May, 2008-- Mom, was Jesus shot?

We were standing in line, waiting to use the bathroom, during the Sign of Peace at Mass, when Teenasia asked me if Jesus had been shot.

            “What?” I thought I had heard her wrong.

            “Was Jesus shot?” she asked, worried. She glanced over at the statue nearby. Jesus stood, arms outstretched, palms up, with a resigned look on his face. His side was pierced and blood was flowing from it. I could see why she had asked the question.

            “No, he wasn’t shot,” I whispered, hoping the bathroom door would open at any moment and we could whisk Teenasia in and stop the conversation. “He was cut with a sword.”

            Her eyes widened, then her brow furrowed. I looked again at the bathroom door. It didn’t open.  Teenasia, our six year old foster daughter, had been with us just two weeks since being removed from the home of her biological father. Last week she hadn’t needed to use the bathroom in the middle of Mass, so we had not run into this issue.

            Teenasia peppered me with questions as I watched other parishioners smiling, shaking hands, hugging and chatting at the sign of peace.

            Who stabbed Jesus with a sword?

            Why would they do that?

            Was this the same Jesus who was BABY Jesus?

            Did someone get him a Band Aid?

            Are you sure he wasn’t shot?

            I explained as best I could, stressing, as much as possible, that after all this suffering, Jesus rose from the dead and lives still. T seemed unsatisfied.

            Teenasia, more than anyone I’ve ever known, understands what real suffering is. While I have known several people well who have suffered from illness, an accident or disability, T is the only person I know whose intense suffering has been at the hands of another. Watching T look at the suffering Christ while we waited in line for the bathroom was at the same time excruciating and enlightening.

            I have always been a Resurrection person. I grew up at Holy Family parish, in Whitefish Bay, where instead of a crucified Christ in front of the church, we had a resurrected Christ, with the cross in the background. My image of Jesus growing up was a strong, peaceful man who the cross could not conquer. That always made sense to me. Crucifixion was not the point, I felt. Many people suffer. The point was the Resurrection—that Jesus overcame death to bring us all to a much better place.

            It was in college that I first understood that maybe, however, the crucifixion was just as much of the point as Resurrection was. I learned about the poor and oppressed throughout the world, and how they held onto the crucified Christ—finding solace that their God suffered, just as they did.

            “It’s first-world countries and often wealthy suburbs where the Resurrected Christ is given the most attention,” I remember a Jesuit telling me. “In poor areas, it is all the crucified Christ.”

            And now, as the parent to three children who have known little suffering, and one who has known too much, I see the truth in his words. Teenasia is attuned to Jesus’ wounds in a way my other children are not.

            One Sunday, we missed Mass at our usual church and went to Three Holy Women, where all four children were asked to bring up the gifts. I brought the kids to the back of church as the ushers collected the offertory. As I explained to Jacob and Liam that they’d be carrying the bread and wine, I turned to the girls to tell them about the basket, and saw that T had huge tears rolling down her cheeks.

            “What?” I asked. I was somewhat annoyed, thinking she was going to complain that she had to share carrying the basket of money with Jamie.

            Wordlessly, she pointed. I looked. It was a replica of the Pieta. Jesus, dead, in the arms of his mother. Teenasia covered her mouth to keep the sobs from coming out.

            “He’s hurt,” she gulped. “Is he dead? His mom is holding him. Is he DEAD?”

            Again, I quickly went over the story. Yes, dead today—resurrected three days later —lives with us still—happy ending. But Teenasia kept looking at the dead, sad Jesus in the lap of his mother.       

            And I had nothing to say. Because three days means nothing to a six-year-old. Now is the only reality. Adults understand days, weeks, months, but kindergarteners do not. T looked at Jesus and saw his pain; his mother’s pain. It brought her to tears, and it wasn’t the time to talk about the resurrection, I realized

            “Jesus died,” I whispered, as the ushers made their way up the aisle. “It was very sad. His mother was very sad. This is a statue of Jesus and his mother on this sad, sad day.”

            T nodded, still looking at the statue.

