a journey toward parenthood

Nathaniel and I have wanted a child for a while, but we also wanted to wait until I was far enough along in my PhD program that I would not be sabotaging myself academically and professionally.  So after I passed my general exams (the Master's benchmark), I went off birth control and started tracking my cycles.  I was pretty confident it would only be a few months—most couples get pregnant within 3 or 4 months of trying.

A year of ovulation and pregnancy tests, temperature charting, and prenatal pills (just in case) later, we went in for the infertility diagnosis so we could move on to treatment.  That first year of trying was emotionally draining, but the following year of treatment was far, far worse.

We learned that my body produced too much FSH (follicle simulating hormone), which usually means that a woman has a low egg count.  Even if one could control the FSH somehow, the underlying issue of too few eggs would remain.  My day three FSH reading was usually around 24 or so.  Less than 9 is considered normal for childbearing age—to put things in perspective, my FSH reading was what should be more typical of a premenopausal woman in her mid forties, and I was only 28.  Over 19 means that many fertility centers won't even try to help you with your own eggs.  It also meant that our Aetna insurance was not guaranteed to cover anything, but we could appeal and make a case for coverage.

At first, I was still optimistic.  Of course I would get pregnant, right?  But then I didn't really respond to the pills they gave me to "ripen" more eggs.  So we moved onto the more powerful injectable medications.  In addition to going in to get my blood drawn every few days (which made me look like I was shooting heroin) and getting intrauterine ultrasounds regularly, I learned to give myself shots in my stomach to both encourage egg development and induce ovulation.  And despite all the needles and early morning poking and prodding, I still only produced one egg at a time.  Well, once I produced a lucky two.  Dealing with insurance was also beastly, though our center handled the brunt of it.

At some point during this process, Nathaniel and I realized that we might never be able to have our own biological children and we each went through our own depressions.  I was angry when television shows, movies, and books used pregnancy as a plot point, especially for a single sexual encounter.  I had a hard time being happy when friends and family announced their own pregnancies.  I had to avoid Facebook because everyone seemed to be talking about their kids.  Church was torture, especially when I listened to lessons or talks from the pulpit on parenting or families.  People unknowingly teased us about not wanting kids or asked us when we were going to have them or if we wanted them.  I had been that person previously, asking inappropriate personal questions, but now I know better.  As the receiver, I would respond with a smile, then go home and cry.

Then our story took a happy twist: after about two years of trying, I was pregnant.  We were actually taking a break from fertility treatment and were not at all expecting it.  N pulled the test out the trash and squinted at it to see the first signs, and I took a dozen more tests through the following days.  A huge burden had been lifted, and the grief had passed, replaced by joy.  I was looking up strollers and other baby equipment, and making plans on when to tell everyone.  I figured out how much weight I needed to gain.  I found a doctor and had my first appointment.  I got rid of my sharps container and used kitty litter to safely get rid of my remaining injectable medications.

I reminded myself that not everyone gets this lucky.  That year of grief taught me a tiny sliver about what it would be like to go through a lifetime of infertility.  It wasn't until I thought I had broken down every single emotional barrier that I got pregnant, or so I told myself.  I needed to gain that humility—I needed to be okay with every option, including adopting (which was easy—I was planning on adopting if I didn't get married), having a special-needs kid, or getting an egg donor (this last one was the hardest).  I needed to want to be a parent so badly that I would realize that being a parent isn't about defining my own identity, but about being willing to fill that role for a child who needs it.  I thought I had come so far.

And then I miscarried at just before 8 weeks.

I was in denial.  I kept reading online about how you can bleed and still be pregnant, even after passing pretty substantial blood clots.  I was in contact with my doctor, and holding out hope for the ultrasound in a few days.  I was tense as the technician looked.  After a while she apathetically told me that she didn't have anything to show me, then left me (without bothering to send in my equally anxious husband) to go talk to the doctor.  There I was, half naked and alone, with the devastating confirmation that I was no longer pregnant.  The icing on the cake was the terrible break-up music being pumped over the speakers.  After a while, she came back and, despite my having told her about the miscarriage concerns, she tried to tell me that maybe I just wasn't as far along as I thought.  I might have visibly rolled my eyes at her—I had been monitoring everything pretty carefully and knew when I had ovulated.  The baby was gone.

We took a while to mourn the loss, but eventually the grief passed.  We tried to look at the silver lining: now we knew I could get pregnant.  And so it was never as hard as it was before the pregnancy.  The darkest times had passed.

We decided that we were going to be parents one way or another, and that if I couldn't get pregnant again, then we would adopt.  We had the capacity to be loving parents, and we wanted to use that capacity.  Some infertile couples end up using that love through volunteering or their jobs, but given the nature of our careers, adoption seemed like the best fit for us.  (Though we understand that it's not the right choice for everyone.) That made things easier some days, but it was still a question of when: when should we make the transition from trying for biological children to trying for adoptive children?  Not yet, we felt, especially with so much uncertainty ahead with graduation looming and possibly new jobs on the horizon.  We didn't want to get all set up with the approval process only to relocate.

I started up acupuncture, since my insurance covered it.  I also consumed plenty of Chinese medicinal teas, many of which were incredibly bitter.  Eventually I stopped going because it was a lot of effort for no obvious benefits—I imagine it could work for some people, but it wasn't my thing.

My church asked me to speak on Mother's day.  I thought long and hard about it, and decided to do it. I basically just cried continuously, but told everyone that Mother's day can be hard for some people.  It can be hard for people who have lost their mothers, or don't get along with their moms, but also for women who have never married, who can't have children, or who have lost a child.  I told them that we were struggling to have kids and that biological children just might not be in the cards for us.  But I also gave thanks for my mother, grandmothers, and other women who have touched my life.  I learned to turn despair into gratitude.  Or at least to try to do so.

Eventually, we went back to western medicine.  We were going to do maximum dosage injectables on an IUI cycle to see how I responded.  If that went well, we could move to IVF.  But I didn't respond well.  At full dosage, I still only produced one egg, which meant that IVF wasn't worth the risk.  I took a home pregnancy test at the end of that cycle and saw a very slight line, but then I bled the following day.  Because the medications can mess up urine tests, it's not clear if it was actually a pregnancy, albeit short lived.

