A crucifix, blue-black, one inch long. A punk crucifix, anti-religious, if anything. Homemade, in 1988. President Hinckley hadn’t yet made his pronouncement against tattooing, but even if he had, it wouldn’t have stopped me. In fact, I would have been all the more eager to grab a needle.

My kids hate the tattoo. They’ve had a dozen or more lessons on bodies-as-temples, and they’re pretty freaked about the “graffiti” on mine. Every few months or so, they notice the ink on my ankle and remind me that tattooing is wrong. And whenever we pass the Laser Tattoo Removal billboard on I-15, one of the kids inevitably comments, “That’s for you, Mom.” They don’t like their mother wearing a mark of disobedience.

I can sympathize. Once I escaped the misery that spawned the tattoo, I hated it myself. It was a token of a time I wanted to forget, a time of deep unhappiness, self-destruction, shame. A time when I happily punctured my own skin with a needle rapid as a woodpecker, driving ink below the surface in an attempt to impress my peers, and myself.

I’ve spent many years hiding the mark with socks and band-aids. I’ve made a point to cross my ankles right-over-left, especially at church, to keep it out of easy view. I’ve wished I had the cash to get the thing lasered off, to burn the dark skin and darker memories into oblivion. Even when tattoos became hip, I still wanted mine gone. It’s hardly a nifty little butterfly.

But a few weeks ago, as I drove past that I-15 billboard, I realized things have changed, in more ways than one. These days I can afford a few hundred dollars for a little skin scorching. But I don’t want to do it.

I like my tattoo.

No, I don’t like the way it looks. As I’ve aged the lines of the crucifix have fuzzed a bit, making it appear especially crude; purple spider veins have crawled their way around it, like bloody vines. It’s undeniably ugly. But I no longer want to forget the ugliness in my past. By remembering, I also remember how God grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and lifted me out of that hell. I remember the saviors God sent to me, wearing all kinds of unlikely disguises. And I remember One in particular.

Funny, that I’ve embraced the sole Christian religion that doesn’t embrace the crucifix as a visual symbol of their faith. In their focus on the living Christ, Mormons don’t wear crosses around their necks. But I’m not sorry that I have one engraved on my body. And I will teach my children why. I will teach them that redemption must be remembered, and not only on Sunday. Every day.

Like yesterday. I was visiting teaching Amy, a single mother, a grandmother, and a heroin addict fresh out of rehab. We wrote letters to each other while she was in her treatment program and began face-to-face visits last month, when she finished. She’s an amazing woman–bright, candid, real. During our visits she describes, sober-faced, the depraved state of being she lived in for two decades, and how God is leading her out.

She just received her patriarchal blessing. “I don’t remember much of what was said,” she told me yesterday, “except for this: ‘You are forgiven.’”

I looked down at my ankles, crossed left-over-right. And I nodded, and wept.

Reed and I were living in a student four-plex adjacent to Brigham Young University, happy to have taken the basement apartment next to our friends, Luis and Eva. Eva was nearly due with their firstborn. Pink-cheeked, with long honey-brown hair and straight white teeth and gentle curves everywhere, she exuded life and health. I had never before kept company with a pregnant woman. When the four of us gathered in the late-lit summer evenings, I studied her bulging middle with fascination, wondering how she could withstand transformation so gracefully. I doubted I ever could.

I did want children, someday. Motherhood, as a concept, held a sense of destiny for me, although vague. And the Mormon culture I belonged to revolved around family life, promising spiritual progression and social acceptance to those who married and multiplied at young age. Young adult women were assumed to desire children above all else. Baby hungry—the knowing tease echoed from my community as soon as I became engaged, making me all the more determined to choose a different path: graduate school, a college-level teaching position, a ladder of publication and promotion that led to university tenure. Children would come later—two, or three at the most; perhaps in my far-distant thirties. Maybe by that time I’d like kids. As a teenaged babysitter I had ordered my charges to bed as soon as their parents pulled out of the driveway, no matter how early the hour.

