her warfare is accomplished

It has not been a calm week in our house. Perhaps that is because we now live, by choice, in 350 square feet. Perhaps it is because we just brought a new baby home. One thing is for sure, our almost three-year-old, like each of us, is adjusting. Her waking exclamations of "our tiny house is finally finished!" as the sunlight streams into her loft turn into groans of "it's not time to get up yet, it's still dark!" when her little sister has a wakeful night. These are, of course, problems faced by new families regardless of the size of the home, but perhaps we are more acutely drawn into life together by being totally at the mercy of each other's rhythms in a smaller space.

This time last year, I was nearing the end of a deployment to Afghanistan, living in a 25' by 10' container,  and realizing that all of this was more possible than I'd previously thought. Just outside the wire, I'd seen semi-nomadic camps of Kuchi tribespeople, their women brightly dressed, usually with a baby on the hip and several small ones lugging fuel and water to the collapsed mud walls where they draped their tents. It occurred to me that while I could wash my face and order an omelet within minutes, these women managed many more competing urges on waking: relieving the bladder after a full night, consoling crying children, starting a fire for breakfast, keeping skirts and head coverings from tangling with everything. Under this, they often face the nagging reality of being overlooked and under appreciated for all these feats. They usually lack a voice in the family and larger society entirely. My worst mornings are still a cake walk compared with this.

When I think of the last Great Altercation between my preschooler and I over toilet training, my anger seems petty, and I realize that I am too easily overwhelmed. Before and after deployment, we have had many chances to tango over her using the toilet. (My frustration mounts because I remember a time when, at six months, she could eliminate waste predictably while held over the seat, using gentle communication techniques known throughout the world wherever there are no disposable diapers.) That we still have puddles on the floor daunts me. Weeks have gone by without incident, but this week we stepped so far back in time that it made my husband and I wonder whether the behavior isn't just regressive attention-seeking, with all the adjustments of a new addition to the family.

I have peace of mind that prior to deployment I spent every available moment with our daughter, who was 18 months when I left for dusty Kandahar. Likewise, we have been very intentional about my quality time with her during reintegration, despite the almost immediate news that we were expecting another little girl. So why all the strife? Why do I not handle it better when she disobeys, misfires, or acts out in frustration: "Mom, I don't KNOW why I'm crying right now." Her Ls and her Rs are still Ws. Her "th" sound is still a "f" most days. Why do I expect that she can always tell me why she's upset, when many adults cannot do the same? I have been ashamed to repeat to my husband what can transpire when he is gone and things go poorly. It is clear that we parent better together, and that I need a refresher course in relating to my own child, with all these changes.

Thankfully, my daughter is already a pretty good teacher. I hold to the idea that authority figures like parents and teachers, while uniquely accountable for their leadership within the learning process, are also co-learners with children and students. Recalling this is like remembering that someone hid you a key under the flowerpot when you believed you were locked out of the house for the rest of the day. It helps me unlock the clues that my daughter keeps leaving for me, and reopen that sense of wonder in parenthood as co-creation with God, when I lose it. The best clues lie in her play and make-believe.

While waiting for the labor pains to start that would bring us a baby, my daughter and I developed a ritual on those evenings when my husband was out working: dinner, an episode of "The Magic School Bus," bathtime, books, and bed. It was calming and in tune with the falling darkness outside, and she is riveted by the drama and characters in her new favorite show. Early on, she began calling me Ms. Frizzle, the zany and ebullient teacher who safely shepherds her class through nature and science while putting them in the driver's seat and urging them to "Take chances! Make mistakes! And get messy!" When I am Ms. Frizzle, my daughter dubs herself Keysha, after one of the students who tends to catastrophize when the class seems to be in peril of, for example, a fast-approaching T-Rex or meteor, saying, "Oh bad. Bad, bad, BAD!" When she repeats this to herself, there is usually no real danger, but as I eavesdrop, her imagined crises usually relate to something dropped, lost, soiled, or broken, much like in her real world. That she calls me Ms. Frizzle is a reminder of how she wants me to be - a secure base from which to explore the world, to take perceived risks, to make a mess, to get it wrong - and to do this unflappably, with a smile.

One is reminded of the Banks' children's advertisement leading to the arrival of Mary Poppins: "If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition... play games, all sorts... never be cross or cruel, never give us castor oil or gruel." While I sympathize with this desire for a self-possessed adult who always seems to know how the story ends and therefore never gets too cross, I wonder where is the place for anger, for frustration, for being at your wit's end in parenthood? Surely even God shows displeasure with us, his children. I am reminded, however, that I have more in common with Ms. Frizzle than I would like to admit. Neither of us is really omniscient, or perfect, even if a child's eyes can make us seem so. After all, as a teacher, I am accountable for incorporating my daughter's messes and mistakes as part of the learning process, to embrace them and to not come unglued. If I make a complete confession, I would have rather spent my minutes doing something other than teaching her how to clean up a mess, and I feel am owed more fun in life than that. I do not see it as the sacred task that it is, and I do not see Jesus making me more in his image as I parent. When I consider my failings, compared with Ms. Frizzle's cheery demeanor, I am reminded that perhaps there is less room for righteous anger while teaching my daughter than I'd like to admit. "In your anger do not sin," Jesus told us, and perhaps that is why I ought to be a little more like Ms. Frizzle and leave the righteous anger to God.

