Mon 19 Mar 2007
On Shame
Posted by Jane under Updates
[20] Comments
When we announced our pregnancy shortly after bringing Simon home, a distant relative, let’s call her Helga, asked if we would be returning Simon now that we were going to have “our own” baby.
This is on my list of the top three most insensitive things said to us about adoption (you do not want to hear the other two). I thought, “Did you give back your first child when you had your second? Geez.” But these last few days I’ve been replaying that moment in my head and wondering about the wisdom of trying to raise two babies at once. And I’ve been feeling ashamed. Ashamed of our hubris. Guilty that because we decided to take on the enormous task of a Baby-Palooza, we’ve now obligated our entire community to drop everything and come to our rescue.
I know we couldn’t have predicted that Ramona would be so sick. But her health was also never guaranteed. And how fair is this to Simon? Would he have been better off with a family who could devote themselves fully to his care? Should an 11 month-old be responsible for injecting joy and life into our household?
And although I feel so grateful for the support and love you’ve all shown us during this time, I can’t help but wonder if you’re not all a little upset with us. For being so reckless. For assuming that we could handle something this big. For not saying “What if?”. For committing ourselves to living at the limit of our resources and not asking you all if you would mind standing in the gap should something unexpected arise.
Ever since I was a child I’ve had a tendency to bite off more than I can chew. My parents were always having to step in and save me, do my paper route, make apologetic phone calls for me, etc. So when I hear myself saying “Life is so crazy right now” as if it’s something that just happened to us, I have to ask myself the tough question, “Isn’t this something you invited into your life with your choices?”
I think of these entries as little essays. If I’m remembering my latin and french correctly, essay comes from the same Latin root as the french verb essayer, to try. So today my entry is an attempt, a try, at absolving the horrible guilt and shame I’ve been feeling about the choices we’ve made that have led to this family disaster. Please forgive us if we’ve left you no choice, if you’ve had to rescue us at great cost to your own family. I pray we will some day have the energy and opportunity to return some of the love and service we’ve been taking in these past months.
Humbly, Jane.
Jane:
I had this well-thought out reply all composed, then my computer hiccuped and I lost it. So, here’s my best shot and recapturing it.
It has been my privilege to come alongside you by praying, following this blog, bringing you groceries tomorrow, whatever I can do. I have never for one minute thought of your choices as reckless or as your current situation being the result of you biting off more than you can chew.
I am certain that I will not be the last, or the most eloquent, to post similar sentiments. And this is not to negate the very real feelings you are having, but rather to say, I just don’t see it that way. You have been Christ to me throughout — from your bold “yes” to bringing Simon into your family and into your heart, to your honesty and vulnerability since Ramona’s medical odyssey began. You have been truth and light, in your joy and in your fear, in your sense of humor and in your anger.
While I would much rather that the extent of the chaos in your life be whatever is normal for moms with two newborns, I am grateful for the deep and abiding love and concern that has grown in me for you and your family because of what has been going on. I probably would have continued to think of you as that neat woman I know and share mutual friends with, who is probably just a little too hip and creative for me to pursue in real friendship. I hope this changes in me permanently and that we can get to know each other more and more.
With love,
Dina
Jane,
We are all a part of one family my sister and I think God knew what he was doing in gifting you Simon and Ramona. No matter what their needs, you and Andy are the right parents for them. You have so much love to give and you have a community who WANTS to stop and help. Give up their time they might have otherwise spent fruitlessly. I speak for myself there but I would much rather be slammed for time because of caring for my family and doing what little I can for you then have free time I might not use wisely. Imagine if Ramona had been born into a different family without family and friends who could step up.
I know a little about baby-palooza and I love the sisterhood that gives us in a way.
Thanks for sharing your process in this so honestly. I don’t feel like you have asked to be rescued but rather to take your hand along the road. I love walking with you.
Jen
Jane,
My children are 16 months apart and I know that is a much bigger gap than your two, but I have to say, when I found out I was pregnant again and my first was only 8 months old I felt horrible. I felt like I was depriving him somehow by bringing a sibling into the world “too soon”. Later on I realized, there is no such thing as too soon or too late or anything other than perfect timing when it comes to children.
We didn’t choose the timing of our second pregnancy (or our first for that matter – it took fertility drugs to get pregnant the first time around), God did. And when I look at my baby girl I think, how could I have ever been upset that she came sooner than I would have planned it? God knew what he was doing and he had a reason for my children to be so close in age.