Yet as distant as I felt from my own maternity, I felt drawn to Eva’s. When she brought her daughter home one morning in the dry burn of August, I fidgeted behind the wall that separated our living rooms, waiting for the right moment to pay a visit. In mid-afternoon I finally took the small step from my doormat to hers, and raised my fist for the knock. The door opened to Eva’s face. Fatigue had bleached her cheeks and shadowed her eyes; her hair was limp, her curves sagged. But she smiled, quick and sure, as she glanced backwards, over her shoulder. Behind her, I saw a pink blanket smoothed over the worn brown carpet, and on the blanket, a child, asleep. My legs moved forward as my eyes took in the sight: flesh and blood and bone, impossibly small, impossibly alive.

Chelsey, Eva said.

I knelt at the edge of the blanket. Eva followed, gingerly, still sore from the rigors of creation. Time slowed as we watched the gentle rise and fall of Chelsey’s chest, the short jerks of her limbs as she startled in her sleep. Dressed lightly for the summer heat, her pink skin glowed with a sheen that filled the room, washing the dullness from the worn furniture and yellowed linoleum and dark-paneled doors. The light touched me and sent me spinning.

I don’t remember how long I sat on that brown carpet, transfixed, as Eva lifted her waking daughter, cradled her, brought her to breast. But as the afternoon sun slanted into evening, something gently broke open within me. I knew, more than I had known anything before, that I wanted a child. More than that—I needed one, like I needed food and water. Baby hungry. I didn’t know why I had changed, or how. All I knew was that when I returned to my apartment, I felt strangely bereft. And when Eva’s door opened the next day, and the next day, and the next, I felt like I was coming home.

***

One year later.

I was lazing in half-sleep, my lower half cocooned in tingling warmth, when the squeezing began, deep and strong. It spread across my abdomen and wrapped around my back, then clamped hard like a tourniquet, forcing my belly upward in a tight swell of muscle and nerve and tissue. The anesthesia had sunken my pelvis into a circle of dark, blessed numbness. But now, bright pain flared around the edges, like the crown of a solar eclipse.

I rang for the nurse. “I think my epidural is wearing off,” I said.

She appeared quickly, pulled on a glove and reached in. After a few seconds, she looked at me with a knowing smile. “You’re complete,” she said. “Ten centimeters. You can start pushing now.”

The words crackled with positive charge. Positive—the word spoken on the long-ago morning of my pregnancy test. The word that ushered in nine months of changing. Nine months of swelling and stretching, of tasting bile and stomach acid. My blood flow doubled, darkening the network of veins across my chest. Sharp little elbows jabbed my bladder and ribs. Red streaks ribboned my stomach skin, like claw marks. Nine months of savage blessings. All along, the force that had shaped Eva into a mother, the grace that had formed her daughter and given her breath, ran through me like a current, carrying me to this moment.

The nurse helped me roll from my side to my back, raised the head of the bed, removed the towels from between my legs. “Hold your knees,” she said. Reed stepped close to help, looking dazed. The supercharged air must have drugged him. He cracked stupid jokes, the kind that are funny only at the very end of a long night, or a long pregnancy. As my stomach muscles shook with laughter, the pressure began to build again, gathering and rising and arching to a keen crest, splitting me in two. One of me hunched forward on the bed, straining with the push, and the hold, and the push. The other bobbed along the pockmarked ceiling tiles, ready to slip through their tiny holes like a sprite.

The nurse’s words tugged me back, grounding me again. “Look—there’s her head! Look at all that hair!”
Still pushing outward, I pushed myself upward with my elbows and peered at the wall mirror, needing to see. Flesh red and pink—mine—split by a thin oval of blackness. A scalp, slick with damp dark hair. Hers.

My muscles relaxed into smoothness, releasing me back onto the bed, releasing her back into the womb. I was weak with surprise. There was a person inside of me, pushing through my curtain-body, ready to claim the stage.