When we next met with the doctor, she told us that we should only try a few more IUIs on low dosage oral medication.  She said we had maybe a 5% chance.  Imagine taking twenty alternate universe versions of this situation: only one will be successful.  It's about the chances of rolling a total of 3 with two dice on a single throw.  It's low.

We wanted things to be more black and white.  We wanted "you can't have children" to make the transition to adoption easier.  But they kept stringing us along.  Adoption comes with its own set of emotional challenges, such as a mother choosing you to adopt her child, then deciding that she wants to keep her child.  Of course she has that right, but it's still difficult for the potential adoptive parents.  So we pushed it down the road...we decided that when we moved away from the area in a year or two we would begin the adoption process.  After about three years of trying, we were ready to be parents, but we could wait a little longer to make the logistics easier.

On another break from treatment, due to scheduling issues, I took another pregnancy test.  It was ever so lightly positive.  I tested again in the following days, and it was clearer: I was pregnant again.  But there was not a lightness or joy this time.  Instead, I felt mostly dread.  When would the miscarriage be?  Every twinge was a sign of loss.  Here comes the sorrow, here comes the despair.  I couldn't let myself enjoy it, at least not until I heard the heartbeat, or so I told myself.  But in the meanwhile, I was looking up really morbid statistics, like the chances of stillbirth or late-term miscarriage.  I even worried about having a child that would die young.

It wasn't until around the time I got a call from my nurse at the infertility center that I started to get excited.  She was calling to check in and make the plans for the next treatment cycle.  I was in a meeting at the time, so I listened to her long message with detailed instructions on how I was going to need to get medications from two different pharmacies (a standard one for the pills and an online order for an injectable to induce ovulation).  So I left her a message in return to say let's put a hold on that for now, and let's where this pregnancy goes.

The following day she asked me to check in with my insurance to see if they would cover early monitoring with them, and for the first time insurance was a breeze.  The insurance guy I talked to was incredibly helpful and cheerful, and it looked like everything was going to be covered.

I think there's something about telling other people that starts to make things real, even if those people are medical professionals and not friends or family.  We still were not really to tell loved ones yet, since in some ways, we would rather have waited to find out ourselves until things were more certain—the roller coaster of excitement and loss is exhausting.

The first ultrasound mid-week 5 went as expected—we saw the amniotic and yolk sacs.  But mid-week 6, I had some severe cramps in the early hours of the morning.  Here it comes.  N went for a walk with me, and we watched a Star Trek episode in the middle of the night to get our minds off things.  But the cramps turned out to be digestional, and N had similar ones soon after.  Still, it put us on edge, to be reminded of how suddenly miscarriage could come.

Two days later, we went in for the next ultrasound, and saw and heard a heartbeat of 116bpm.  That meant the miscarriage risk was around 18%.  It put us a little at ease, and even encouraged us to get a little excited, but the risk was still there.  Risk will always be there.

We told our immediate families and some close friends.  The weeks ticked by.  I defended my PhD and graduated.  Now I'm 28 weeks along, and everyone who sees me in person can tell I'm pregnant.  Frankly, we're lucky.  There are many people who deserve to be parents and don't get that chance.  And while I am very happy with out current situation, I would never give up the three years of heartache—it taught me some much needed empathy.  The pain of this journey may fade, but we won't forget it.  I think it makes me a better person, even if I still have a long way to go, because it's stripped away a lot of my desire to judge others and taught me about how to be more sensitive to others' hidden experiences.

For instance, I developed a much deeper respect for those that become parents either through an egg or sperm donor, or through foster care and adoption.  Being a parent is about the love you give your child, and while giving birth and breastfeeding are ways of showing that love, they are only some ways to do so.   And biological similarly does not necessarily help you be a better parent.  Again, it's all about the love and care you give the child.  This applies even if you aren't a guardian, but are an aunt or uncle, teacher or friend—if you have the love of a parent, you are a parent in your heart.

I also learned that there are so many kinds of infertility that it isn't really helpful or encouraging to share a success story for a type of infertility that doesn't match what the person is going through.  Like don't try to inspire someone with a story about surrogates when the person is having trouble making their own eggs.  There are a bunch of articles about dos/don'ts.  Even if you think you don't know anyone struggling with having kids, whether it's secondary or primary infertility, or recurrent miscarriages, I guarantee that you do.  About 6% of married women of reproductive age struggle with infertility.  That means that if you have 100 female acquaintances that get married at some point, about 6 of them have, are, or will struggle with this.

Miscarriage is a whole 'nother ballpark.  The stats on that are a little trickier, because most miscarriages are mistaken for periods.  Recurrent miscarriages (3 or more) happen in about 1% of women, but it feels like almost every woman has a miscarriage story, either her own, or one from a sister, mother, or close friend.  Miscarriage is incredibly common.  I say this not to diminish the emotional impact of a miscarriage, but to remind folks that 1) if you've gone through a miscarriage, please remember that you aren't alone and there are people out there that want to love and comfort you and 2) someone you know and love has gone through a miscarriage, even if you don't know about it—use that as a reminder to always be kind, sensitive, and loving.

There are also people who don't want kids, but get pregnant accidentally or feel constant social pressure to have kids.  There are infertile women who judge those who get abortions, and people on birth control who judge those who are pregnant.  It's so, so messy.

The more open I am with my own history, no matter the context, I find that many other women have their own stories to tell, be it about infertility, miscarriage, or being pressured to have kids.  And men aren't immune—just because they might not go through the same physical processes doesn't mean they don't feel the emotional pain.

So if you don't know, don't assume.  Just try to understand, but be very careful with your personal questions.  I learned not to ask questions about having kids directly—what you think might just be an ice breaker could actually hurt someone a lot.  I'm sure I am guilty of this in many domains, not just infertility, but my go-to ice breaker is now some variant of the vague, "So, what are your interests?"  (If you've made it this far, I'm probably preaching to the choir.)

And yes, you shouldn't need to tip-toe around worrying about everything that could possibly offend someone.  As long a you cultivate true love and respect for other people, that will shine through.  But that kind of love requires putting in the patient effort to understand our fellow men and women, just as one should to understand a child.

I'm putting my story out there because I believe it's important for these issues to be more public.  When you think you're alone, it hurts all the more.  But you aren't alone.

the first of the season

Today I harvested the first greens of the season—baby spinach and pea shoots.  The garden has started off lovely.