I have to believe the same for you. God chose each of your children and the timing of them for you. Perhaps Simon was to be so young so that he wouldn’t completely understand everything going on with Ramona – so he wouldn’t worry about her or be upset by her ordeal. Who knows?
I wish we lived closer so we could do some things for you – I personally would not consider it a cost to my family, but an honor to help your family and be God’s family to you.
Thank you for your openness and sharing – we will continue to keep your family in our prayers.
Nicole
Jane,
The three previous posts I read this morning say so well what I’m thinking. I believe God chose you and Andy to raise Simon, and He decided to bring Ramona into your world shortly afterwards. Several years ago I heard a sermon/lesson that posed the question “Coincidence or providence?” and I believe that it is providential that you adopted Simon when you did and it is providential that you became pregnant with Ramona when you did. God’s timing is perfect. I don’t know why God is allowing all of this to happen right now. I trust He will reveal more about why down the road. Maybe He wants you to learn how to depend on others to lift you up during such a difficult time. Like someone else said, your feelings of guilt and shame are valid and I can see where you’re coming from. I pray that God will take the guilt and shame away. Thank you for journaling your thoughts and feelings. It really helps me know how to pray for you.
Kathy
Dear Jane,
I have been feeling some of those same feelings myself recently. I am thankful for God ‘s grace on this journey of motherhood.
When I found out I was expecting baby number five, I was shocked…I cried for days….this was NOT in our plan. In fact when I was late I was pretty sure that it was the beginning of the end of those things for me. I was afraid to tell my family, andy’s family….friends. I did feel shame. Andy was in total denial…I felt like somehow this was my fault….And there was little Naomi….she was only 9 months old when I found out I was pregnant…what would people think. Then of course I felt guilt… I knew so many people who had tried for one baby and here I was expecting my 5th. I asked God why this happened. Then there was guilt for not be happy about this pregnancy when I had prayed for so many women who could not have children… this little one must be a blessing from God …He must have a purpose here. So I felt hypocritical.
When we told my parents they were elated…My mom was a bit speechless…but then so was I. This would be their 10th grandchild. WOW! My mom shortly after we told them wrote a note calling this little one…and that is what we have been calling her ever since. My mom also told me in that it is probably okay to be overwhelmed with the blessings that God give us. I will never forget that…and I am sure Mary was a bit overwhelmed when she found out she was to be the mother of GOD!
As the weeks have gone by God has given me more and more reasons to take joy in this blessing. I mean this is my rock star baby! Yesterday in church I was overwhelmed with God’s goodness for allowing us the honor to have this little one. I truly just wept.
And I do know what it is like to have two little ones. But I was not planning an emergency C-section, needing two units of blood, not holding one of my babies for 24 hours… But God revealed so much to me as I parented and continue to parent twins.
Right now I continue to be overwhelmed by God’s blessing, I ask why us, what is the purpose…I am thankful….I am humbled…I get fearful…I still sometimes feel shame.
I take comfort in the fact that God knit me together in my mothers womb. The he knows me and has a purpose for me…just as he has a purpose for my children and knows them. I struggle sometimes with the fact that part of God’s purpose for me is motherhood…even though I have always wanted children. Again I am thankful that He continues to extend grace on this journey and that he stretches me on this journey as well.
I really dont want to get preachy…Take heart because God has a purpose for you and your children are a part of that lovely journey.
I know that it is difficult to ask for help for basic needs but then as the saying goes it takes a village to raise a child. I think people help as they are able and dont feel you are a burden to them.
I am praying for you.
Love,
Nicole
While I applaud your desire to acknowledge the help you are receiving, I think the shame thing is something for you to work through yourself.
I wasn’t born here and in many other places I have lived there isn’t the assumption of independence that is so valued in the US. Here, in many communities, independence=adulthood=strength and interdependence (or need) =child=weakness. How crazy is that?
We can’t control life. ‘Bad’ things happen to everyone at some point right up till death (or should we apologize for that too… all that grieving and missing us) and I think the most wonderful way to live life is to let people help us and give the same generous help when we notice a need.
Now, I say this blithely but I also felt weak/embarrassed at the help we had during Wren’s hospitalizations. I hatched elaborate plans in my head to “give gifts back”, “wreite cards” or “help in return shortly” by way of childcare of whatever. Of course it was beyond me but I felt better “settling the score”.
Of course we can’t and for me, that vulnerability and acknowledgment of my need for others help was a big gift. It has helped me relax into what will be.
I am so glad you have the wonderful community to be your support and I am sure they will reassure you that they are not overtaxed and resentful
Shannon
“Isn’t this something you invited into your life with your choices?”