The squeezing began again. I moved with it, moved in and out of time and sanity until the parting was complete. Emptied, I stared at my daughter as she wriggled on the sterile blue sheeting, her skin bright and fresh and full of light, the same pink light that had filled Eva’s apartment, only much stronger. The naked force of a life.

This was not the soft, hearts-and-flowers love scene that I had expected. None of the birth stories I’d heard prepared me for the truth: this baby was alive. Without batteries, without wires or plugs. The shock grabbed me by the hair, slapped my face, then set me back on the bed, reeling.

In the meantime the nurse was wiping the waxy white vernix off my daughter’s chest and wrapping her in a striped flannel receiving blanket. She was ready to be held. I fit her capped head into the crook of my elbow and tucked her covering a bit tighter across her chest. I didn’t know what to do next. I had figured that when the baby came I would know how to feed and clothe and clean her; the fabled maternal instinct would take care of that. It didn’t.

But instinct did tell me this: If anyone tried to harm this child, I would, without hesitation, rip out the offender’s throat with my teeth, spit his blood, and go about my business.

And this: The light in my daughter was a compass to follow, a key to life.

On the first Sunday of every month, able-bodied Mormons go without food and drink for 2 meals (in our family, children 8 and older miss breakfast on Sunday, and those of us age 12 and older miss breakfast and lunch). The reasons are many: to show obedience to the law of the fast, to give thanks to God for sustaining life, to increase awareness of the need for spiritual sustenance, to bring the physical body into submission to the spirit. And, most importantly, to help others. Self-imposed hunger brings the reminder that others are hungry, and also brings the motivation to help. As part of the fast, church members donate money to the poor and needy among them–at minimum, the money saved by missing two meals.

This state of being closes the distance between man and God, and enables more powerful and effective prayers. It’s a time of cleansing, both literally and figuratively. It’s a time for self-examination and rededication. It’s a time to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

This Fast Sunday I’m mindful of how delightful my days are right now. In my house we’re all healthy, happy, enjoying a beautiful spring. All our wants and needs are met. But other people in my life are suffering, struggling daily to keep their heads above water. One friend is striving valiantly to overcome substance addiction. Another is trying to save a crumbling marriage. Another, a single parent of five, has a teenage daughter about to give birth and a preschool daughter who is very ill–every day she walks a tightrope of physical and emotional survival.

This contrast hurts. I am grateful for the ease in my life right now, this beautiful year–the best I’ve ever had–which came on the heels of great crisis and difficulty. I know it’s only a matter of time before difficult days come again. But I wish I could share this fulness I’m enjoying. I wish that I could fast from peace and contentment, health and stability, for these 24 hours of Fast Sunday, gather up what I saved, and give it to my friends in need. They are hungry.

At one point she flipped the disc over and showed me a tiny button lodged deep into the plastic casing–the kind you’d need a very thin screwdriver to push. “If my pet dies, we can push this reset button,” she explained.

Reset??

I was about to launch into a tirade about how we’ve been ruined as a society if we think that life, even digital life, can be revived so easily. (Thank you, Tom and Jerry. And Roadrunner. And… oh, never mind, the list is too long.) What about responsibility? And accountability? And grief?

But then a tear-stained Elizabeth approached me. She had just discovered her hamster, Rocket, curled into a cold, furry ball in the corner of his cage. I went downstairs to see the evidence. Oh dear.
“Why did he have to die on Christmas?” she sobbed. I hugged her and murmered sympathetic words for a while. Then my wise-counselor streak took over.

“You know, in a way it was good timing,” I said.

She asked why.

“Because today we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus. And that reminds us that Rocket is still alive–his spirit is scampering around somewhere up there. And his little furry body will come alive again, someday.”

She sniffed and nodded, and sniffed some more. I thought for a while about Christ’s power to throw tragedy into reverse. Errors, sins, even death. All we harm, all that harms us, all that perishes in any of a hundred different ways, will be repaired and revived through love.