There are days when I can't believe it's not June yet, and then there are days I feel stuck in March.  But mostly, I just feel tired, and the date doesn't mean anything.

I started teaching seminary in January.  For those unfamiliar, it's a 6am religion class for high school students.  At first, it was very fun, but as time drew on, my excitement turned to exhaustion.  I love deep study of religious texts, but getting up early is not my strong suit.

Combine that with working in the youth program (a second church job), along with something about finishing my PhD in 2016, and you get a stressed, sleep-deprived woman. When I'm not worrying about implementation bugs in my statistical inference algorithm, I'm worried about teens cutting themselves.  It's fun.

I'm trying to find some balance now.  N is helping me so much; one thing he's doing is teaching seminary two days a week.  I need to start doing more things that aren't work and church. Gardening qualifies.

LDS Public Affairs

This past Sunday, I received and accepted a new calling: Secretary to the (horrible acronym warning) NYMMPAC, which stands for New York Metro Multistake Public Affairs Council.  It covers 3 Coordinating Councils, or 13 Stakes and 131 units.

Generally speaking, the idea of church public affairs makes me a little queasy.  In an ideal world, the good works of the church should speak for themselves and we should have no need to influence public opinion of us.  That said, I think the public affairs groups aren't there solely to bring about good press—the director emphasized to me that "public affairs" is really an unfortunate name, since there's much more to it than that.  But, prior to this, my perception of Public Affairs was the folks who force members to wear yellow Helping Hands vests and do photographed service activities.  Or, more recently, PA was represented by the token woman that introduced the Apostles for the press release on religious freedom.

So why did I accept the calling?  Part of it was certainly ego.  But another big part of why I accepted is that I was recommended for the position because of my strong opinions.  This means that they knew what they were getting, and I had license to be myself.  I also warned them that I have a blog.

I have a friend at church who is on the NYMMPAC, and she and I have had regular hallway discussions on church issues (in lieu of attending Sunday School).  She acknowledges that some aspects of Public Affairs and popular LDS culture need to be improved, and has been working to make things better.  The idealistic optimist in me says: now I can be a part of that effort!

While I do need to keep some things confidential, I hope to keep a record of some of my public affairs experiences, to improve transparency, define the role of public affairs a little more concretely, and to prevent me from drinking too much cultural kool-aid.

Update: Since writing this post, lots of people have told me about great PA experiences, like:

• Partnering with Feed Ohio
• LGBT outreach
• interfaith events, including a ongoing blood-drive that alternates between churches
• partnering with other local nonprofits through JustServe

Folks have also pointed out that PA is one of the few areas in the church hierarchy where women have impactful roles.  Now I'm feeling pumped.

music appreciation

I don't usually write about working with the young women at church, mostly because the best stuff is spontaneous and a little effervescent.  But tonight I planned a "music appreciation" night, which involved putting together a jeopardy-like arrangement of index cards in six categories: 20th century pop music (name the decade), classical composers, name the instrument, name the artist, hymn titles, and Disney (name the movie).

It was fun to prepare--all I had to do is go through my music library and pick 30 songs, as well as spend a few minutes writing up the categories and numbers on index cards. I enjoyed finding obscure but still recognizable segments for the Disney category; the hardest one was from Bambi, which many of the girls had never seen. Name-the-decade was probably the most fun to construct, though, as I got to dig through a huge spectrum of music.

The girls seemed to have fun, and everyone got at least one right. The best moment for me is when the visiting girl who only really speaks Portuguese correctly answered the hardest name-the-artist without any real hesitation (it was Avicii's Wake Me Up).

It was interesting to see who shone in which categories, and I learned that one girl plays the flute.  One girl got every single guess-the-decade, from a 1928 Luis Armstrong piece to a 1996 one by Jewel. Another got every single hymn title.  The flautist was a whiz with instrument names.

Everyone avoided the classical composers, but when we finally did them, many of them recognized the music and spent a while mulling them over.  Exposure is the key for this kind of stuff, and I was glad to make them think about it.  I was also happy to teach them what a harpsichord sounds like, and that no, those are bagpipes, not a piccolo.

the pace of change

For those of you who aren't LDS or otherwise haven't heard, this Saturday the church president a policy change: men can now serve missions starting at age 18 (used to be 19), and women can now serve missions starting at 19 (used to be 21).

Everyone's buzzing about it.  Young women are super stoked about the possibilities, some older women are excited but a little bitter that the change was only made recently.  I'm personally excited to see the next generations of girls, possibly even my own daughters, grow up thinking that a mission is a serious possibility, not just something to be done if you don't get married in college and don't know what to do with your life.  (I'm not saying that was the actual reason for most women missionaries, but it was a common perception.)

I think this is a great step toward equalizing men and women in the church.  While it isn't perfect equal (women can still only serve 18 months as opposed to men's 24, and there's still the 18/19 discrepancy), it's a much, much better policy.

It's got me think about the pace of change, though.  At the press conference after the announcement, when asked why weren't the ages set to be equal for men and women, Elder Holland responded "one miracle at a time." N pointed out the quote from Winterbuzz on FMH, that sums up the skeptical view pretty well (which I share):

While I am happy that this change makes so many people happy, I can’t help but wonder that if this is the most we can expect from modern day prophets in the way of revelation, that’s sort of depressing, isn’t it? We must be so spiritually hungry that even the smallest shift in policy seems heaven sent.

Each generation experiences the church's policies and politics differently.  My parents experienced the policy change that African descendants could receive the priesthood, but also the anti-ERA push.  The next generation, like Joanna Brooks, experienced the September Six in the heat of their coming into real adulthood.  My generation experienced Prop 8 in that same heat, and now we have this policy change to add to the list of experiences.

Just looking at the list, it seems like we're focusing on smaller and smaller changes or policies.  This makes sense, because--never mind, I'm not going to go into detail on the parallels between policy changes and simulated annealing.  You can make them yourself, if you care enough.

Anyway, I hope to see more equalizing progress.  That's all.

minimally problematic

Today I helped clean out some closets at my church building.  With the calling shuffle, we needed to know what was actually in the various Primary closets, since our now-released fearless leader was pretty much the only one who knew where everything was.

