Wise Grace

We were in the last 2 hours of a 7 hour drive home from a short vacation with Jen's mom in Oregon.  We had had a great time in Oregon and so far the drive back had been fine.  As the day was our anniversary, I had hoped to have the last few hours of the drive quiet to spend time talking with Jen (we had already moved the celebration of our anniversary to the next day).  However, Sophia would not cooperate.  While she is usually a great traveler, for some reason she would not fall asleep (even though it was way past her bedtime).  I had held her hand for a while and sung songs with her.  When that didn't work Jen tried for a while.  Sophia kept talking and started whining and crying.

We have found that sometimes when Sophia gets in this state, a forceful (but restrained) "Sophia, Stop!" will pull her out of what would otherwise be a downwards spiral into a tantrum.  I tried this to no avail, so I repeated it, still nothing.  I was beginning to feel desperate as we were nearing the end of our drive and I really wanted some quiet time with Jen.  I could tell I was losing my patience so I just stopped saying anything and focussed on the road.  As Sophia kept whining, I became increasingly irritated (at that point I sooo understood the stereotypical fatherly threat "you kids better shuttup or I'll turn this car around!).  Finally, I said it again, "Sophia, Stop!" this made it worse, and I lost my temper "Sophia Marie Amundgaard, stop crying, I want at least some quite time with my wife tonight - shut up!!!"  This put her over the edge, she completely lost control and started wailing.  She tried to speak through her deep sobs "Sophia, huh huh, Sophia want, huh, huh, Sophia hode, huh, huh, spoon, Sophia huh huh, Sophia want huh special huh peaches"

I felt horrible, my heart sank into my gut and I almost started crying myself (tears are coming to my eyes as I retell it now).  I immediately regretted my outburst and knew it had hurt and scared my little girl.  I looked for the next exit and pulled off.  I turned off the engine, got out, ran to her door, took her out of her car seat and hugged her to my chest.  "I'm soooo sorry sweetie, poppa was wrong to yell at you, please forgive me!"

Her response?  Pointing to the almost full moon she said "Rock in the sky!"  I said, "That's the moon, sweetie.";  "Myoon ... Papa get it?";  "You want the moon sweetie? I'd get it for you if I could.";  "Papa take you there?"; "Someday, I'd love to take you there, but it's too far away to go there now.";  Pointing at the grass in the ditch, "S'okay, go through the grass?";  "I don't think we can get there by the grass."  "Okay, maybe later, Sophia want special peaches?";  "Okay sweetie, let's get in the car and have some peaches."

When we got in the car I could no longer control myself, I broke down.  I held her head against mine and cried.  Her chubby little hand grasped my finger and she leaned against me as I cried.  I deeply regretted that I yelled at her.  I couldn't imagine how I could be so angry with her and could think of no reason why she would ever deserve to be yelled at.  I desperately wished I could turn back the clock.  Moreover, I was overwhelmed and deeply humbled by her gracious, trusting response.

However, in the midst of my grief, I began to feel strengthened and encouraged.  It felt as if somehow Sophia's innocent, joyful, trusting, gracious response to my anger had brought light into the situation, and this light was slowly overtaking the darkness.  As I wept in sadness, my heart began to feel joyful.  This situation seemed to have more significance than the normal successes and failures of every day life.  I knew that I would remember this night and that it would somehow leave me changed forever.

As I reflect on that experience, I am convinced that it was a sacramental moment.  In some mysterious way the Father used Sophia as a means-of-grace.  I'm not sure how it worked but I feel quite certain that that is what happened.  At first I wanted to reject the idea - how could grace come at a time like that? in the midst of my failure?  But this seems to be the pattern with grace - it is most present when we least deserve it.  The grace communicated through the cross of Christ and through the weekly celebration of the Eucharist are the prime instances of this.

In her essay "The Church and the Fiction Writer," Flannery O'Connor writes that one of the problems for a Christian fiction writer is "the presence of grace as it appears in nature, and what matters for him is that his faith not become detached from his dramatic sense and from his vision of what-is."  In other words, it is difficult to write about grace in the context of human evil; nevertheless, it must be done.  Ignoring the human condition produces fiction with no depth or any real meaning.  "By separating nature and grace as much as possible, he has reduced his conception of the supernatural to pious cliche and has become able to recognize nature in literature in only two forms, the sentimental and the obscene."  However, says O'Connor, both obscenity and sentimentality are perversions.  Sentimentality, she says, tends to overemphasize innocence and in doing so turns it into evil.  This is because human innocence was lost in the fall and is only gained through participation in Christ's death.  "Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite."  To avoid this, grace must always be kept within the context of nature no matter how ugly that nature might be.