Thank God the universe has a reset button.

It’s a given that childbirth is painful. Even with the pain relief measures I’ve accepted each time, it has still hurt. A lot. But Thomas’s birth was in a whole different category of pain.

I think it was a combination of factors–the physical and emotional stress that had built up for two weeks beforehand, the uncertainty and fear that likely accompanies every premature delivery, and the out-of-my-element feeling that resulted from having this round be so unlike my other childbirth experiences. I didn’t know my own body, I didn’t know what would happen, I didn’t know anything. Every expectation I had about what my labor and delivery would be like was turned on its head. The baby, while appropriately turned on his head, must have been facing the wrong way, which meant that he wasn’t moving along the way he should have been. The anesthesia failed. And the Pitocin-fueled contractions were enough to push me right over the edge of composure.

Now logically, everything was just fine in that birthing room. The atmosphere was a bit tense because of the increased risk of problems with the baby’s health, and while all possible preparations were in place to temper a full-blown medical emergency, we never had one.

But I had a little emergency of my own.

It came right at that apex when the pain is intense enough to make me wish for a hasty exit from earth, or at least the freedom to curl up into a tight ball and preserve all my strength for weathering the pain. That’s the exact moment when I’m expected to assume a very un-curled-up position and somehow channel all my strength elsewhere. Of course it’s hard. But what I felt went way beyond hard. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I was walloped with a feeling of hopelessness I’ve never felt before during childbirth.
This was new and unthinkable territory. The determination that had kept me engaged thus far–I have to get through this, for the baby’s sake–began to slip. My concern for self was eclipsing concern for other–and not just any “other,” but the most innocent and vulnerable and dependent and deserving “other” imaginable.

Despair, for a mother, may be defined as thus: being in so much pain and desperation that you’d consider abandoning your child in order to bring yourself relief.

***

When I was first awakening to Christianity I found it difficult to fully sympathize with Jesus. I didn’t doubt that what he endured was awful, much more awful than anything that man has endured. But after all, he wasn’t a regular guy. Didn’t being a demi-god give him just a wee bit of an edge?
It took me years to realize that, in fact, Jesus’ supercapacity did not work in his favor, so to speak. Actually, the opposite was true. Yes, he was stronger–much stronger–than any of us. But that just meant he was able to bear far more. It didn’t make it easier. It just made the depths much, much deeper. And that’s just the beginning. Not only did the depths exceed any place within our ability to grasp, but he also had the capacity to free himself from those depths at any given time.

This is the stunning truth of Christianity: that a being not only voluntarily suffered beyond our puny mortal comprehension, to free us puny mortals, but also sustained his suffering through his own power. His body did not manufacture its own misery, as a woman’s does during labor. He was not just a willing participant in an act beyond his control. The circuit of pain could remain open only through his own unflagging will.

I still cry every time I think about Thomas’s delivery. I’m frightened by the memory of pain so keen and commanding. And I’m ashamed of my weakness, ashamed that I had, even for a fleeting time, looked for an out.

But God is wise enough to not offer us outs in times of creative extremity. No, that’s a torment he reserved only for himself.

Of course, there’s no shortage of things to be scared of when you’re pregnant. Miscarriage/stillbirth, complications, birth defects–I started enumerating some examples but I quickly gave up and erased them, because there’s too many to even take a stab at.

But what haunts me most is a twofold question that, when it surfaces, stops me cold:

Will life be a good thing for this baby? And will this baby’s life be a good thing for me?

How can I doubt the goodness of bringing a soul to earth? Because it’s messy, and hard, and dangerous–both for the child, and for me. Not just the birth part, but everything afterward.

Can I really adequately care for another child? I don’t know–define “adequate.” My good friend has a philosophy of life that I admire: she doesn’t take on any more than she knows she can well care for. If she only has the resources to care for 6 tomato plants in her garden, she only plants six, and gives them meticulous care. She takes the same approach with her interior homemaking, her family life, and her other responsibilities.