I’ve come, increasingly, to think as a grown-up less about “choices” than I used to. I’m reminded of your entry talking about the c-section—not a “choice” at all, just like the courage you both have been praised for. I remember being told how courageous I was, going through labor after we knew our daughter was already gone, but this didn’t quite make sense to me, since the only choice I wanted to make was the one not available to me: to have Ella still with us, healthy, to be home, pregnant and clueless about the heartbreak that life can bring. [Which is not to say that I haven’t found myself thinking of you two as courageous—just to say that I remember that that’s not always the way it feels from the inside.]
In depends, in part, on how you define the concept of “choice.” My 34 year old brother hasn’t really “chosen” to be single, any more than I really “chose” to fall in love with and marry someone I met in high school—and yet people regularly define him as a bachelor, just as people who’ve met me recently think of me as a career woman more committed to her degree than having children. I try to remind myself that in others I don’t know as well that some of the most salient facts of their lives are often not the result of “choices” in that simplistic sense.
This is all, perhaps, easy for me to say because I live at a distance and haven’t been making the kinds of material contributions that your family and friends make regularly. But it seems to me that the choice you and Andy made was about opening your hearts to children, however and whenever they arrived—and this is never about the practicalities, probabilities, or anything else, because the truth of the world is that life is not predictable. Americans (with our high standard of living) have the luxury of deluding themselves that they can plan to have kids, and do it properly in terms of salary and housing and investments. We think that those plans have something to do with who our children are (that saving for college means we’ll have kids who go to college); sometimes I think those parents who are most “prepared” for kids in the commonly-used financial sense are least prepared to meet their children as unique individuals, to know deeply that their children are not mere extensions of their parents’ identities and wishes, but genuinely unique souls.
I return, finally, to your question, “Isn’t this something you invited into your life with your choices?” What, I wonder, is the referent for “this”? The question is very different depending on that missing noun—could it be “DiGeorge syndrome”? “chaos”? “sleeplessness”? From here it seems to me that what you truly “invited into your life” was Mona and Simon, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.
Opps… my mom called the baby that we are expecting “Little Blessing.”
Take Care,
Nicole
Dear Jane,
I say “Amen” to everything the ladies above have said.
One of the major things God has taught me over the years is that, in Christ, we as Christians are called to live at the limit of our own resources everyday. In spiritual poverty, pockets emptied of all self accomplishment, agenda and wordly identity. We fall prey to the false assumption and more deadly pagan lie that we as individuals have any control or power over anything. We make personal choices, yet still under the power and authority of an Omniscient God and the power of the Holy Spirit within us. Aside from just barely beginning to understand the implications of all this on a theological level, here in my day-to-day, I must rest in that I can do nothing on my own. I just don’t have that much power.
Neither do you my love. As for us coming to your rescue, in our weakness, we our made strong – by design and for God’s purpose. It is a joy and honour to serve you and your family. As christians, we cannot grow without self-sacrifice, service, trial, challenge, adversity and humility. God has placed a great desire and love for children on your heart and has fulfilled that for a purpose. You have reached out in humility and love for the body of Christ. We all stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you, even those of us that have only met through your entries. You have been a willing instrument for the body of Christ, for His glory. For me personally, I thank you, lift you up and thank God for making you the loving, open-hearted, humble, dying-to-self mother and embraceable woman of God you are.
With love to you and gratitude to God Almighty for the work He has wrought through you.
Your sister-in-Christ,
Jackie
I like to think of what all of us, your friends and family, have been able to do these past several weeks has been helping/not rescuing; supporting you by your side – not pulling you up from under or lifting your heads above the water. You are doing that on your own. We are filling in the empty spaces.
LOVE
your one of my peeps Jane. we peeps stay together
Jane, to go along with the other reassurances that you are sure to recieve, helping you along the way when life hits a road block, is part of the things the WE agree to when we become family. Loving someone like everyone loves you includes being for them in tough times. Love givesyou these obligations to help all we can and love all we can. But its not an obligation to any of us, it something we want to do. Obviously i dont know this, but I would think having a child the same way. i don’t think your supposed to ask what if, you are supposed to ask the obvious questions, “Can we love them?, Are we in a reasonable fincial situation?, Do we have the time?” You can answer all these questions with yes, and thats what matters, life throws curveballs at you, but your not supposed to predict each one, if there were no unpredictable problems to solve, it wouldnt be this big mysterious thing. We all love you, and thats not bad thing for any of us.