This seems to make sense of my experience.  God used my failure and Sophia's response as a channel for his grace and as a means of furthering my sanctification.  While I still wish I could undo my actions, I am grateful for my Sophia's gracious response and most of all for the Father's wise grace which was communicated through it.

What no father expects when they are expecting.

In the last few weeks, Jen and I have had a number of conversations about the advice we would give expecting couples as to how the father ought to be involved. The conversations were raised by other conversations which either Jen or I had had with friends of ours who have recently had a child or are expecting one soon. Whether these conversations were with the mother or the father, the experience was almost unanimous - father's have a very difficult time knowing what to do after a child is born and therefore the mother ends up either doing most of the work, or feels like she is 'nagging' her husband to help. In light of that problem, I thought it would be helpful for me to share my own experience and what I learned through it. The goal will be to justify my one piece of advice for new fathers and mothers - give the father one job that he is completely responsible for whenever he is home. (I would recommend diaper changes - sorry guys.)

Before I start, I want to give two caveats.

First, as I'm only just recognizing, postpartum emotions are incredibly complex and messy - for both mother and father (there is even new research showing that many men suffer from postpartum depression). Moreover, while there may be better and worse ways of handling the situation, there is no way to avoid it. Like the rest of married life, frustrations and hurts often go unsaid until they completely blow up. However, in the postpartum world, those blowups (fights, whatever), take a ton of energy from an almost entirely depleted supply. Moreover, there is often too much to do, and feelings get pushed to the wayside. These feelings never get discussed and they turn into resentment. This resentment often combines with other postpartum issues (like the mother's lack of desire/ability to have sex for some time) and can tend to snowball. This is the difficult underbelly (no pun intended) of the postpartum world. While I don't think you can completely avoid this situation, I think applying the one piece of advice I am giving here can go a long way toward avoiding some of the tension.

The second caveat is this - I learned this through massive personal failures. I am not holding myself up as a model in any way. I wish I could say I was an involved and supportive father from the beginning - I certainly wanted to be - but alas, I was not. I learned what I learned because my wife was willing to stick it out and fight for my involvement in Sophia's life. This cost her much pain and anguish and was supported by her very deep love for me and commitment to our marriage (and her love for the Father - who, I'm convinced, sustains us all). I want to say this because as I reflect on my experience, it may sound as if I knew all of what I am about to say at the time - I did not.

The day Sophia was born, there was an almost inestimable increase in the amount of tasks to be done around our house. This coincided with a decrease in our sleep and in our food intake. It was a very trying time and, while we love Sophia, I'm sure we would have opted out many times if given the choice.

However, Jen was the one who bore most of the burden. She got up with Sophia all night to feed her. As a result, she changed her diaper all night. I was at school a lot of the time or working on assignments, so Jen took care of Sophia during the day as well. She changed her diapers and her clothes. She put her down for naps and to sleep at night. She looked up stuff online if we were nervous about something or didn't know what to do in a given situation. She began to develop ways of doing things and times for doing them. She knew how to put Sophia's diapers on properly, she knew how to get the onesies over her head. She knew how to give her a bath, trim her nails, wipe her bum, etc. When we went on trips she knew what to pack. As Sophia began to develop personality, Jen began to recognize traits and began to know which things were Sophia's favourite or which things she didn't like.

As all this happened, I felt increasingly overwhelmed. I didn't know how to do all this stuff and some of it scared me or made me uncomfortable. Moreover, Jen did know how to do it and, being more proactive than I, she would do stuff if it didn't get done. In my mind, she might as well do it as I would probably screw it up or she would just end up doing it over. The more she did with Sophia and the more she learned about her and the more she organized Sophia's stuff, the more and more I felt on the outside with no hope of ever catching up. It was like trying to participate in an advanced calculus class when you've only had algebra 1.

I also had a feeling that Sophia didn't need me in the same way she needed Jen. Jen gave her food - she was the only source of her food. If Jen wasn't there, Sophia wouldn't eat. If I wasn't there, it might be sad, but it wouldn't threaten Sophia's life. I realize that there are all kinds of reasons why this particular thought is incorrect - believe me, I probably told myself all of them at one point or another. Nevertheless, the feeling remained.

Another contributing factor was, I believe (and Jen agrees with me - right babe?), hormonal. When Jen gave birth, her body chemistry changed. She began to have what might be called a 'nesting' instinct. She was automatically very protective of Sophia. There were certain things it just seemed like she knew how to do. Moreover, every time she nursed, she released oxytocin (the cuddle hormone) which further bonded her to Sophia. However, I didn't feel any natural change. In fact, I wanted things to continue on the way they were (and often kept living that way to Jen's detriment). When I did make changes in behaviour or in how I allocated my time, I had to choose them - often against my desires and feelings. This is not to say that Jen never made any hard choices - I know she did. But there was a hormonal change in her which essentially made her do some things differently whereas in almost every situation I had to overcome my will to make a change (and usually did not succeed).

