seeing spiders

A friend of mine says that in many cultures, spiders are associated with the act of writing. I have been seeing spiders all month, and having the urge to write, as well. With a 3-month-old in my life, this doesn't seem especially feasible most days, but occasionally writing is simply the overflow of a full heart: it feels harder to avoid it than to sit down and begin.

I have been back at work for a month now, and military motherhood has left me, as Mary, with much to ponder in the solitude of my own heart. First, there is the hard reality that my mother would probably not have approved. Faithful to traditional models of what it means to be a woman, my mother advocated strongly for staying at home with little ones, and for the art and science of full-time homemaking. This made my childhood wonderful, and I can appreciate that raising five daughters was a full time job. On one occasion, my father related to me that an insurance adjuster advised him to increase my mother's life insurance policy, as he would not be able to afford to pay anyone to do all that my mother did for us in the event of her untimely death. My father wisely listened to this counsel, and used the discussion as a humorous way of explaining how much he deeply valued all our mother did during long years of sea duty in the submarine force. It also made me aware that the unpaid work of homemakers is easy to underestimate, until you attempt to quantify it. Then, it becomes glaringly obvious that the role is often taken for granted.

I had always thought I would follow the path my mother took, and am still surprised to find myself on active duty in the Army while raising our first child. My husband, a Reservist and full-time graduate student, is also navigating a much different experience than he anticipated for much of his life. To say that he is "Mr. Mom" seems demeaning, for he is not playing at being an excellent full-time care provider for our daughter--if anything, he is "Mr. Dad," the genuine article. Though his approach to various baby-related problems differs vastly from mine, he finds ways to meet her needs I never would think of, like the night he jogged her to sleep to the song "Heartbreaker." Who would have thought that blasting classic rock records would soothe a baby so completely? I saw it happen in my own living room, and rejoiced that God made us both, male and female, in his image. Still, there are pangs of guilt when I steal away to physical training each morning, and then again to work after breakfast and feeding the baby. What kind of woman am I, to choose such a demanding profession during my childbearing years? How will my choice to stay in the Army for a few more years affect my relationship with my daughter, and with my husband? Is this really the kind of work I was born to do long-term, or is this a detour on the road to my true vocation?

I do not have bulletproof answers for these questions, and there are better women than I who have chosen either to be professional Soldiers or to be homemakers. What I do know definitively is that the Army has made me a better mother in a few tangible ways. First, I am a far more persistent person than I was before active duty service. Somewhere between the first 20-foot rope I had to climb (with a weight vest on), and the last late night at the office poring over PowerPoint slides, I gained a kind of visceral self-reliance that I never knew I had. I learned that I could outlast the Army's demands on my time and energy, and that even when I felt myself to be at a breaking point, there was always a little bit left, if the mission required it. I am reminded of St. Paul's words to the Corinthians: "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed." 

Second, the Army reinforced the value of camaraderie, especially that of other women, in a way that few other experiences can. While I have grown to value and rely on good collaboration with my brothers-in-arms, it doesn't give me the pleasure I experience in the company of good, strong women who can push and encourage me toward my best self. This is the kind of fellowship St. Paul recommends to Titus that women can uniquely offer each other, when he says that older women should, "teach what is good" and "urge the younger women to love their husbands and children." In other times, this meant that women helped each other to manage their households while their husbands won the bread, but the support that women offer each other in the daily self-sacrifice of family life is timeless. While I value and seek the mentorship of older, wiser women both inside the profession of arms and outside, I have found that my peers often astound me with their insight, their problem-solving, and their desire to be faithful to their calling as wives and mothers. In one sense, as the oldest of five girls who grew up replicating the comforts of sisterhood in my friendships, making female friends was second nature to me, and was always much easier than my friendships with men. But I also was privileged to be part of a group of newly married female lieutenants at my first unit who confirmed for me that sisterhood was as necessary to my professional life as to my personal life. As we learned how to operate and excel in a world heavily influenced by men, we enjoyed the lifegiving camaraderie that kept us afloat even on the toughest days. It is little surprise, then, that we have one by one leaned heavily on each other as we entered into motherhood, easing the most demanding calling any of us has answered yet. If I can teach my daughter one thing about the company of other women, I hope it is to seek its encouragement and never to play the lone ranger.