I found it interesting that I was the one who pushed to toss/recycle stuff we didn't need.  I've been progressively minimizing the amount of stuff I own, and given the amount of junk I've gone through so far, I've had a lot of practice at gauging need relatively quickly.  While I don't believe in waste, I also don't believe in keeping things that you realistically aren't going to use.  Given that I used to keep 10-year old balloons, boxes of dried paints, and clothes from elementary school, I am pretty proud of how far I've come.  Today allowed me to celebrate that a little.

Along the minimalism lines, I've been thinking more about eReaders.  I've gone from being opposed to owning one, to being theoretically okay with one, to kinda wanting one.  There is a huge appeal in trimming down our overflowing bookcases (the biggest remaining front of stuff), but the cost is the stickler for me.  Paper books are still so much cheaper, since I pretty much only buy used.  The local library has an increasingly decent collection of ebooks, though, so renting would be an option.

One conundrum is what to do with the paper books I already have?  Ideally, I'd like to only keep my favorites, selling the rest (or at the very least ensuring that they have good homes).  Selling is a bit tricky, since books are so cheap to begin with; Amazon buys a handful of used books, and then there are used book dealers...but I'd need to discover the ones out here.  (If we were back in Berkeley, I could get to the used book places with my eyes closed, partially because there were so many of them.)

An then there is the issue of what to get (if anything at all).  A Kindle/Nook is easier on the eyes, but an iPad is more versatile.  I think I lean towards the book-specific readers rather than the more general tablets, mostly because I don't need another window to the internet.  Plus eink readers have much better battery life, and Kindle at least has a "free" 3G option, i.e. no monthly payment plan, hence kindle is also better for travel abroad.  And then the classic, touchscreen, or keyboard?  I'm leaning touchscreen w/3G and no ads, but that's double the price of the classic.  Uf.

One thing that I need to do more research on is the reading of academic papers digitally.  If I would be comfortable with reading papers and maybe even taking notes on an eink device, that would be a strong selling point.  I've read mixed reviews on the topic so far, but many of them were from the early kindle days.

It's one of those things that I'll hem and haw about for a few weeks and then make an abrupt decision one way or the other.  I really wish there was an obvious choice, but I think there's just no ideal situation yet, at least given the constraints I'm imposing.

dear diary

It's been nose to the grindstone here, or nose in the books, or however you want to say it.  Work.  Noses.  It's all the same.  So here's an update on a bunch of miscellaneous things.

I've been reading Go Ask Alice and Cloud Altas, both of which are excellent.  And I'm still going to the gym, for the most part.  I've taken a few sporadic days off recently due to the aforementioned nose issue, but I don't plan on stopping any time soon--it feels great.  I keep looking at my arms and being amazed that I can actually see a hint of muscle.

My seedlings are growing leggy for lack of light.  N did all sorts of research on it yesterday (including some Matlab computation) to figure out if we needed to buy different lights for them.  He decided we did, so we went out today for that.  I'm thinning them out and replanting them in the same containers, just deeper, so they stop falling over (cabbage, I'm looking at you).

What else?  I was released from my calling at church just to be re-called to the same thing--one of those leadership shuffles.  Kinda wigged me out, I must say, since they emailed me in the middle of the week to schedule a meeting for Sunday.  I haven't had a formal meeting time set for a calling since I can remember, so I kept wondering if I was in trouble for something (a.k.a. corrupting the young'uns with my blasphemous ways), or if they wanted me to do something crazy.  N kept saying they were going to call me as prophet.  But no, it was nothing special.

Funny thing though: I was teaching a lesson to the young'uns the day I was recalled...and I was talking about the good things prophets tell us to do (e.g., praying), the bad things they tell us to avoid (e.g., gossiping), and grey-area things where they give us some council but don't straight-up tell us what to do (e.g., who to make friends with).  When I asked for examples of bad things to avoid, one of the teachers came out and said that Hinckley warned us not to attend raves.  In response, I told her that I used to go to raves.  It cracked me up to hear all the kids gasp.  Regretting that re-calling now, eh?

But, it was a good segway into the grey-area bit, saying that parties are something that we need to be careful about, blah blah blah.  With Go Ask Alice on my mind, I warned them against drugs.  One kid pretended to offer drugs to another, and I got to tell them that people actually do that.  It's real.  I've been offered drugs at parties by complete strangers, I told them (and it's true).   Drugs aren't a joke.  They make people to crazy things.  Betcha nobody was expecting to have that conversation.  Good times.

Another thing that's been on my mind of late is the line between constructive criticism and destructive criticism.  In particular, I've been thinking of how it relates to improving a religious organization like the LDS church, wherein the whole purpose of said organization is supposedly to bring constructive change to people's lives.  On some level, I criticize an organization or its members for my own sake, usually to justify my feelings on various points.  On the other hand, if I feel negatively about some aspects of the organization, do I have an obligation to help change it?  How about if the struggle for change is personally painful?  How about if that struggle brings unwanted personal change?

Lots of random thoughts.

teaching young women

A bit ago, I was asked to help out with a YW class. I didn't end up doing it (out of town), but it got me looking at the teaching manual and I wanted to share some thoughts.

Looking through the list of lessons, the section on "Fulfilling Women’s Divine Roles" seems like it has the most questionable material, though it has a lot of good stuff too. The idea of having "divine potential" in a spiritual sense instead of a gender-roles-sense is great, but they can't help but sneak gender roles.  Also, requiring priesthood approval to have a guest teacher is silly:

"Invite an exemplary sister (preferably one who has married in the temple and has a family), who has been approved by priesthood advisers, to speak to the young women about the joy of being a woman."

"Finding Joy Now" is a wonderful lesson--life doesn't start at marriage or motherhood. The lesson entitled "Homemaking" seems an odd fit for this section, since I typically associate homemaking with housekeeping++. They've apparently co-opted the term "homemaking" and tried to put a spiritual spin on it:

Explain that homemaking involves a wide variety of activities, all of them important. Of great importance, of course, is keeping a house clean and taking care of the physical needs of the family members. However, there is another important side to homemaking, as Sister Belle S. Spafford, a former general president of the Relief Society, points out:

“Homemaking, as I view it, falls into two major divisions: homemaking and housekeeping. Homemaking takes into account the spiritual values: love, peace, tranquility, harmony among family members, security. It makes of a place of residence a spot to which family members can retire from a confused and troubled world and find understanding and rejuvenation. Its character is quietness; it evidences good taste, culture, and refinement. Men, women, and children alike have their individual contributions to make to good home and family life, and each shares in its benefits.