While I was deployed, my husband faithfully took our daughter, then a toddler, to swim lessons, preschool, and the library each once a week in a routine that both kept them sane and presented her with strange new situations to satisfy her brain's craving for anything novel. At the library, Margaret Hodges' retelling of St. George and the Dragon became a fast favorite. Our daughter styles herself as St. George, and calls me Una, the princess who leaves her realm to find and bring back a knight worthy to free it of the afflicting dragon. The elaborate illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman show Una as beautifully fragile, but also as strong, as capable of defending her people with the right help, ranging epic mountains and fearful woods on horseback, leading St. George to his quest. I am happy that my daughter sees herself as a kind of warrior - life itself affirms that this is true. I am puzzled that she sees me as her Una, and today I struggle to decipher what she is telling me that she needs in calling me this name. Perhaps she is telling me that she knows we are in the midst of a struggle, that the fiery, unpredictable dragons of anger, exhaustion and self-righteousness can strike at any time in the heart of our small realm. Perhaps she is telling me that she knows we are in this together when she says, "Una, I am very sorry I peed in my pants again," and waits for me to say, "I forgive you." Perhaps she even knows that it has been hard to switch from responsibility for only myself and a staff of adults to just two little women - that I wrestle with the need for importance and motion and the illusion of progress. Perhaps that is why sometimes I need to hear her say to me, as the wings of my retreating anger flap overhead, "Mom, I forgive you, too." 

Fictions are not just a luxury: we need them. When my daughter creates these other worlds for herself to live in, I am reminded of my own need to see past the world as it is and envision what it could be. J.R.R. Tolkien put it this way in his essay, "On Fairy Stories":

The consolation of fairy stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive’. In its fairy tale or otherworld setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophy, of sorrow and failure; the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glance of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. 

I have witnessed many homecomings in my life, growing up as a Navy kid. I have heard many stories from peers, superiors and subordinates during my Army service of brief honeymoon periods, followed by an insatiable desire to escape and bury oneself again in work after returning from deployment. Perhaps one reason reintegration with family can seem so defeating to us is that we feel a guilty kind of discontent that we spent so long missing family, and when we return, we don't remember how to enjoy what we've been pining for. It may help to be reminded that this frustration is common, and that it is part of the "anxiety of becoming" experienced by all of creation. We fall so far short of our own expectations because we live in a fallen world, and because we are still being remade: out of the distorted image of a parent who never gets angry but abdicates responsibility to correct bad behavior, or on the other hand berates a child over spilled milk. We should expect to feel futile sometimes, and when we despair of the "perfect parenthood" we imagined for ourselves, we find hope in the words of St. Paul to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.

Romans 8:18-25 

I am also reminded of the prophet Isaiah's words about the coming of Christ and his Kingdom:

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.
“Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD’S hand
Double for all her sins.”
A voice is calling,
“Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
“Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together; 
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Isaiah 40:1-5 

This passage, in rehearsals and performances during one Advent season in college, is responsible for my not abandoning the Church altogether, and for that reason continues to be a luminary for me. I keep it, like the bottled starlight given to the hobbit Frodo by the elf Galadriel: "May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out" (from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien). When I went to war, it was in my arsenal to ward off despair and the sense of futility that threatens all of us when we are far from home on an uncertain path. My husband sent me a mixed tape for our anniversary simply titled, "Her warfare is accomplished," containing a track of the "Messiah" movement containing this passage on it, wedged appropriately between the electronica and classic rock. I felt oddly reverent to be on the receiving end of a mixed tape, as we had made many recordings for my father during his deployments when I was a kid. After thanking my husband for this labor of love (mixed tapes are, I'm told, a very precise art!) I also recall wondering with him how to avoid bringing my "warfare" home with me when I left Afghanistan. We knew I would certainly bring home some kind of scar, however small. We prayed that this would be for our good and that we would heal and recover well together. At that point, we knew, even as we did not want to acknowledge, that there would be some dark days of learning how to be a family again, up close.


Military training and experience teach us to set goals and pursue excellence in all matters, personal and professional. It also teaches us to balance this with intimate knowledge of our own capabilities and those around us, helping to regulate our expectations. Sometimes the chance to wargame how badly something might go, and arm ourselves for that worst-case encounter is, oddly, comforting to us. This week, as I reflect on my recent labor to bring our baby girl into the world, on my husband's sacrifices to help us each thrive over the past three years, and on our preschooler's struggle to choose a world that revolves around our life together instead of just herself, the expectation of difficulty is comforting. We do what's hard all the time - we train for it. With a wry laugh that comes from tough, resilient joy, we remember that the struggle to become better members of a family is as epic as it seems, because our very souls - and those of our children - are at stake. It makes sense, then, that it should be tough and adrenaline-charged at the same time that it is fun and exhilarating: all of our most gratifying experiences are.