One of the reasons I love being a columnist is that I love telling people what to do. That's probably why I blog, too. My downfall is that at times others do not seem to recognize the brilliance of my insight, but I console myself in the fact that one day they might!
Hence, I know that one of the sins I struggle with is judgmentalism. Perhaps we all have it to a certain extent, but I have it in spades. I am constantly having to remind myself that I should not judge, for I too have faults. And I should not expect people who are not Christians to behave as if they were.
And this time of year is especially difficult for me, because of Father's Day. We had a wonderful Sunday celebrating with my husband and my father-in-law, with lots of card games, laughter, and barbecues to go around.
Nevertheless, I know that many did not have such good days, because the dads in their lives walked out on them. They had affairs on their wives. They abandoned their kids. I struggle when I think of these men.
It reminds me of a wedding I was at when I had to leave early because I had such a visceral judgmental reaction. The wedding was for two people who were closer to my husband than they were to me. While they were smiling and walking down the aisle, all I could think about was the fact that a year and a half earlier the bride had aborted their baby because she was still in school, and they wanted to finish their degrees first.
As I was seething in the pews of that church, I was also pregnant with my son, whom we knew had a serious heart defect, and whom we knew would likely not live long when he was born. We had been pressured to abort, and yet did not, because we wanted to give our baby whatever life we could.
That made the stark choice of abortion all the more vivid to me. And as I was thinking these thoughts, there was this couple, grinning from ear to ear, enjoying the wedding they wanted now that they both had landed jobs after they had received their diplomas. They had lived together for years, had aborted their baby, and had done everything so that their lives could be as convenient as possible.
And what was worse, to me, was that she had not kept the abortion secret. She had told people proudly that she was exercising her right to choose, so that she would not be burdened with a baby when she was not ready.
That was about fifteen years ago; I have no idea what has happened to that couple, or if they have gone on to have other children. Yet I have always almost hated that woman. At the time I refused to stay for the dance, and demanded that my husband take me home, because the thought of her being so happy after she had sacrificed everything that was good and pure on the altar of convenience made me physically ill.
I am not proud of my reaction, and yet I am getting the same tight feeling in my stomach when I think of that moment. I am not sure what I expected; did I want to hear remorse from her in her wedding speech? Did I want her to look miserable? Obviously the emotion I was feeling was not due to her. I was projecting on to this woman for reasons of my own that I still have not entirely figured out.
Perhaps it was easier to project because I did not really know this woman on a personal basis, and everything I did know about her was in such contrast to my own values that it was hard to feel any sense of comaraderie. Yet often it is in our deepest areas of pain that we are the most judgmental. I am most judgmental about men who leave their families, and about women who abort, because these are the big hurts in my life: a father deserting me; a baby I so desperately wanted dying. When others throw away what we would have done anything to keep, it makes us angry not primarily because of the hurt that they caused, but because we take it personally.
As much as we may be right in our assessment, though, we must stop this urge to personalize such sins. That couple did nothing against me; they did everything against God and against their child. It was to God that they owed an apology, and not to me. Yet I was acting the part of God in that story, demanding a penance that was not really mine to receive.
I wonder how often this dynamic plays a part in our own families. I know that I am far more sensitive to when Keith does something that reminds me of a husband leaving, even if he has no intention of leaving. Early in our marriage, when we used to have fights, I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed to leave the house to clear his head, even if it would help, because that would be hurtful to me. I would interpret it too much as what my father did--even though it was nothing close to it. Similarly, when I sense a rift developing between Rebecca, our 15-year-old, and Keith, I immediately lay all the blame at Keith's feet and demand that he fix it, because I know what it is like to grow up a teen without a father. I am projecting onto Keith sins he has not committed, because they sit so close to the areas of my heart where the hurt is still a little raw.