            “Sometimes sad days are as important as happy days,” I said. The ushers were getting closer to us. “And we need to make a statue for those sad days.”

            “That was the saddest day,” T said. “I wish he didn’t die.”

            Now, all I could do was nod and blink fast. But T’s tears were gone. The ushers had made it to the back of the church, and as Teenasia, Jacob, Liam and Jamie brought up the gifts, I looked at my third child. I prayed for her—for the suffering she had endured. For her own resurrection someday. And I prayed for my husband and myself. That we would find a way to honor Teenasia’s own sad, sad days. Not with a statue, but with something just as real. Something that told T we understood that this happened to you, and we are so sorry.  We believe in your sad days.

            My children brought up the gifts that day, and I watched with the congregation. They handed the gifts to the priest, and I looked at the crucified Christ in the front of the church. Not the Resurrected Christ of my childhood. My children handed their gifts to the priest under the crucified Christ. And even though they all bowed to the tabernacle, it was only Teenasia that I prayed for.

            Bless her. Heal her. Thank you for bringing her to us. Crucified Christ, give her strength.

May, 2008-- You be the judge (or not)

About a year ago, when Jamie was three, I needed a crown put on a tooth and in an effort to avoid thinking about what a bad day that would be—I’m deathly afraid of the dentist—I did not make child care plans for Jamie. The morning of my appointment, I called up my friend Kathleen and asked if Jamie could come over to play with her four-year-old.

            “Sure, bring her over,” she said.

            As I dropped Jamie off, Kathleen mentioned offhandedly that she was also taking care of her 1- and 2-year-old niece and nephew that morning because their mom just had a baby, and would I mind if she took all four kids to McDonald’s?

            I was appalled that I had put Kathleen in a position that she would be watching my child in addition to two extras, but with 20 minutes until my appointment, I had little choice but to leave Jamie there. I thanked Kathleen extensively, wished her luck, and left.

            After my appointment, when I picked Jamie up, I asked Kathleen how it went. She said the kids were great and listed all the things she had done with them. A marching parade; coloring time; and Ring-around-the-Rosie at home. Then off to McDonalds where there was tag in the indoor playground and French fries and chicken nuggets for lunch.

            “There was one bad part, though,” Kathleen said. She went on to say that after about three hours into entertaining the four toddlers, when they were all sitting quietly eating, she made a quick call to a friend to chat, while sitting with them in the booth. As she was speaking on her cell phone, a woman came up to her and admonished her for not paying attention to the children.          

            “She told me that my children needed my attention, and I shouldn’t be talking on the phone,” Kathleen said. “She was quite angry with me.”

            Kathleen didn’t explain to the woman that she had been playing with the children all morning and this was her first five-minute break of the day, but I had an strong urge find the woman and explain that myself. How dare that woman judge my friend—here she was, helping both a mom with a newborn, and me, with my newly crowned tooth, when she didn’t need to help either of us.

            Kathleen’s story reminds me how easy it is to judge others— and the risk we take by making a comment when we don’t know the whole story.

            The day after Teenasia entered our house as a foster child for the third time in five years, I brought her to our local public school to register her. As we walked in the office, the first thing the secretary said to her — even before hello — was, “Honey, you don’t need that thumb in your mouth, take it out.”  The comment was made in a sweet voice; Teenasia obliged and I didn’t say anything, but inside I was seething. With all T had just gone through, her thumb was about the only stable thing in her life at the moment. The secretary, of course, had no idea of all of this, and did not mean any harm. But every time we choose to criticize a situation we know little about, we take a risk.

            Fr. Mike Bertram, in his homily over the weekend, said that while sexual sins are often given the most press by those who like to point out sins, Jesus rarely spoke of them. Instead, Fr, Mike said, the sin Jesus mentioned the most was judging others. 

            Parents walk the line between using good judgment and being judgmental. If we are to keep our children safe; if we are to help them grow into the best people they can be, we cannot naively think only the best of everyone. To do so could put our children into harm’s way. Many times, as parents, we need to make a judgment about another parent’s decision that could impact our child. We need to use judgment about how well-chaperoned the party will be; what movies may be allowed in a particular household that our kids visit; how children are allowed to speak to adults in another household. So what is the difference then, between using good judgment and being judgmental?