Well… shame is understandable, but it’s not like you had a crystal ball. Besides, when everything is under control we forget about God and he doesn’t like that. You may think you have caused a burden, but the truth is we think nothing of a few meals or time spent, because you and Andy are the ones who really have to walk this road, and we can’t do that for you.
I *like* how you bite off more than you can chew, Jane! You’ve got chutzpah, and I like that. I think you are the only person I could ever make 250 chocolate truffles in one day with.
And I’m glad we get to help out, even a little bit, with your family right now. I choose to be your friend!
Dear Jane
I love you.
-ang
To order my thoughts and so i don’t forget i have three things for you
1. a bit of my own therapeutic experience
2. Shame
3. Community
I have been in therapy ever since I was 16, and I will probably be until the day i die. Some people spend their life paying off college…others their therapists. Anyway, here’s a thought. YOU and ANDY had NO way of knowing you would have a beautiful baby girl when you adopted Simon. You also had no idea that she would be sick. So that cancels out the possibility of it being a “blaming” situatio fn and simply makes it SAD. It is SAD that Ramona is sick. While i know there is joy in the midst of this, when someone is ill…it is SAD. And lets face it, who really wants to feel sad? Shame and guilt seem much more digestable. Maybe i am making no sense and I apologize if i’m not…i didn’t get a degree and i don’t claim to know others psyche…just my own. And i just wanted to note that i totally get the feeling of guilt wrought from having to depend on others while living in a society that screams “self-sufficiency and independence” at you. And what i’m learning is that we are, at our core, created for community. Created for relationship. And God, being the oh so creativto I AM that he is…seems to be willing to use the most undesirable circumstances as a means of creating and uniting a community. I wonder if he sits up there and thinks “why do my people wait until natural disasters, illnesses, and crisis to bring dinners to others homes…to pull together and be my hands and feet???? Just some thoughts. “after all, God has spoken and the rest is just commentary, right??”
Jane,
It was great talking to you the other day. I hope that you will call back again when you have time or when you need to.
As for your post today I hope you know that “we” want to help you. I don’t know your friends and family, but if they are like mine they are aching for some way to help you. And you know how you were looking for reasons why Ramona has her condition? I believe that one of the reasons Drew has DiGeorge & his heart problems is so that I could help someone else in a similar situation. I don’t live close enough to bring you a meal or pick up groceries, but I would love to help you through your journey by sharing our experiences with you.
God Bless!
Jane,
All good mothers and fathers question themselves at one point or another. Are we good parents? Do we love our children enough? Do we give them enough of our time and attention? The answer to all these questions in my opinion are if you have to ask yourself these questions, then you probably are giving your children your best and fulfilling all of their needs. The mere fact that you have these feelings shows that you care and love them enough to worry about these things.
And coming from someone that barely knows you…I agree with the other woman in this post. I am happy to take time out and help in any way that I can. I know that if I were in your shoes I would pray for the love and support you are receiving from your community. To feel guilty is your normal human emotion, but seriously,there is no need. We are happy to be here, happy to cook you meals,happy to give you a shoulder and anything else you need.
Jane,
As every single parent knows and would admit it they are honest, guilt plagues us. Did Tory get pnumonia becuase I went away for a weekend? Did I lose Elliott at Great America because I was tired and resting with baby number three is my arms? Was Peter so curious (not naughty! curious?) because we lived in a falling down house? Did Megan leave because I was negligent? The world is a disaster Jane…but not this situation…and while I know it feels that way and don’t punish me for saying this…the truth is this is about God wanting to show up in your life like never before…like Anne Lamott says…he is hunkered down in a corner somewhere, just waiting for you to believe….So, let Ramona be your happy thought….and Simon…and your dear husband…and believe….
And Jane, we are here to stand in the gap…anytime..
Love,
AJackie
Okay at the risk of sounding preachy I would like to explore this one piece of scripture with you. All these entries and all your words today draw to mind a sermon I once heard on Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 “It is better to go to a house of mourning that to go to a house of feasting. Because that is the end of every man and the living takes it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter. For when a face is sad, a heart may be happy. The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning. While the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure.” Now as a girl who very much loves to laugh and partay, and do such with you and yours, I am again confronted with the depth and reality of these words. This community of readers and writers that has grown up around you at this time make me quiet with awe at what has been witnessed and survived in this life. All the scary stuff that life serves up…that has the capacity to transform us, to point us to what really matters. I love that that woman is pursuing her yoga certification because of Ramona, I have loved the honor of hearing the contents of all these hearts pouring out. I love that
you continue to show up with candor and wit and discernment. I love that I have the honor and joy of your friendship. I love you Jane.
Kerry