Many people say judgmentalism is caused by pride; we think we are better than others. I think it is also caused by hurt. We are angry that things did not work out differently for ourselves, and when others seem to be replicating the problem, it is almost as if they are denying the hurt feelings that we ourselves have. The answer to judgmentalism, then, is not always to look at our own sin. I think sometimes it's to look at our hurts. Take those hurts to God. Often we stop telling God what we're really feeling because we're afraid that if we start all this anger will come pouring out, and it won't help anybody. We'll never be able to stop. Yet we need to be honest with God. He knows what you're feeling anyway, and He's the only one who can wipe away the tears.
When we don't go to God, we take it out on others. That pain is still there, and it is ugly and it is big and it won't be silenced. If you won't take it to God, it will emerge in obscure ways in anger; usually in the anger of judgmentalism. You will start projecting onto others because that way you have a seemingly safe method of exorcising some of the pain. But it doesn't work, because it doesn't really get to the root.
If you find yourself overreacting in certain areas of your marriage, or overreacting with your kids, ask yourself if they're touching a scab, or maybe even an open wound on your heart. And then ask God if He will start to heal that wound. Don't be afraid to touch it. Sometimes healing hurts initially. The alternative, though, is to live with the pain. And to me, that's not much of an alternative at all.
Here are some of my favourite children's books she has:
Anyway, Jeannie also sends out a beautiful prayer every Monday that I subscribe to, and it starts my week off right.
Recently, though, she had been praying for the unborn, and got some rather nasty emails back from people who are Christian. I'm not privy to what these emails said, but here is her response, which I just love. I asked for her permission to post it, because I thought it was so well put, and encapsulates how I feel exactly.
I am not political. Had you asked me thirty years ago which party I favored, Democrat or Republican, you'd have gotten a blank stare. ...
And yet, despite my political-neutrality, several people have recently accused me of the exact opposite. It started when I sent an article on abortion to my Monday Morning Prayer List. Instead of appreciating the well-reasoned arguments in the piece, one friend wrote back and requested I please not talk politics with him. Another two people huffed off my email list demanding they never get anything else from me. Not ever. Not even the Monday prayers -- because I had offended them with political propaganda.
I was stunned. Political propaganda? I don't think of abortion as a political issue, it's a moral issue. Isn't it? It used to be.
Sadly, without most of us even noticing, moral issues have morphed into political concerns. ...Same-sex marriage, the day after pill for seventeen-year-olds, embryonic stem cell research -- there's no space to list them all, but every one of those ethical and moral issues have become political matters, and as a result morally-neutral. Porn on the Internet is nothing more than free speech these days. See how easy it's become? ...It's all good, guilt-free.
Unless you come down on the politically-incorrect side of a topic. More often than not, that unpopular side is God's side. ...Make no mistake, the sharp divide in our nation that has become so apparent in recent elections runs along moral lines even though disguised as political division. Recognize that! Learn what God expects of you. If you recognize that something is politically-correct, stop and analyze it. Ask what God says about it. Is it really political or is it an ethical matter?
Study the Bible until you can recognize right from wrong. Pray for wisdom and clear sight. Make decisions based on what the Bible says and not on what feels right. Instead of voting based on party, look at morals and ethics. Any time you have the opportunity to do it, speak up for right. You will suffer for it, but God will reward you in heaven. You and I must summon our courage and do what we can to stop evil now. ...Even if it means friends and family label us "political."
What she's saying is true in my own country of Canada, too. So often we see things that should be moral issues in terms of political issues. But if they're moral imperatives, they're moral imperatives. And we shouldn't confuse the two.
I guess I feel so strongly about the abortion question because I was once pressured to abort. I was pregnant with my baby boy, and they detected a serious heart defect. I let my baby live, and I am eternally grateful for that. You can read his story here.
I get way too into politics. I fret over elections, and polls, and the news. And yet, when all is said and done, political parties don't matter. They don't last beyond this world. But abortion does matter. God matters. How we handle our own charitable giving matters (rather than leaving it all to the government). How we live out our own marriages, and encourage other people's marriages, matters. So let's reclaim the moral, and stop trying to make things into political issues just to silence others. Let's do what we can to live out our values and morals in our homes, in our workplaces, in our cities, and in our countries. Maybe I sound political; I don't mean to. But these things matter. And we had better make sure we don't sweep them all under the rug because they're just about "politics".