“Housekeeping involves the work of keeping a house clean, orderly, and well managed. This includes financial management, failure in which often becomes a source of family friction.”

I won't go into how silly it is to divide something into two things: itself and something else.  I also think that putting this in the series "Fulfilling Women’s Divine Roles" just begs a few questions: Do men have no divine responsibility to keep their house clean?  How about to bring spiritual values into the home?  Why do we keep bringing gender into these things?

Lesson 8, "Attitudes about Our Divine Roles" is interesting.  The objective is that "Each young woman will develop a positive attitude about her divine roles of wife and mother."  After all that beating around the bush, they finally let the cat out of the bag: wife and mother are the divine roles, the potential we want them to reach.   For starters, I think have issue with the idea of having a spiritual role defined by my gender, no matter what it is.  I think being married is a blast, and I look forward to being a mother, and I think that it's good for teenagers to seriously consider these possibilities.  But.

But three things: 1) emphasizing marriage and children too much in a culture can lead to social and emotional hardship when folks don't "fulfill their potential," 2) the way marriage/mothering is taught tends to be to the exclusion of other wonderful things for women (I'm not saying that that's how the manual is written, but often times that's the lesson the girls end up learning), and 3) there is not nearly as much analogous discussion of marriage and fathering for boys.  As an example of numero dos:

Point out that the worldly view of women’s roles is false partly because it is selfcentered. It focuses so much on a woman’s rights to receive that it almost ignores her opportunities to give.

I agree that it's good not to be self-centered and that it's better to focus on giving, but just to clarify, what are the worldly views of women's roles?  Last I check, most of the world agreed with the idea that women should be primarily wives and mothers.  An increasingly large portion is equalist, saying that men and women should have just as much opportunity to work, stay at home, become educated, and have families.  (Yay!)  And a very, very small sliver is women's-rights-greedy to the degradation of men.  Tossing out this last category, how is the "worldly view" bad?  Because more people are starting to think that there aren't women's roles?  That it emphasizes that women are people?  (Also wik: stop with the true/false binary.)

I can also pick apart the lesson on the value of education:

“There are impelling reasons for our sisters to plan toward employment. … We want them to obtain all the education and vocational training possible before marriage. If they become widowed or divorced and need to work, we want them to have dignified and rewarding employment. If a sister does not marry, she has every right to engage in a profession that allows her to magnify her talents and gifts.”

Three things: 1) not so much with education and training after marriage?  2) Why is education either a contingency plan or a boon in teaching your own kids?  3) I don't have the right to engage in a profession if I marry?  Or do I just have to pick one that doesn't magnify my gifts and talents?

But.  But.  But.  There are lots of great things in many of these lessons.  I've just highlighted a few of the increasingly infrequent things that rub me the wrong way.  And they aren't less frequent because I'm getting softer.  I think there's been huge progress for women, both globally and within the Mormon context.  I think it's important to make note of the things that still need to be fixed, but it's equally import to acknowledge the great things about where we are now.  I didn't do the latter in this post because it's both easier and more interesting to discuss areas that require improvement.

don't compete with the boys

Growing up, I knew my life was out of phase with "Mormon culture."  Both my parents were (are) professionals with advanced degrees. I academically outperformed every boy in our ward (and maybe even most of them in our stake).  For career day in elementary school, I dressed up as a lawyer, skirted twill power-suit and all.  I babysat twice as a youth, and to this day have never changed a diaper.  Instead of babysitting, I bought wholesale balloons (or really my parents did the buying), fliered the neighborhood, and made bank twisting animal balloon for parties.  I went to a private college-prep high school.  These are small metrics, but that's really the only way you can measure childhood and teenager-dom.  The point is: I was driven in areas that Mormon girls tend not to be, and apathetic in the areas that were culturally emphasized for girls.

One ward conference, all the young men and women were gathered together to be talked at, as tends to happen at conferences, Mormon or otherwise.  Our dear Sister W. made a remark that stuck with me for a very long time.  She was talking about academic stuff, and she says to us girls (with the boys sitting there listening along) "Don't compete with the boys."  I'm sure it could have been interpreted to mean everyone should achieve at their own standard, but then why bring gender in at all?  Sweet and kind as Sister W. was and is, she meant that girls shouldn't compare themselves to boys academically/professionally because either they'd fall short (and they will if you feed them that rhetoric their whole lives) or else it wasn't their place (i.e. they, due to their femaleness, should be more domestically and family focused).  Whatever her reason, it was part advice, part directive, and it infuriated me.  I steamed at church and sobbed for a long time when I finally got home.

It was a long time ago, and I'm very over it.  Forgiveness, healing, repentance of my anger, the whole deal.  And I've changed a lot since I was a kid.  Heck, I'm way more domestic than I'd ever thought I'd be.  I love cooking, crocheting/knitting, and gardening.  I am kindling my quilting skills and have a secret passion for vacuuming.  I've always wanted kids in an abstract sense, but now I actually like playing with toddler-age kids.  (Still wary of the very wee ones, though.)  I haven't lost my drive to achieve at things I enjoy, but I've shed some of the raw material ambition and power-hunger that came with it in the past.  In short, I'm mellower as an adult than I was as a teenager.  Surprise, surprise.

But being over this event (and growing up in general) didn't prevent me from cackling maniacally at the phone call I got today.  Mom and Dad called to tell me they saw Brother and Sister W. at a wedding reception.  They talked about us briefly, how N was in grad school and all.  Then Dad just had say something along the lines: "You know Allison, she just has to compete with the boys.  So she applied to school and now she's getting her PhD too." Stone silence.

Faith and Apologetics

The Story of Vedanta, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Once in a tree there were two birds, one at the upper branch, serene, majestic and divine, and the other at a lower branch, restlessly pecking fruits, sometimes sweet sometimes bitter. Every time, when the restless bird ate a bitter fruit, it looked at the upper bird and climbed a branch up. This occurred a number of times and eventually the bird reached the topmost branch. There it was not able to differentiate itself from the divine bird, and then it learned that there was only one bird in the tree, the upper bird, which is described as divine, the real form of the other restless bird.