            In talking about the dangers of being judgmental, Fr. Mike brought up the story of the adulterous woman at the well, and how Jesus protected her by inviting anyone without sin to cast the first stone. To me, that simple story is the illustration of the difference. The woman’s life was not intersecting with any of the stone-throwers. They had no reason to judge her.

            By repeatedly instructing us on the dangers of judging, Jesus is freeing us. Constantly being judgmental is exhausting. It requires us to tap into mental reserves to analyze the “facts” of a situation in order to make an assessment from those perceived facts. Jesus tells us to leave judging to God. In releasing us from the responsibility of judging others, Jesus gives us freedom to spend more time in examination of our own lives— freedom to simply live our lives. Jesus’ reminders not to judge protect us from ourselves—the less we judge, the less chance we will judge wrong.

April, 2008-- How many mothers?

How many mothers?

Jamie and Teenasia  were getting ready to play house the other day and were deciding on roles.

            “I will be the mom,” Jamie announced.

            “But I wanted to be the mom,” Teenasia said.

            “Maybe we can both be moms,” Jamie suggested. Teenasia considered this, then turned to my husband Bill who was standing nearby.

            “Dad, can we have two moms?” Teenasia asked.

            “Sure,” Bill said. “You have two moms in real life.” Teenasia nodded in agreement, satisfied with this answer, and the girls went off to play.

            I am one of Teenasia’s two mothers. In her six years, Teenasia has been in foster care three separate times—23 months total--  with our family. She calls both her biological mother and me “Mom,” and if she is referring to one of us in conversation, the context is almost always clear enough that she does not need to differentiate further than an occasional “my” in front of  “mom” when she’s not talking about me. Because she lived with our family from ages 1 to 2, and her biological father was given custody of her at that point, T does not have a memory of living with her biological mother. Right now, T visits her once a week for four hours.

            On a day-to-day basis, I rarely think about being one of two mothers to Teenasia. Instead, like most mothers, I am focused on getting the lunches made, the shoes found, and the homework checked all while having three conversations at once.

            It’s not during the busy times that I think of being one of two mothers. It’s during the quiet. Ironically, it’s when I’m not actively mothering — when the kids are in bed, when I wake up in the middle of the night, when I’m on a run — that I think most about being Mom #2.

            Many mothers are one of two moms. I join stepmothers, grandmothers raising their grandchildren, mothers in same-sex partnerships and thousands of other foster and adoptive mothers in not being the one and only. Sharing the stage takes practice, and I certainly don’t have it down yet. There are many times I think of how much easier — for both Teenasia and me--  it would be if I were the only mom T had.

            But I am so clearly not the one and only, and it seems to me that the most healthy approach for both T and me is to embrace this hand we’ve been dealt. As long as we have it, let’s play it well. To me, that means being as matter-of-fact as possible. Just because Teenasia’s situation with two mothers is unusual doesn’t mean she has to feel odd or uncomfortable about it. There is plenty of drama in foster care without me escalating it. Teenasia will tell me things about her biological family and look closely at me for a reaction. While I know I need to teach Teenasia that parts of her experience were not acceptable, I also need to make sure I don’t make her feel that the mother she was born to is not deserving of respect.

            Teenasia is part of this other mother. She carries this other mother in every cell of her body. Sometimes, when she smiles or laughs in a certain way, I see her other mother so clearly that it takes my breath away. I know that by valuing this other mother, I value Teenasia as my child. Yet, the juxtaposition is that even as I value her as a “mother,” I know she does not have the wherewithal to add the “-ing” to that word. And that is the balance I must learn to live with. 

            Teenasia’s mother has had a life I cannot even imagine. I have had advantages she cannot even dream of. We are so different from each other, yet the one thing we have in common is the most important of all — we both love Teenasia. We live out that love differently, as we are able. I think about the other mother in the quiet. And I wonder when she thinks of me.

