, "Bethany, why don't you come over to church at  First Baptist, that way you wouldn't have to drive all the way to West Point every Sunday."  But even then, as a stupid teenager, I knew (because my parents had taught me) that the truth of the Gospel has little to do with convenience.

Because Protestantism was so dominant where I lived, my parents made sure that I understood why ours was the one true Church.  And so did the other members of our small ward, which was made up predominantly of converts.  These converts spoke often about their former Protestant religions and discussed the differences and why they chose to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   If we were to be ridiculed (and it sometimes felt like, persecuted), we needed to understand why we did it.

And this is why I am familiar with Protestantism.  I am far from an expert, and I would like to learn more.  I do know of some of the major differences between the Protestant faiths and the LDS Church and I have chosen to be a member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I love my religion and my fellow members.

I also love the Protestants that I grew up with in Mississippi.  These were my friends and many still are.   They are good people.  They pray to God, they believe in Jesus Christ.  We are fellow Christians.   As I have gotten older, I have realized (with something of a shock due to the way I was perpetually being called out for being "different") that I have a whole lot in common with other true disciples of Jesus Christ, no matter what the denomination.  For those Christians whose religion shapes their lives, I know that we have far more in common than we have differences.  I love the Conservative, Christian South!   And I wish it would accept me, and my religion.








****Update
I sent this post to my very wise siblings, and since they commented in email rather than here on the blog, I thought I would include their comments here since I found them to be funny as well as relevant:


From one sister: Much of it definitely resonated with me. I don't remember ever hearing anyone talking about me going to hell though. Most of my experiences were more with people joking about multiple wives, temples, undergarments, prophets, etc. And it was mortifying many times as a teenager of course. Also, always being called a goody goody and being dared to do things that people knew I wouldn't do so that they could make fun of me for it. Or if I ever did do or say something wrong, everyone making fun of "the Mormon" for doing something wrong. 

It is interesting living here now as an adult. People do tell us that they have sunday school lessons about us and ask some of the same questions but it doesn't really bother me anymore. In fact, I really like setting people straight. :)

From another sister: When I was in junior high a rumor went around that Mormons thought baptists would be their slaves in heaven. It was weird.

And From a Brother: That's a pretty great rumor. And kind of eerily related to that particularly awful faith-promoting fabricated quote that says the youth of this generation were generals in the war in heaven and ends with everyone in the afterlife bowing down to us when they heard we served under Gordon B. Hinckley.

[This post] definitely resonates considerably... I remember [a specific friend] being very concerned that I was going to Hell, among others who approached the matter with varying degrees of sympathy. Mostly it wasn't that big of a deal for me, but it did come up on occasion. Like when everyone on the soccer team seemed initially uneasy about inviting me to say The Lord's Prayer with them before a match.

And another brother: I remember people making off handed comments about Mormonism and being embarrassed (more so by [a history teacher] than anyone else, interestingly enough). When I got to MSMS I was fortunate that everyone was really nice about it, and in medical school everyone is really nice about it though they think some things are queer (you don't drink coffee? How can you survive?) Or ive had it said to me in a relieved way "when I learned you were Mormon I thought you were going to be very LGBT intolerant, but I'm glad you're not!".

The farther along I get the more silly squabbles between religions seem, especially among Christians. As Stephen Colbert said, isn't it crazy that Mormons believe a man got the golden plates from an angel on a hill when we all know that really a man got the stone tablets from a pillar of fire on a mountain? Anyway, it seems to me like the classic theme in stories where there is all this infighting between the similar, natural allies while a much more powerful and sinister outside force lies on the brink of invasion to destroy them all. Really protestants, Mormons, whoever else should be supportive of each other as believers standing against the wave of secular humanism.

And a final comment from a sister:  At MSMS, I was once complimented by a guy who told "well, you *are* pretty open-minded." I gave him the mine I think I got from Dad about how "My mind's open; it's just not empty."