One thing that I have faith in is that I can be better than I am. I've learned a lot from past mistakes, and it's my hope that I can keep on learning. Thus there is some factual evidence in support of this faith, but not enough to prove it unequivocally to anyone, which is what makes it faith.

I feel that apologetics often gets a bad reputation, claiming that it's missing the point of faith or that it's focusing on the wrong things. But I wonder, is it possible to have faith without being apologist in some way? I don't think so.

My breed of apologetics tends to be inclined toward defending faith (and religion) as a mechanism for personal change and as a lens for understanding the world.  While traditional apologetics focuses on more physical and historical truths, how is this side of apologetics much different?  It's still defending faith with reason.

We're mostly rational creatures.  Even though faith is supposed to be belief that is not based on proof, individuals still cite spiritual experiences as the reason for belief.  I had this feeling at this time, thus this belief must be correct.  Isn't that the basis of faith for most believers?  I live this way and I appear to be blessed.  Is this not the evidence, or "proof" that believers show themselves?

My question is: what role should faith and religion play in a society and for an individual?  Teaching morality requires instilling faith in a system of rules, be it secular or religious.  Likewise, coping with death and sorrow, and achieving other kinds of healing (e.g., getting over one's own mistakes or being wronged) requires faith.  But all of these examples can be achieved without religion.  Is the biggest distinction between religion and faith organization?  Does that make religion just mass perpetuation of culture?  I think to some extent yes, but there are lots of advantages to having an organized, unified community, which religion tends to provide.

I think it's interesting to note that teaching religion requires apologetics, because you can't teach without justification and reason.

fiction or nonfiction?

In looking for something in the recent issue of The Friend, I came across the the article "Fiction or Nonfiction?", all about a little girl's struggle with whether or not the Book of Mormon belonged in the Nonfiction section, which she decided it did.

I'm opposed to the true/false binary for religious texts, and most bookstores and libraries agree with me.  They tend to have their own section, usually somewhere between cookbooks and biographies, saddled alongside opinion books.  Why?  I'm sure that in part they don't want to offend parties that believe that they are "fiction" or "nonfiction," but I also believe that it's because truth isn't so simple.

Take a look at art.  Do we categorize art as true or false?  Not really.  There are photographs and videos, which are "true" and can be used as legal evidence, but they can be edited and altered, and people can act.  Portraits are pretty close to representing reality, and have long been used for genealogical purposes and identifying criminals.  Even still, there is freedom for artistic expression in the representation of truth.  Landscapes and still-lifes fall into the same category--based on reality, but altered somewhat.  What about cubism?  Surrealism?  The pieces are true to the artist's intent, certainly, and that's their purpose.

Now back to writing.  Where does poetry fall?  And are journals fiction or nonfiction?  Every person has a bias in telling their own story.  There are things we don't see or understand from our singleton perspective.  And on top of that, we are natural storytellers, making up reasons for why we feel a certain way, even if a reason is simply created to justify a feeling.  So even if the individuals narrating the Book of Mormon really existed, they were still writing down their perspectives and they wouldn't have been all-knowing.

Religious texts exist on a plane of spirituality, not a plane of history.  Their purpose is to expand the mind, and draw closer to the divine.  The intersect history somewhat, to be sure, as do all things.  And we can project them onto the plane of history and learn from the projection, but in the end, they don't live there.  Things can be good and meaningful on either side of the true/false nonfiction/fiction classification system, but not everything needs to be classified that way in the first place.

It's common for folks at church to say that they know the Book of Mormon is true.  We'll, I don't know that it's true.  I know that it's good and meaningful.   It teaches me about the divine and about humanity.   Joseph Smith has a famous quote, "I told the brethren, that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."  Here, I take "correct" to mean morally correct, not historically, and frankly, I'd rather have the former than the latter.  We can wonder and worry about its origins, tiptoeing around top-hats and seer stones or analyzing native american anthropology, but in the end the real question is: does its narrative help me in my journey to be the person I want to be?

Boys and Girls and God

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the LDS Faith in God handbook for boys and for girls.  I've marked stuff that appears in the boy manual in blue and the girl manual in red.  The boy manual had some typos that I didn't include.  I'm a little torn: if women can't have the priesthood, is it nicer to make a separate manual so you don't have to see the differences, or does that cause a bigger rift between the genders?  I can see it go either way; on the one hand separation allows each gender to be strengthened as much as possible...there's something to be said for forgetting about issues until they essentially disappear.  On the other hand, separation perpetuates the problem of inequality; if we have to deal with it, it might get fixed faster.

Entertain young children with songs or games you have learned or made yourself. Show that you know how to care for and protect/nurture a young child.  Saw that one comin'.

Learn how to budget and save money. Discuss why it is important to faithfully pay our tithing and how Heavenly Father blesses us when we do (see 3 Nephi 24:10–11). Pay your tithing and begin saving for a mission/an education.  I'm glad it's not a hope chest for the girls.  In all seriousness, though, this seems a little unfair to the guys.  Were we not moving away from the mentality that every man must serve a mission?

“The Priesthood of Aaron … is an appendage to the greater, or the Melchizedek Priesthood, and has power in administering outward ordinances.”/“Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come.”

Complete the following activities while you are 11 years old. They will help you prepare to receive the Aaronic Priesthood and become a righteous young man/to become a righteous young woman and to participate in the Young Women Personal Progress program.  Calling first, little gents.

Learn about the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood (see D&C 13,D&C 107:20, and Joseph Smith—History 1:68–73).

After studying the thirteenth article of faith, make a list of things that are uplifting and virtuous. Discuss with a parent or leader how you can seek after these things.  Is this just filling in the blank page where the Priesthood stuff goes or is it saying something about differing expectations for the virtue of females?

Read D&C 20:57–60 and Aaronic Priesthood: Fulfilling Our Duty to God [Deacon], page 7. Discuss with a parent or leader the purposes of the Aaronic Priesthood and what it means to do your duty to God.

Talk with the Beehive class presidency or a member of the Young Women presidency about the purpose and importance of the Young Women program.

Talk with the deacons quorum presidency about the role of the deacons quorum. Write in your journal how you can serve the Lord as a member of a deacons quorum/you stand for truth and righteousness.  'Cause guys just stand for the Man.