Finally, Army life has given me an unexpected set of roles to explore that, while unconventional by some standards, usher me into the fullest experience of womanhood I have known. The medieval Christian mystic Julian of Norwich is well known for her meditations on the motherly, nurturing aspects of God. When I first read her work in college, I did not connect with it and felt it strange and foreign. My first week back at work after maternity leave, I experienced the costume change from Army uniform to nursing wear and back again, and I was broadsided by the wonderful feeling of providing for my daughter and my family in so many different ways. I could then identify with Julian's vision of God: "A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself. ...With all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully... in these blessed words, ...'All the health and life of the sacraments, all the virtue and grace of my word, all the goodness that is ordained for you in holy Church, that I am." (From Revelations of Divine Love, circa 1393) 

Persisting in my efforts to breastfeed is something my mother would have championed, even if she disagreed with my going back to work, and I was struck by the total, physical takeover that motherhood is. All my waking moments were suddenly geared toward provision and nurture, and even my combat-ready exterior could not obscure that warm, gentle reality. My friends and I have joked that being a woman in the Army means constantly "getting in touch with our masculine sides," but going back to work after having my baby was the most thoroughly feminine experience of my life. I have experienced God as all-sufficient, in the name El Shaddai: "El" indicating might and strength, "Shaddai" derived from the word for breast, "Shad," indicating sufficiency and nourishment ("Shad" and "dai" may also be a contraction meaning "one who is enough,"). This side of heaven, we often experience lack that leaves us unable to provide for those we love perfectly. How appropriate, then, that Christ modeled God's all-sufficiency for us even while limiting himself to the frailty of human experience, saying through St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you: for my power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me."

By virtue of an Army connection, my husband and I recently had the privilege of entertaining an Afghan officer who is attending school here in the states. I wondered, of course, how to achieve the right balance as a woman in my interactions. If I were in his country, for example, I would not reach for a handshake during a greeting, and would probably cover my head. He was in mine, however, and this was a unique opportunity to model what it means to be a woman who wields the full power of her own choices in a society that permits her to do so. As the evening progressed, my husband and I exchanged the baby, the dishes, and the components of dinner, I watched our foreign guest relax: initially he had not even wanted to make eye contact or speak directly to me. Ensuring that I did not wear revealing clothing, participating in the making of the meal, caring for the baby, and taking great interest in stories about his family and country, I stumbled through the cross-cultural encounter, as did he. He asked me several questions about my work and how I felt about leaving my baby, and about my husband taking care of her during the day, and he kept revisiting this theme as if it were magnetized. I, similarly, asked repeated questions about women in his family and culture. He asked me for a blanket and took it outdoors to pray twice during the evening, and laughed when I warned him to look out for the tarantulas in our yard. When we broke fast with him at sundown as part of his Ramadan observance, he saw that the delicious meal had been made more by my husband than by me. Still, at the end of the evening, he reached for my hand as he left, and said, "Thank you, my sister," and wished us both a "long, good life." I wished him the same, my heart running over. He had heard me say that I enjoyed my work, but that I loved being a mother, and that it was a difficult problem to solve, wanting always to be in two places--and I think he understood that this choice was something I'd rather struggle with than not have at all, and I hope he saw it as part of my relationship to God.

It is with fear and trembling that I work out my vocations of military service and motherhood, searching for how best to reflect the imago Dei and to imitate Christ's supreme sacrifice and example. I only know that this is the most joyful, and the most complicated, phase of my life so far. Because of that, I believe--if God gives his saints anything particular to do in his heaven--my mother who departed for glory before she could satisfy her eagerness to be a grandmother is ideally positioned to intercede for me in this endeavor. Because motherhood itself is, like the rest of creation, groaning in its imperfections and radiant in its triumphs, I would not be surprised to find that the fellowship of Christian women spans the "already and the not yet" of the kingdom of heaven in this way. The thought of what my mother would say, think, or do in my situation spurs me forward in a pursuit of excellence in motherhood, joining the examples of my friends and mentors, and helping me to find inner resources I never knew I had. Whether or not I have a military career in front of me, it is my hope that I can blend the best of my mother, the best of my many sisters, and the best of the self God gave me into a gift I can give to my husband, my daughter, and hopefully future children, too.