These three factors - being overwhelmed; not feeling needed; and not feeling any hormonal change - contributed to a situation wherein Jen was essentially a single mom for about the first six months of Sophia's life. It's not that I wasn't around. I was home a lot working on assignments or prepping for tutorials. But I was increasingly escaping into my own world. I would sit out on our balcony and smoke my pipe, drink wine and read by myself for hours. Jen would try to ask me to be more involved, but I felt so inept that what she said sounded like criticism and I often responded defensively.

The situation deteriorated to a point where Jen was almost entirely hopeless. Out of that hopelessness, somehow, she was able to communicate something that finally clicked. I don't remember everything she said, but I finally began to see what I was doing, how I was absent from her and Sophia in a very real and constant way (I feel, to, that the Father was answering many of Jen's prayers. Prayers she prayed both consciously and unconsciously). This was not easy for me to deal with (and still isn't). I never thought I would be the kind of man I was in those first six months. I wasn't abusive or terrible in that way - but I was absent and irresponsible, choosing my own private world over relationship with Jen and Sophia.

This situation was caused and perpetuated by more than the three things I've discussed above (being overwhelmed; not feeling needed; and not feeling any hormonal change). However, I believe these three issues are common to many new dads and I feel like the suggestion I am making in this post can go a long way toward decreasing these feelings and the way they affect one's family.

When Jen finally got through to me I still felt all these feelings and I still didn't know what to do (in fact, it was worse now, I was six whole months behind). At one point in our discussion, Jen said "I really need you to be responsible for all the diaper changes when you are home." She didn't give me her reasons for deciding to suggest me taking over one task in entirety (she could have asked me to do diapers half the time and give her a bath half the time) but I think her suggestion was absolutely brilliant for a number of reasons.

First, giving me sole responsible one task, meant I was responsible for providing a need. Diaper change became my thing. If I didn't change Sophia's diaper, it wasn't going to get changed. All of a sudden, I was a very real and constant part of Sophia's life. Every other hour (as often as she fed) I changed her diaper. As much as I still didn't look forward to the actual diaper change, these times became special and sweet times of bonding for Sophia and I. Moreover, I became more comfortable with her little body. Whereas before I felt as if I was going to break it, or just felt awkward about changing a little girls diaper, now I felt confident and at ease (mostly).

Second, giving me sole responsibility for one task bypassed my feelings of being overwhelmed by all their was to learn and know. I could practice changing diapers until I knew what I was doing and felt confident doing it. As with any task, the better I was at it the less time I spent doing it. Moreover, I became more confident, and therefore willing, to do other tasks. I began playing with Sophia more regularly. When she started to eat solid food I often fed her. I began to teach her things and help her develop new skills. We would read together. I often worked with her on crawling and when she learned to walk. Eventually I started putting her down to sleep at night (a big step, I assure you, I thought I would never know how to put her to sleep).

Third (and this would only apply if you didn't begin doing this from the beginning), it avoided the past. The fact was that I didn't know much about taking care of Sophia despite the fact that she was six months old. No finding of fault and no amount of browbeating was going to change this. By moving past what had happened to figuring out a solution to the present situation, Jen made the process easier for me to accept.

I remember the first day it hit me that I could actually take care of Sophia for a number of days if Jen had to go away. I was both sad that it had taken me so long to get to that point but also quite happy that I had made it there at all. I felt a sense of accomplishment and I actually felt like a father. It felt right to say that I was Sophia's papa.

As I did more with Sophia, it began to feel to both Jen and I that we were becoming a team again. We began to share the same lifestyle and the same priorities. We didn't fight with each other as much as we worked together to accomplish a common task. This process was months long (and is ongoing). But there are milestones, and it's great to look back and see how much things have improved.

While I don't think this one thing was the entire reason for a change in my behaviour and our marriage, I would name it among the top 3 turning points in the past 2 years. I know at the time it certainly didn't seem like a very positive thing. It is only with the clarity of hindsight that I can see the value of it. But I am convinced it was a decision of great value.

Moreover, I am convinced that it would have been of great value if I would have taken over just one task from the beginning. I don't think it was helpful just because I had already made so many poor choices. It would have helped alleviate some of the anxiety which led me to escape in the first place.

I thank God for my wife and for the wisdom he gave her. I thank him for my daughter and the sheer delight she is. I thank him for the relationship he has helped me restore and build with both of these women. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I pray that this reflection is of use and can help avoid a degree of pain and hurt. If anyone would like to chat about this more, please feel free to email me: bamundgaard@gmail.com