My approach is a lot more haphazard. I get sloppy, even with things that are very important.
Every time a new baby is on the way, I wonder what the heck I’m doing. It’s not like I’m doing such a stellar job with the children I already have, that I clearly should invite another. The postpartum period is so draining and demanding–I feel as if I’m on the bare edge of survival for months. Things go to pot. Family life gets permanently and exponentially more complex each time we add another member.

Contemplating these inevitable outcomes can feel a lot like falling off a cliff in slow motion. At first the view is lovely and the bottom seems too far away to be threatening. But as I get closer and closer, I know I’m going to crash, and that it’s going to take a long time to climb out of chaos and into comfortable, routine, manageable life again. Not that it ever stays comfortable, routine, and manageable for long.

And that’s just part I of the issue.

The other side of it is the child’s experience. I get scared about how my shortcomings will affect this person’s life. I worry about the crazy family dynamic he or she will be tossed into. And overall I worry about life itself. What sufferings will this soul be required to endure? On a rational level I know that pain is essential to progression, and that this mortal life is the gateway to a potentially glorious future. But it hurts, really bad, to think about the innocence and vulnerability of a new baby, and the darkness of this world, some of which dwells within my own mortal self.

So–I get scared. But before I lapse into deep melancholy, allow me to report the series of experiences and memories that allowed me to transcend my latest bout of mid-pregnancy fear.

1. On agency

In our old neighborhood we lived across the street from a very depressing family. The deplorable physical condition of the yard and home was a good match for the mess of abuse and other problems that plagued the family’s relationships. I was a visiting teacher to one of the daughters in that home, a young adult who had suffered horribly over the years. One night when I made a visit, she was babysitting one of her sister’s children (it was a family tradition of sorts to bear children out of wedlock–there were a half-dozen or so living there at the time). This baby was lying on a filthy, crusty couch. He only had a diaper on. His mother was prone to disappearing for days at a time, leaving him in the care of her younger siblings, who were none too pleased to have the responsibility thrust upon them. Needless to say, the baby and the other “cousins” were not well-treated.

He was a gorgeous child–half Latino, with olive skin and huge, deep-deep brown eyes and long lashes. He stood out like a sparkling jewel amidst the squalor of his surroundings.

When I was home again I thought about the future that awaited him. My heart hurt so much I didn’t think I could bear it. I just couldn’t reconcile his perfect, holy little self with the circumstances he had been placed within. How could this be okay?

The answer came, clearly and firmly: He chose to come.

2. Beauty all around

During my fifth pregnancy, my regular pregnancy freak-out came back for a second round when I was in the hospital. With the drama of childbirth over, real life came rushing in as I realized I’d be bringing Matthew home the next day. As I sat on the hospital bed with my delicious little blanket-wrapped guy on my lap, I was overwhelmed by the whole prospect. How could I ever pull this off? And what had ever made me think this was a good idea?

The door opened, and in walked an elderly hospital volunteer bearing a floral arrangment from my mother. As she crossed the room I stared at the flowers. I had a distinct impression that my son was something truly wonderful and lovely–a gift that had just entered my life, like the flowers that had just been carried into the room.

When the woman noticed my baby she stopped in her tracks. “Oh!” she exclaimed with a deep sigh. She looked at me kindly, yet intently. “Oh, I envy you.”

Matthew. The name means “gift of god.”

3. Bread and fish

I was way tired and grumpy as Relief Society began a few weeks ago. I was sitting in the front row with my legs sprawled out in front of me. Even with the help of the padding on the folding chair, I was still really uncomfortable after sitting there for the Sunday School hour. As the RS President bustled around, adjusting the tablecloth and all that, she came upon my legs. They were a kind of roadblock. She paused politely, waiting for me to assume a more ladylike position.

I suddenly felt so big, so cumbersome. Instead of getting depressed, I got huffy. I actually got up and moved to a seat in the back row.