A number of major dilemmas from readers have come through the comments (some anonymously that I haven't published at their request), and they're really toughies.
So I thought I'd throw them out there to all of you, in the hopes that through our collective wisdom we could help! I'll do them one every few days, because they're pretty deep.
Here's the first scenario (some details have been changed): Imagine you have adopted a little girl into your family and you love her to death. She even kind of looks like you.
But the reason that she was put up for adoption in the first place is that the mom was raped. So your beautiful daughter is actually the product of a sexual assault.
As her new mom for life, what should you do with this piece of information? Presumably she will eventually find out, since when she's older she can meet her biological mother. So how do you tell her? When do you tell her? And how do you deal with it?
Let me attempt to give my point of view, but please don't take it as gospel truth. I've been praying this one through lately, and here's what I've come up with:
We had a "what do I tell the child" situation in our extended family, too, that had to do with adoption. In that case, the question was, do you tell a child that he or she has siblings they don't know?
My policy was always tell them everything, because they're going to find out anyway. Instead, though, this child didn't find out about the siblings until later, because the information was not shared. And it was a big shock.
Now that's not the same thing as finding out that your father is a rapist. That can be truly devastating. So how would I deal with it?
I think I would stress, even before they could understand the words, that they were chosen. They were chosen by their adoptive parents, chosen by their biological mom, and chosen by God.
As they got older, I may gradually start teaching about how God often brings the most beautiful things in life out of a difficult situation. And keep that as a theme that you tell your kids constantly. When you see soil, you can say that it only comes because stuff rots. And yet it supports roses! When you hear of an earthquake, you can talk about those who were rescued, or about how the God's people moved in and brought beauty out of it. How beauty is often most noticed when it comes out of something difficult. Make this something you are constantly on the look out for.
And you can start talking about these types of things even as young as 4 or 5. Ask them to notice beauty. Tell them that they are beauty to you! That God chose them and they are beautiful. Share your story, about how it was in the worst things in your life that God made you beautiful.
Then, slowly, as they are older, you prepare the ground. Tell them that their biological dad made a mistake. That sometimes people do that. But your mom didn't, and she chose life.
So let them grow up knowing that the dad did make a mistake, so you don't have to spill the beans all at once. But do it in the context of God having His hand on the child. And also you can talk about how sometimes people do bad things, but they themselves probably have very good things about them, too, that can be hidden. But they are there. And even if the dad did something wrong, the dad may have had parents himself who were loving. The whole branch of the family tree isn't necessarily rotten.
Eventually you tell the little girl the whole truth. But if the groundwork is laid, I think it will be okay.
Two stories come to mind. The first is about Gianna Jesson, who is only here with us because she survived an abortion. Her mother tried to kill her, the nurse saved her, and then she was adopted into an amazing Christian family. Just watch this:
The second is from Heather Gemmen, the book "Startling Beauty: From Rape to Restoration".
It's interesting, but I only remembered Heather's name before I looked up the book. So all the stuff I wrote up there about beauty I thought of before seeing her title. So that's obviously a theme that works!
Heather was raped, but she kept the baby and they have raised her. It's really a moving story, and a great read. She was pressured, even by Christians, to abort, and she just couldn't. Initially she was going to give the baby up, if I remember correctly, but she couldn't do that, too. But her rapist was black; she and her husband are white. So they had to tell the child the truth from the very beginning. It was obvious. And so that may be a good book to read for her perspective.
That is just my opinion. I've never believed in keeping secrets that are fundamental to someone's identity, and I think Jesus' love and grace are big enough to bring healing. Just listen to Gianna talk!