April, 2008-- A tiny chapel, a late night

As a student at Marquette University, my friends and I often attended the 10 p.m. nightly Mass at the Joan of Arc Chapel on campus. We’d finish up our studying for the evening and meet in the tiny chapel. The chapel has radiant heating in the stone floor and five or six benches seating three each around the perimeter. Because I tended to get to the chapel about 45 seconds before the opening song, I usually didn’t get a seat, so I sat on the floor, and shifted positions often so that my bottom didn’t get too hot.

            While I loved the Masses, I also took them for granted. I took for granted that I attended Mass with a community of about 50 people, and at the Sign of Peace I could greet more than half of the people by name. I took for granted the guitar playing, the lively music, the way the sound filled up the space of the chapel in the darkness.  I took for granted students voicing petitions about the same worries that we might talk about later that evening over a dish of ice cream or a cold beer. I took for granted the 500-year- old building; the wrought iron candle chandelier, probably centuries old; the huge ancient wooden beams. I took for granted the Jesuits—young and old—men of wisdom, intelligence and prayer, who led the students gathered to look deeper into ourselves and discover who we were called to be. But mostly I took for granted attending Mass almost daily; going to a Mass so tailored for me, my schedule and my peer group, that not only was there no excuse not to go to Mass, I liked it so much, I wasn’t even looking for an excuse.

            Graduation gave way to young adulthood and I moved away from the campus.

            Despite my love for the St. Joan of Arc 10 p.m. Mass, I never went back. I don’t know why, exactly. At first, maybe I felt that I had closed that chapter in my life—I wasn’t a college student; I didn’t belong there. Eventually, I didn’t go back for practical reasons—a Mass that ends at 11 p.m. is substantially later for a mom of small kids than it is for a college student who can hit snooze until 15 minutes before the first class of the day. In any case, I never went back.

            Until last night.

            Maria, a friend and Marquette alum who now works at the university, had suggested that we take our mutual friend, Jill, to the Mass. Jill was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months ago, and the last round of chemo had been particularly difficult for her.

            “I heard the music on Tuesday night is really good,” Maria told me. “Music is healing. Are you free?” Of course I was free. I’m always free at 10 p.m. on weeknights because I am usually asleep.

            We got to the campus over an hour before Mass was to begin, planning to have a little picnic outside beforehand. The wind was cold though, so we moved our picnic to the lobby of the library. Maria had brought Pinot Grigio, candles, and cheese and crackers. I brought flowers and high quality chocolate. We toasted to Jill’s making it through four rounds of chemo—and to the rounds coming up. We toasted to the cancer going away and never coming back. Students entered and left the library, glancing quizzically at us and our plastic wine glasses. Then we packed up our picnic and went to the chapel.

            St. Joan of Arc was just as I remembered it, but better, because I wasn’t taking it for granted. We had gotten there early enough to get seats, but soon the entire chapel was packed and students were crowded on the floor. As a student, I had not much looked around and noticed the faces of other students—except for the guitar player on Thursday nights that I had a mad crush on—but as an adult, I took in their faces. They were so young. Beautiful. Just five to eight years older than Jacob, my own son. I saw in them what I hoped he would be someday. Chatting animatedly before Mass began; singing the opening song loudly, enthusiastically; sitting reverently, listening to the readings, the homily. Laughing at the Sign of Peace. Hugging. Shaking hands.

            Looking at the students, I remembered my own prayers inside that chapel. Prayers so different than my prayers now. Not less, just different. Different prayers for different stages of life. Then, I prayed that God would guide me in all the huge decisions I was making about my life. I had prayed about my relationships and my future. Now, having already made so many of those life decisions I was wondering about in college, I prayed for Jill and her family. That the chemo would work. That the cancer would be squashed and that her hair would grow back.

            As I sat next to Jill, I couldn’t help but think how many of my college prayers in the chapel had been answered. Buoyed by the memory of those answered prayers, I prayed again for Jill. I prayed that the peacefulness, the holiness of this place would permeate her being. That the cancer would feel unwelcome amid the goodness and youth that surrounded us.

            I prayed for Jill’s healing and gave thanks for this tiny, holy chapel. And somehow, it felt like the same prayer.