Read D&C 88:77–80, 118 and D&C 130:19. Discuss with a parent or Primary leader how important a good education is and how it can help strengthen you as a priesthood holder in your home and family and in the Church.  Men are strengthened by education.  Women strengthen their families.  Hmm...

Children who complete the requirements in the guidebook can earn the Faith in God Award.   Whatever.

In countries where Scouting is part of the Church program, boys work on Faith in God along with Cub Scouting. Many of the Cub Scout activities can fulfill requirements for the Faith in God Award. Completion of all activities in this guidebook marked with a Œ qualifies a boy for the Scouting Religious Square Knot patch.  This makes some sense.  I mean, I still wish that girls did the scouting stuff, but whatever.

Parents may help their sons and daughters complete the activities in the guidebooks/this guidebook, especially where it is difficult for children to gather for Primary activity days.  Guys can do everything.  Girls can only be girls.

Each year, the bishopric meets with all 11-year-old boys and their parents to help them understand the importance of the priesthood and strengthen their commitment to prepare to receive it. Members of the Primary presidency also attend the meeting.  We do?  Good to know.

welcome to the system

I've been teaching the "Sunbeams" class at church--the three-going-on-four-year-olds.  The kids are adorable and the lessons are wonderful: "I am thankful for my eyes," "I am thankful for my home," "I love my family," "I can say I'm sorry," etc..  But no more.

I was recently called to be in the Primary Presidency, which was kind of surprising, given that I'm more comfortable with middle-schoolers than eight-year-olds.  I can't tell if it was a surprise for the President herself, but speculation on that front leads only to negative places.  Regardless, somebody's decided that I need to be elbow-deep in church: N and I are working at the temple once a month and I'm still a VT supervisor for the Relief Society.  Have I mentioned that N and I just chaired a service project too?

The more bureaucracy I see, the more I want to change.  For example, on the service project, I got a fair number of emails, probably about half of which concerned publicity.  Not publicity as in getting the word out to up the number of volunteers, but publicity as in can you give us a quote for this newspaper article? or can you read this statement from the governor of New Jersey at the event?  No, was usually my answer.  Especially when reading the statement from the governor would be patting ourselves on the back in front of those who we were serving.  We'd be telling adults in a group home that they were a service project.  Yeah, not gunna happen.

And now I'm in Primary.  Recently there was a lesson in modesty and they talked about how we should keep our shoulders covered.  To kids aged three to eight.  Several of whom were wearing sun dresses without sleeves.  I told one afterward that I liked her dress, and she shamefully replied that she had left the jacket at home.  I told her it was okay, but I don't think it sunk in.  I don't feel good about passing on some aspects of the culture to kids so young.  I don't want their bodies sexualized or them to feel that kind of shame at seven.

I'm supposed to be in charge of the Primary program coming up in October.  One of the songs I take issue with: The Lord Gave Me a Temple, to be sung sweetly.  It seems wrong to have kids singing about being "clean and pure and habit-free."  Ugh.  I get shivers.  We aren't open enough to say we're talking about sexuality, drugs, etc. for kids, and so we use these vague terms, which frankly makes it really creepy.  Another nit: reading your scriptures is a habit.  So there.

As long as I'm ranting, Mormons say "I know ___ is true," a whole heckavulot.  The scriptures, the gospel, the church, whatever else.  What does it mean that the scripture are true?  Does it mean that they're literally true?  Does it mean that they're inspired?  Does it mean that they exist?  If the church is true, does it mean that other churches can't be "true" too?  Again with rampant ambiguity.

Finally, I've been in a whirl of streamlining my life.  I've become pretty efficient in general, but I'm now using the GTD system and taking it up a notch.  Given that context, almost everything systematic in Primary is grossly inefficient, to the point where it might be twitch-activating.  What I really need to do is focus on the wonderful people I'm serving with and try and feel their concern for the kids, which is where the real beauty lies.

On some level, I need to stop worrying about being right and start worrying about being good and loving.  I don't need to come up with a way fix everything I see.  I do need to make sure those that I interact with are treated respectfully and with love.  It doesn't matter that I'm recycling almost every piece of paper that's passed my way (in favor of digital copies I've requested from the fabulous secretary).  What matters is that we're there for the kids.  I'll do my best to teach what and how I think is best, and I have to trust everyone else to do the same.

first and second

The earthquake earlier this week was strange enough, but now there's a hurricane on the way.  It's the END OF DAYS.  Ironically or not, the Christian-type station I've been listening to on the radio has been all about relaxing and being prepared physically and has totally abstained from any kind of apocalyptic rhetoric, which I find refreshing.  I'm trying to finish up the sewing-machine-dependent part of my quilt so that in the event that the power goes out, I'll have something to do (hand-finishing the edges).  When it comes to other emergency preparations, I'm not worried: our camping/backpacking gear will cover us easily for a week; light, cooking, and water included.  N says that there's a 5% chance that anything bad will actually happen; where he pulled that number from, I have no idea.  Frankly, I'm a little excited for the storm.

The Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother

When the in-laws visited a bit ago, I had a conversation with my MIL in which she conjectured about the Holy Ghost being the enigmatic Heavenly Mother.  It was an interesting discussion and given that the conjecture again appeared on FMH recently, I decided to articulate my thoughts on it (in written form, my MIL already got an earful), because while it's nice to have the Godhead be a family, LDS doctrine doesn't simply slip into that mold.

The first thing that came to mind was of the conceiving of Christ by Mary.  In this aspect, the concept of the Heavenly Mother coming to Mary for her to act as a surrogate is really beautiful.  ...as opposed to the creepy Brigham Young quote: "if the Son was begotten by the Holy Ghost, it would be very dangerous to baptize and confirm females, and give the Holy Ghost to them, lest he should beget children, to be palmed upon the Elders by the people, bringing the Elders into great difficulties." (JD1)  Oh, Brigham Young.  Anyway, there's some weird sexual tension in the immaculate conception, and this would fix that for me, with one mother passing responsibility to another.

The second issue is that in LDS doctrine, the Holy Ghost is disitinct from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in that (s)he doesn't have a body.  From lds.org:

The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead. He is a personage of spirit, without a body of flesh and bones. He is often referred to as the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, or the Comforter.

