Fertility // Eve // Deception
Dark chocolate covered honeycomb is one of my favorite treats to this day. When I was younger (late elementary school or maybe middle school), I convinced one of the children that my mother was babysitting to sneak into the closet and steal the small plastic container my mother had recently obtained from Henry's (it is now called Spouts). When confronted, I lied.
It is so easy to lie. To place blame. When backed into a corner, we are scared. We are terrified of the uncertain, but also terrified of the certain. The certain is that we've been caught and are in trouble. the uncertain is the punishment. So maybe, lying is a coping mechanism meant to stave off punishment. But it doesn't work. It never does.
A long time ago, there was a woman backed into a corner about her actions and lied about it. She shifted the blame. She still had to deal with the punishment, and was told that because of her disobedience and tempting of her husband that she would submit to him. Eve. The first conflict of the Bible is about our shame and hiding of sin. Eve lied.
Five years ago, I was a terrified 19 year-old college student who was petrified by the fear of the unknown and clinging to what little amount of control she had left. I don't think it was conscious, but unconsciously I had decided that my life was spiraling out of control and one of the few things left in my control was my narrative. I had hubris. I think it was pride that prevented me from disclosing the truth. So, I lied.
I was so incredibly incorrect about this assumption, and it all came to a head when I accidentally scheduled my blog to post my pregnancy announcement before I had told everyone I had planned. A switch flipped and I was able to take ownership of my mistakes, timidly at first, but I did it. I stopped lying.
However, until the moment I found out I can't control everything, I was struggling to hold it all together. I honestly thought I could control it. So I did my best. I used massive amounts of deception, which after an entire semester of sneaking around to have sex with my boyfriend, didn't seem like a big deal. I didn't realize what a gigantic hole I was digging. I didn't think about the fact that these deceptions were thin veiled attempts at hiding an inevitable truth. The inevitability of it all did eventually find me.
Five years later, I am still struggling through the consequences of my choices. I was too young to have a child and I am a suboptimal parent at times because of it. The deception that I employed caused fractures into cornerstone relationships that I do not think will ever be fully restored. I am still trying to earn the degree that I was working towards when I dropped out of college to become a stay at home mother. The learning curve for everything was incredibly steep. I'm in a giant game of minesweeper and every time I think I have cleared the last bomb, the board expands to reveal a whole new section of unexplored territory, unexploded mines to discover.
Everyone struggles with the transition to parenthood, and I am not exempt from that. Perhaps that was part of the pervasiveness of the first sin, the first deception. Perhaps "pain in childbirth" is not just the physical act of labor, but the way it can absolute rip relationships to shreds. There is no pride in childbirth, we are laid bare, exposed. The most beautiful act of the creation of life has been twisted and disfigured into such an ugly thing. I want to blame culture. I want to say that we have stigma attached to childbirth and pregnancies that don't look like the ideal straight, Caucasian couple in their mid-thirties with two financially stable jobs, a house, and paid maternity leave. It's not culture, it's sin.
Sin takes the beautiful act of creating a family and distorts it into a painful act that destroys our bodies, and sometimes relationships. It wasn't meant to be this way.
It is so easy to lie. To place blame. When backed into a corner, we are scared. We are terrified of the uncertain, but also terrified of the certain. The certain is that we've been caught and are in trouble. the uncertain is the punishment. So maybe, lying is a coping mechanism meant to stave off punishment. But it doesn't work. It never does.
A long time ago, there was a woman backed into a corner about her actions and lied about it. She shifted the blame. She still had to deal with the punishment, and was told that because of her disobedience and tempting of her husband that she would submit to him. Eve. The first conflict of the Bible is about our shame and hiding of sin. Eve lied.
Five years ago, I was a terrified 19 year-old college student who was petrified by the fear of the unknown and clinging to what little amount of control she had left. I don't think it was conscious, but unconsciously I had decided that my life was spiraling out of control and one of the few things left in my control was my narrative. I had hubris. I think it was pride that prevented me from disclosing the truth. So, I lied.
I was so incredibly incorrect about this assumption, and it all came to a head when I accidentally scheduled my blog to post my pregnancy announcement before I had told everyone I had planned. A switch flipped and I was able to take ownership of my mistakes, timidly at first, but I did it. I stopped lying.
However, until the moment I found out I can't control everything, I was struggling to hold it all together. I honestly thought I could control it. So I did my best. I used massive amounts of deception, which after an entire semester of sneaking around to have sex with my boyfriend, didn't seem like a big deal. I didn't realize what a gigantic hole I was digging. I didn't think about the fact that these deceptions were thin veiled attempts at hiding an inevitable truth. The inevitability of it all did eventually find me.
Five years later, I am still struggling through the consequences of my choices. I was too young to have a child and I am a suboptimal parent at times because of it. The deception that I employed caused fractures into cornerstone relationships that I do not think will ever be fully restored. I am still trying to earn the degree that I was working towards when I dropped out of college to become a stay at home mother. The learning curve for everything was incredibly steep. I'm in a giant game of minesweeper and every time I think I have cleared the last bomb, the board expands to reveal a whole new section of unexplored territory, unexploded mines to discover.
Everyone struggles with the transition to parenthood, and I am not exempt from that. Perhaps that was part of the pervasiveness of the first sin, the first deception. Perhaps "pain in childbirth" is not just the physical act of labor, but the way it can absolute rip relationships to shreds. There is no pride in childbirth, we are laid bare, exposed. The most beautiful act of the creation of life has been twisted and disfigured into such an ugly thing. I want to blame culture. I want to say that we have stigma attached to childbirth and pregnancies that don't look like the ideal straight, Caucasian couple in their mid-thirties with two financially stable jobs, a house, and paid maternity leave. It's not culture, it's sin.
Sin takes the beautiful act of creating a family and distorts it into a painful act that destroys our bodies, and sometimes relationships. It wasn't meant to be this way.
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