The RS Pres, who really is a lovely woman, came back and apologized. I assured her that my relocation had nothing to do with the leg incident (which was a big fat lie). I was just more comfortable back there, I explained. And that was true. I just wanted to be left alone so I could wallow in the misery of very-largeness.

The local missionaries were guest teachers for the day. Their lesson was about member missionary work. They turned on the Church’s DVD about the restoration of the gospel in the latter days. I had already seen it a few times; in fact we had watched it as a family recently. So as soon as the lights went down, I zoned out into an almost-nap.

I snapped into alertness for some reason a few minutes before the program ended. Checking the monitor, I saw Joseph Smith Sr. handing his little son a hand-carved wooden horse, homemade–just like the one the boy had admired in the general store at the start of the story. The words of the voiceover sunk deep into me:

If ye then know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

4. While the sun shines

Not long ago we sang “Today, While The Sun Shines” for our pre-scripture-reading hymn. I’m not a huge fan of the sunshine-y hymns–I’m all for good cheer, but they remind me of that stereotypical overly perky RS pres. or something. They do, however, help the atmosphere at a 6:30 a.m. gathering. Anyway, as we sang, this line lodged brightly in my mind:

Today, while the birds sing, harbor no care: Call life a good gift, call the world fair.

I’ve been thinking about all this a lot lately. Preterm labor has landed me in the hospital for an extended stay. The first day I was here it seemed highly likely that our son would be born very soon. At 28 weeks’ gestation, he weighed about 3 lbs. They put me in a delivery room which had a drive-thru-type window that opened into the NICU. They warned me that as soon as the baby arrived, he’d be whisked through that window and likely put on a ventilator. It would be a few hours before I’d be able to see him, and who knows how long before I’d be able to hold him.

Miraculously my labor stalled, and my condition stabilized. I was moved out of the labor/delivery unit. Since then I’ve had plenty of time to think about that close call, about the tiny preemies I saw during the NICU tour, about this time-bomb uterus of mine, about the possible outcomes of this little drama.
Here’s what’s assuaging all (okay, most) of my current freak-out tendencies:

Knowing–and not just in my head–that this new, impatient life within me is a good gift. It’s a good gift for me, even though that goodness necessarily emerges amidst the fog, stress, and even trauma of mortal life. And it’s a good gift for this son of mine. Even if he only lives a few minutes, or must endure long-term complications, or simply has to weather childhood in my household, life is a good gift.

And while the world hardly seems fair, especially for the children born into pain and squalor, someday our understanding will expand, divine compensation will kick in, and we’ll realize that things are fair after all.

Imagine that. I might even learn to love those sunshine-y hymns.

Doing laundry is my only productive endeavor for the day. And that’s been typical. While sitting I try to remember times that I’ve actually been the motivated, organized, creative teacher-mom that I’ve fantasized about for twelve years. Whenever I’m in a slump I tend to think that I’m really dropping the ball, that I’m usually a whole different animal. But I don’t think that’s actually true. That different animal is mostly a mental construct. I hold on to the fantasy as if my devotion to it can compensate for not being it. In reality I’ve had short stints where I’ve come close–I plan, I gather materials, I implement, I nurture and connect, singing as I go–but it doesn’t last long. Inevitably I revert to my usual schlepping mode.

I’m much better these days about accepting myself while in schlepping mode, but as I fold my underwear I’m suddenly panicky about my thoroughly mediocre mothering/homemaking. I haven’t had one of these panic attacks for a while. Luckily I remember what to do.

Please, I pray, let it be enough. Let me be enough. I don’t have anything else I can give. Please tell me that I am safe, and that they are safe, despite all I lack.

And God replies: It is. You are. They are.

This can seem hard to believe. I know how deep and weighty my responsibilities are. How can it really be okay to be so weak and unproductive? But I already know the answer, which rests beneath the muddy river of my rational thoughts:

I become enough, through grace, in the asking.