We obtain the doctrine of embodiment from the first vision, where Joseph Smith sees God the Father and Jesus Christ.  This is backed up by the fact that the resurrected Christ is touchable in both the New Testament and The Book of Mormon.  Much later, Joseph Smith gives instruction on the nature of the Godhead, which is recorded in D&C 130:22:

The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

The nature of D&C130, however, seems to be more conjecture than anything else--prophets are entitled hypothesize too.  JS backs up his assertion with logic (as did BY in his above quote), which to me indicates that it is possible he came to that conclusion on his own (well, it's possible he came to everything on his own, but that's another story).  Of the LDS Godhead doctrine, I find the Holy Ghost's required disembodiment to be the least convincing.  Still, however, it would be a major obstacle in any sort of official consideration of the Heavenly Mother-Holy Ghost theory.  (Hey, that sounds kinda like the Adam-God theory.  Maybe we just need a wacky prophet in order to swing it.  Packer, I'm counting on you.)

The third issue I want to consider here is the role of women in general: what would Heavenly Mother as the Holy Ghost imply for the rest of us?  There are sufficient reasons for not wanting to propagate a doctrine of Heavenly Mother at all, namely that without a divine role model, women have more choices; as long as society is patriarchal, having an archetype may not be the best for women.  If the Holy Ghost were the female archetype, though, would that imply that women are inherently comforters, that they bring wisdom and peace?  Would we dispense with the fire metaphor as being too masculine?  Given that we know little about the Holy Ghost, would it take on an even more obscure and less understood role?  Would we impose feminine characteristics on the Holy Ghost?  Would doctrine such as this humble the patriarchy enough to enable true equality between men and women?  Or would it encourage further pedestaling of women instead of giving them any real say?

Joseph Smith papers

The Church History Department of the LDS church released the Joseph Smith papers online relatively recently and it's blowing my mind--N discovered the site today.  Take this journal entry, for instance: the page includes a photograph of the original document, a transcript, and notes on the historical context of the journal.  I'm getting an itch to run topic models on a giant church history corpus...

The Atonement

Given the Easter season, it should be no surprise that I've been thinking about the Atonement of Christ, which heals the bridge between imperfect man and perfect God.  The official LDS website has the following to say about the atonement (among other things, of course).

As used in the scriptures, to atone is to suffer the penalty for sins, thereby removing the effects of sin from the repentant sinner and allowing him or her to be reconciled to God. Jesus Christ was the only one capable of carrying out the Atonement for all mankind. Because of His Atonement, all people will be resurrected, and those who obey His gospel will receive the gift of eternal life with God.

I'd like to narrow the scope of my discussion to the earthly ramifications of the Atonement, or how people use the Atonement in their lives.  In the most traditional sense, we use the Atonement to repent of our sins.  It is a wonderfully cleansing process to think back on the things I've done wrong and be healed--it enables me to let things go and forgive myself.

Additionally, LDS folks often talk about the Atonement enabling Christ to know all our sorrows and joys; He feels perfect compassion.  This is nice because we will always have someone to turn to for comfort, no matter what we are experiencing.

I recently utilized an aspect of the Atonement which is new for me--it doesn't strictly fall under either of these categories.  A motley of events have lead me to feel mild anger, a hesitation to do what's right, and dislike of specific individuals.  These are all mental and spiritual burdens which can be lifted through mechanisms closely related to the two other usages of the Atonement.  In my case, the negative emotions were replaced by love, which was a mixture of repentance and experiencing the compassion of Christ.

It's old hat to use one's relationship with God to improve oneself, but I had never framed it in this way before: negative emotions can be relieved as soon as we acknowledge them as unwanted and seek healing.  The earthly ramifications of any of these mechanisms can probably be achieved through other means as well, but I thought I'd share a little bit about my method of healing.

as long as im posting about church stuff

I might as well mention that LDS Church Administration handbook 2 (a new edition just came out yesterday I believe) is now online (thank you T&S).  The content can be boring or interesting, depending on who you are and what you care about, but regardless, I think it marks progress: a greater subset of policies are now accessible to everyone, or at least those with access to a computer.  This is especially important because we're a lay church.  It's also important that the document is online, which means that (though unlikely) the Church can evolve policies and distribute the evolutions more easily instead of waiting to print a new set of books.

Handbook 1 is online as well, but you have to have a bishop/stake pres login.  I think I see reasons for keeping access to handbook 1 restricted, but I'm still curious about it.

My father, a member who has been in involved in church administration since I can remember, said that compared to the previous edition (which was never public), the new handbook is a lot shorter and more focused on following the spirit, allowing individuals to more easily tailor programs to local needs.  I definitely support that direction.

modesty

I'd like to highlight an excellent series of articles on fMh regarding modesty.

Modesty Part One of Four
Modesty Part 2 of 4: Between You and God
Modesty Part 3 of 4: Between you and your neighbors
Modesty Part 4 of 4: Just for you

using raw veggies

Sometime last week I discovered that I had let a bundle of parsley start to wilt.  I had wanted to make pasta dish that night, so I decided to make a pesto.  Puréed parsley with a little olive oil was too strong on the parsley flavor, so I added carrots and a few mushrooms to the food processor to smooth it out.  I spiced it to taste and tossed it with thin spaghetti and it was a success with leftovers to spare.  Greens saved from wasting and dinner served.

Then on Sunday, we had the LDS missionaries over and I made dinner for them: arugula salad, black bean soup, and stuffed acorn squash.  The stuffing was a quinoa-wild rice pilaf with cooked onions, shredded carrots and zucchini, and halved grape tomatoes.  One of the missionaries paid me a complement when he said "I just realized what I'm eating.  You know those magazines with the food that looks really good and is good for you?  That's what I'm eating."

The common thread between the two dinners was that they both used a fair amount of raw vegetables in the main dish.  I'm familiar with various raw-foods diets and am far from that myself, but I think it would be a good thing to incorporate more raw food into my meal preparations.  Cooked food is nutrient-dense and allows us to eat good food inexpensively--rice, beans, potatoes, bread--but adding raw foods will increase the diversity of our diets.  Briefly looking at raw-food recipes online, it seems that apple, avocado, carrots, coconut, and nuts are fairly popular, but of course any veggies or fruits can work.  I've been intrigued with apples in savory dishes for a while, so perhaps I can try a raw twist to that.  It'll be a fun vein to explore.