To Those Questioning the Church Based on Its History

(also written as an email to a family member)

We had a good lesson on First Corinthians in Church on Sunday.

Basically, God's wisdom is not our wisdom and trying to understand it as such could be our downfall.

I don't think it's wrong by any means to try to understand Church history, under the following parameters:

1.  We acknowledge that there is no way for us to understand perfectly what happened  (as we were discussing the other day).  We will never know exactly what happened behind closed doors in the 1800s, and I don't believe even corroborating first person accounts can be relied upon given the reasons so many people had for conspiring to make things up.  And in the case of the early church, yes I am something of a conspiracy theorist, but that's neither here nor there:  accept we will never in this life know exactly what took place, what the exact motives were, or what people were thinking.

2.  We acknowledge that even if we DO think we have at least a pretty good grasp on what happened (given that there are certain indisputable facts, and then given that we think we have the rest at least 80% correct), we do not possess God's wisdom so we can't understand the motives. If we accept that we CAN'T understand the events with God's wisdom, but we enjoy researching, pondering, grappling with the ideas, then fine, do it.  If we however do NOT enjoy these things, and researching, pondering, grappling with ideas instead brings us to tears and makes us depressed, and ruins a culture/religion for us that we otherwise enjoy, then perhaps we should not try to understand certain aspects, since, as I mentioned above, we're not going to get it anyway.

I think the Gospel has set the precedent on multiple occasions that we are meant to learn line upon line, precept upon precept, and that God unfolds his wisdom a little at a time.  Intelligence has always been held from us, partly because our human minds can't comprehend it, but mostly because it wasn't his plan for us to know.

Bringing us back to Faith (and to Moroni's promise).

We can simply pray and ask, a la Moroni's promise, but to be honest, I am not to that point in what I consider to be my own "lifelong member" version of conversion.  For me, for now, it is more a matter of Faith, of relying on my own intuition--or maybe that's the Spirit...  If I feel good at Church, if somewhere in my heart I love the Gospel, if I trust the testimonies of others, I think for now perhaps that's my answer without pinning everything on an "all or nothing" prayer.  I Believe in the Gospel and in Jesus Christ, and so I choose to believe his Prophets.  This takes immense Faith and Trust because I am believing that what the Church has shared with us about the Restoration and early Church History is true to the extent of their knowledge.  I'm also trusting that if God thought we should know more, he would let it be known through his Prophets and on to us.  

I choose to believe this.  I also happen to believe that there's plenty he could potentially clear up, but that we make our own messes and he lets us sort through it and deal with it ourselves since it is not Essential to Our Salvation.   Once again, back to Sunday school answers, stick to the issues essential to our salvation, which are all laid out pretty darn clear.

I like to share my feelings because my heart goes out to those questioning the Church because I understand.  At some point, however, I do think one has to Choose Faith, because the straightforward answers a historian might yearn for simply are not there (at least in my opinion).  Look at the mess in the history of the Catholic church--there's all kinds of bizzarro stuff that we consider as fact, and even more weird and disgusting rumors that we can today simply only speculate about (i.e. the Borgias).  And yet so many Catholics choose to believe...and we can too.  And yes, I believe our religion has many more legs to stand on than Catholicism.  And in my heart I believe that it might even be true--this is certainly my greatest hope.  There are certainly way more good and positive and miraculous things in the history of the Church (and in our own lives) that would have to be explained away to prove that it was a farce than there are negative or hard-to-understand things that we need to accept (or not think about) in order to make room for Belief.  The Church blesses my life, and I choose to believe.

My Un?Testimony

(Written as an email to a family member)

I would say that it is not so much that I am a Mormon Feminist as that I have some questions and/or disagreements about certain areas of the Church (mostly historical), but definitely with some "feminist" things thrown in...

My testimony of the Church is fairly complicated currently, but I have over time been able to organize it in such a way that at least my relationship with the Church is simple. 