But I know there are alternate views out there. So what do you think? A faithful reader of my blog wants to know, and she checks in here everyday. So do share your thoughts in a constructive way. What should she tell her daughter? And how, and when?
Hi everybody! Here's my column for today. Each week I write a syndicated parenting column that appears in several newspapers in Canada and the United States, and this is this week's. It's controversial. For those of you who don't know, Henry Morgentaler is the face of abortion in Canada. He fought to make it legal, and he opened up clinics all across the country. Anyway, see what you think:
In a very duplicitous and infantile way, our Governor General and her advisory committee have seen fit to appoint Henry Morgantaler with the Order of Canada. Michaelle Jean promised he wouldn’t be on the list; she denied it until the end; and when people phoned her office to protest, her staff gave them the phone number of the Campaign Life Headquarters. Laughing at pro-lifers is not what the Governor General is meant to do. Nevertheless, it seems that we’re stuck with this sort of judgment until Stephen Harper finally gets to appoint his own Governor General.
As a teenager, I attended the church located next door to Morgentaler’s first clinic in Toronto. We knew the police who were assigned to guard his clinic by name. Researching Morgentaler at the time, I came across an article where he stated that to him, a fetus was nothing more than a fish.
In the recent blockbuster movie Juno, though, the 16-year-old girl who is about to procure an abortion changes her mind because a classmate informs her that her fetus already has fingernails. And that makes all the difference, because Juno, unlike Morgantaler, knows that fish do not have fingernails.
Personally, I believe that life begins at conception. But I do understand those who say that despite the fingernails, despite the heartbeat, despite the obvious baby features, a mother should not be forced to carry the baby to term. It is still her body.
While I don’t agree with that position, I respect it. What I don’t understand is this compulsion to celebrate abortion. Even liberal Bill Clinton felt the need to qualify that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”. Though he supported abortion, he knew that there was something fundamentally distasteful about the procedure. In a day when we're used to squinting over "Baby's First Picture" to try to figure out where the head is on that ultrasound printout, the face of abortion has quite literally changed.
Most of us, I think, agree, which is why we react in horror to Planned Parenthood’s gross marketing ploys, like the “Choice on Earth” Christmas cards, or the “I Had an Abortion” t-shirts. Abortion proponents hope that by normalizing abortion they’ll take the shame and stigma out of it. It doesn’t work. Even those who want it kept legal would rather not think about it or talk about it, because it just isn’t nice.
That’s because each of the roughly three million abortions which have been performed in Canada represents a failure on a multitude of levels. First it is a failure of responsibility. Two people were sexually irresponsible, and now they need a way out. It’s also a failure on the part of the father. Either he rejoices because he gets off free and clear, or he’s in mourning for a child he has no way to protect. It’s a failure for women, too, no matter what Michaelle Jean may say about it. Women tend to want commitment, love, and romance far more than men do. Whose sexual desires, then, does abortion best serve? It’s not women’s. Abortion opens the door to men’s dreams of sex without consequences. Everything is now entirely her responsibility. And if things go wrong, she is the one making the appointment, sitting in the stirrups, and in many cases dealing with the guilt afterwards. Tell me again why this is good for her?
Finally, it’s fundamentally a moral failing, even if you don’t believe abortion is murder. Rather than sacrificing her body and choosing to let her baby live, even if it is with another family (for every child today is wanted, even if not by its biological parents), the woman is putting her own comfort and dreams first. It is ultimately a selfish act, and normally we don’t praise selfishness.
You can celebrate abortion all you want, but that doesn’t change its underlying nature. There’s an old proverb that says “what sorrow is there for those who say that evil is good, and good evil.” We can say abortion is great, but that doesn’t make it so, in the same way that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Maybe instead of praising abortion and honouring its biggest proponent, all of us, pro-life and pro-choice, should work together to end this act which represents our society at its worst.
Here's one of the hard parts about writing a column: I only have 700 words. And I can see so much that I left out of this one. I left out any reference to the guilt that she may be feeling afterwards, and that it wasn't my intention to exacerbate that. I could have been nicer in that regard.