I appreciate and love the Church.  I achieved a certain level of peace when I realized that even if--and this is a huge "if"--the Church were not true, that the history, revelation etc, were not as we have learned--even if all of that, I would still want to be a part of this organization.  I love the people, I want to be part of the Church that my family is a part of and loves.  I like the teachings/values.  I appreciate that my husband is not addicted to pornography and coming home drunk.  I want my children to grow up with the values that will help them become the kind of adults that I want them to be:  generous, loving, conscientious, with a stable family life.

Now that aside, I do not feel like a hypocrite attending meetings, holding a temple recommend and a calling, etc because there is a deep, inner part of me that truly believes that the Church is true.  Now it is responsibility to reconcile my brain with that.  The problem, I've realized, is that I tend to overthink things.  I can see that my testimony was never simpler and more pure than when I was a child.  My testimony probably was at its "best" when I was an older teenager--maybe when I was a freshman at BYU (interestingly this is about the age when we go on missions), because at this point I had some true intelligence and knowledge of the gospel, and yet I had not begun to overthink everything.  I do realize that this is where the "becoming like a little child" or whatever comes in.  The point is to regain that pure and trusting testimony--that easy faith. 

Unfortunately, with my adult brain and what convoluted versions of history I am able to gather via the internet and other sources, this is a difficult mindset to achieve.  Going back to my point, however: once I realized that even if the Church were not true, I would still want to be a part of it, this buys me time.   Time to live and enjoy the gospel, time to appreciate my Sundays at Church and the good people that go there.  Time to gradually either reconcile those questions that I have, or, as slowly seems to be happening to me, realize that it really doesn't need to be completely understood at this point because my mind and our worldly understanding is so finite that there's a good chance I wouldn't get it anyway.  The irony of all this is, of course, that after the pain, tears and grappling, I have arrived at the Sunday school answer of "We don't need to understand these things right now, we just need to trust, and all will be explained one day."  Haha.

"To some it is given to know, to others it is given to believe on their words".   I really feel like I have been on different sides of this.  In the last several years I  have certainly relied heavily on the testimonies of others that I respect and admire:  my family, my mother, my father...and the good, righteous, intelligent people of the wards that I have been a part of.  If these people can truly believe and know these things to be true, it makes me think that I can too.   I might not know it today, but I do believe I can get to that point--getting there my way, I guess. 

And it comes full circle:  the marriages that I want to emulate, the families that I would want to model my own after--these are families in the Church that have become as they are by living by the principles of the Gospel.  So again, even if it weren't "true" or if all historical accounts have not been portrayed 100% "accurately," I would still want it.   Of course, then there's the paradox of "by their fruits you shall know them":  If I want the fruits, I guess I want the Gospel too (even if I don't completely understand it at this point in time).

Why We're Having a Fourth Child Even Thought We Can't Afford It

Shortly after I had given birth to our second child, my husband was approached by a co-worker, given a slap on the back and told, "Way to go! You got the perfect family--a girl and a boy, so you get to be done already!"  My husband came home and he and I kind of chuckled about it, because we knew this wasn't "our" perfect family.  We always knew we wanted a third.
           Well, we got our third, and believe me, the past seven years have been no walk in the park.  My husband and I got married pretty young and immediately started a family, having our three children in fairly quick succession.  It has been hard.  My pregnancies have all been tough--I'm one of those gal's with morning sickness the entire nine months.  My babies have not been easy:"colicky" as newborns, and then, due to what the pediatricians and myself can only guess to be an underdeveloped digestive system/acid reflux, refusing to sleep through the night until well over a year of age.  As the kids have gotten older there has been the added commitment of homework, soccer, dance, as well as the stress of dealing with and worrying about the little "issues" that each child invariably has, no matter how wonderful they may be.  And, of course, there's always the finances to consider.  Kids are expensive and our financial resources are certainly limited, as is the space in our three bedroom home.  Don't get me wrong, my husband makes a good, reliable salary as an engineer, but we remain a single income family--it shouldn't be hard to imagine that my earning potential as a Liberal Arts graduate with no work experience would be quickly negated by the cost of childcare x 3 (besides which, I believe in staying home with my kiddos and think they deserve the best of me--but that is a topic for another post). The result is that money must be carefully managed, luxuries are few.  So why then, are we currently expecting a *gasp* planned fourth?
              Well, throughout all the sleepless nights, diapers, whining, squabbling and vomiting of the past several years, the moments that have made it all worth it, the moments that have, in fact, brought me the most pure happiness that I have ever experienced, are when I see my children playing together--developing a relationship with each other, learning to love each other.
               I come from a family of five children.  The rewards that I have experienced as such are innumerable and invaluable to me.  Moving around the country, having even some really fantastic best friends come and go, my siblings have always been there for me, even into adulthood--in fact I would say that our relationships are actually way better now that we are all mature adults.  In my own life (and I know this may not be the case for all), I have found my relationships with my siblings to provide the most rewarding and the most reliable friendships, while requiring the least amount of maintenance/drama.  We may live halfway across the country from each other, but the bond is still there and I know with certainty that it always will be there.
               And so I answer the question (because many have asked): Why are we having a fourth?  To be honest, the decision was tough.  We thought and prayed long and hard about it.  I even asked my husband, "Can we provide for a fourth?"  His response, "We can always provide less."  He was referring to material possessions, of course, because we knew that really we would be providing more--more personalities, more laughter, more love, more family, more friends.  My kids will always have their siblings, and--I believe--if the bonds are created while they are young, nourished and encouraged in a family devoted to "Family", they will always have loving, committed, supportive "Friends".  
             So I decided to give my kids the gift that I thought would be most valuable to them.  My gift to them won't be fancy vacations, expensive gadgets, or a sporty car when they turn sixteen.  My gift to them will be each other.

On Abortion

(written to the venerable audience of Facebook)

I don't always broadcast my political opinions, but this time (after watching a video about Planned Parenthood keeping a baby alive wherein to better harvest their organs), I couldn't stay silent because it hits close to home:

I am "pro-life" (and "pro-choice").

I will teach my daughters that they will have the choice of creating a human life BEFORE that life is conceived. I will do my best to teach them values and to make sure that they have all the information they need to make sure that this choice is not denied them--because yes, having a baby is incredibly "inconvenient", and it is a "life sentence", and it is expensive, and it is a heavy burden of responsibility (of course, based on the number of children I have, I also believe that raising children is fulfilling, and entertaining, and interesting, and fun, and really one of the few things in this life worth my time). People will bring up, "Well, what about cases of rape or saving the mother's life?" I think anyone would agree that such cases constitute a small subset of abortions, but in those instances I would leave that choice up to the individual.

I believe in freedom as a human right, but I also find it inarguable that choices we make can limit our future freedoms.

Why do I have this opinion? The most remarkable events of my life have been the births of my children and what I find every time to be the most incredible part is the relatively small amount of effort that is required...Yes, I'm sick the whole 9 months and yes, it's painful, etc, etc, but if I keep myself relatively healthy, that little baby is born a HUMAN BEING--a gorgeous, adorable, individual. There was nothing I could do to magically turn them into a life at 20 weeks or whatever the cut off for abortion is--they just grew, all by themselves, in every aspect a miracle.

And so, considering how miraculous and precious and yet how considerable the stakes are, I would think that this of all freedoms we as human beings should be infinitely careful with. This is human life. Trust me, I have every sympathy for a woman who has become pregnant when she wasn't prepared for it, and that's why I'm saying "Be educated, be careful, make your choice, preserve your freedom!" Pilots aren't constantly "accidentally" diving head first into rocky cliffs--the cost of human life is too great, they are too careful. So let's be careful with these sweet little babies, they deserve it.