I don't think my either-or when it comes to men is fair. I said that men either are relieved or grieving; there's probably more commonly a middle ground, and ambivalence that I didn't leave room for.
And I left out any reference that society had failed, too. But I'm not sure if that's true. We say that all the time: society failed this girl, so that she felt she had no choice. But is that true? If a girl wants to keep a baby, she can get welfare, she can go to a crisis centre and get help. Or she can put the baby up for adoption, and there's tons of medical care available in that scenario. So perhaps society hasn't failed, it's just that these options aren't easy and they take a long time.
Anyway, I hope the column goes over well. I always get nervous about these ones!
Don't miss a Reality Check! Sign up here to receive it free in your inbox every week!
Britain seems to be a lot more honest about abortion than us here in North America. They report every year not just on the number of abortions, but also on the number of repeat abortions, and break it down by category. They can tell you how many have had 7 or 8 abortions, and how many teenagers have repeat abortions. I haven't seen stuff like that in the mainstream media here.
The Royal College of Obstetricians apparently also has said that abortion can cause mental stress, something that doctors in North America are yet to admit.
My column for the week coming up is on abortion. Canada's Governor General has named Henry Morgentaler to the Order of Canada. For those of you who don't know who Morgentaler is, he's the face of abortion in Canada. He was arrested multiple times for performing abortions illegally, fought in court, and eventually won, opening clinics across the country and lobbying for abortion to be publicly funded (which he won). Without him, we wouldn't have abortion the way we do. And our Governor General just gave him our most prestigious award.
My column is already written and sent in, but in retrospect I wish I had written more on women's guilt. I think I may have been unduly harsh, but I'll leave that for you to decide on Friday when I print it.
For now, let me give you a glimpse of abortion coverage in Britain, where the Daily Mail is profiling, quite unfavourably, a woman who had seven abortions.It says:
After her third termination, aged 26, she tried to kill herself by overdosing on alcohol and painkillers and spent eight weeks in a psychiatric unit. And yet the ease with which she was able to secure a fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh abortion with no proper assessment is astounding.
Indeed, she reveals that she went to the same abortion clinic for each of her terminations and claims she was offered only the most cursory of counselling before every one.
'I do wish that someone in those clinics had really sat down with me and talked it through properly,' says Angela, who is now undergoing counselling to help her cope with her past actions.
'The reason why I had so many abortions is that I didn't want to bring a child into the world unless my situation was perfect - but it never was. 'With each termination I felt it was my responsibility to get on with my own life and forget about it. After each one I just blanked out the emotions and never thought about it. I felt no remorse at all.'
She says she felt no remorse, but the article details her suicide attempts and depression. It's really quite sad, although she did keep one baby and he is now the joy of her life.
I think that's interesting--she thought her situation had to be perfect first. How did we ever make people think that? For millenia people have been having children before they had much money. After all, we tend to have kids when we're young, and that's before we're established. This thought that you need to have stuff first is ridiculous. Certainly we need an apartment, and money for food, but to get rid of a child because you don't have enough is silly.
Perhaps she meant that her relationship needed to be perfect. She may have a point there. But if the guy she's dating isn't fatherhood material, why is she having sex with him in the first place?
I've written another column about this phenomenon:
In the recently released movie Knocked Up, professional journalist Alison discovers she is pregnant from a drunken one-night stand with loser Ben. She doesn’t want to raise the child alone, so she chases Ben down and tries to turn him into fatherhood material. I think Alison’s onto something. Single parenthood is a rough road, and Alison knows that her baby will need a dad.
Unfortunately, Alison did everything backwards. She got into a relationship without realizing that this guy may end up being the father of her children. It’s better to make sure a guy will make a good dad before you wind up pregnant. For many young women, though, fatherhood material is the last thing on their minds. They’re looking for cool, popular, even a little dangerous, or simply someone to like them. None of those things ultimately holds up.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
Stumble It!
