I'm not supposed to have children.
I stole every last one of them.

My first, I had at 19 years old. I wasn't supposed to get pregnant. and I wasn't supposed to keep the baby. He was supposed to go to the beautiful young couple I had been talking to. but I stole him back.

as penance for that, we suffered through years of infertility and lost baby after baby. When I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing the blood stains from the grout in the bathroom, after losing a baby while Chowder was in Guatemala doing mission work, I had finally been broken. I began screaming, "Fuck you, GOD! You can't keep doing this to me! What kind of parent are you?! I could never be so cruel! I've had it! I'm through with you! I taking this out of your hands and putting it into Dr. Campbell's hands!" And then I stole my twins.

I quickly stole another child when I saw the look on my OB's face. It was the briefest of looks. It passed over her face so fast. The look of terror as she delivered my fourth child. But, both Chowder and I saw it. We asked her what was wrong. She said "oh nothing! He's perfect! Look, he has a complete knot in his cord. That means he'll have a life of good luck!" We found out later from the nurse, that he also had the cord wrapped around his neck two times. By all accounts he was very lucky...to be alive.

We tried to have another child using the embryos we had created when we stole our second and third children. But, all of those embryos died. As penance, I delivered my next baby on the bathroom floor, tiny and perfect, still inside her little bag of waters.

But greedy as I am, I snuck in another baby.

I'm trying to keep quiet over here and just blend in. I don't want to call much attention to ourselves, because if God notices what I have done, it's all over. I'm like the woman in the gospel who touched Jesus' cloak as he walked by. Stealing a miracle...but I'm not as brave as she was. She came out of the crowd and said it was her. I have slinked back into the crowd. I can't come forward.

oh. I have tried. I have confessed this sin over 20 times in the last 5 years. But, God just won't absolve me. I know how it feels when God forgives you. There is this drenching of fresh cool water that falls from above and washes you clean inside and out. I have felt it before. but I can't get it now. I will keep doing my penance. I will be the perfect mother so he'll see that I am worthy of these children.

And then...he'll forgive me.

And then...I'll get to keep them.

but until then, I'll be hiding over here in the corner desperately grasping onto my stolen children.

mothers....

My heart is in a very dark place right now. I've been spending hours and hours reading the stories of mothers around the world and suffering that they endure. Chowder wants me to stop. I'm not sleeping. I'm awake until 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning...thinking of them. seeing their faces. and Chowder thinks this isn't good for me. He wants me to stop.






What an extravagant luxury that is. What an extravagant luxury that I am not an Israeli mother who's baby was shot in the head by a sniper, not a Palestinian mother who's 3 yr old son was killed in a military action, not a Darfurian mother who's husband and sons were killed in front of her while she and her daughters were raped, not an inner city mother whose 2 year old daughter was killed in a drive-by shooting, not a Rawadan mother, an Iraqi mother, a Bosnian mother, a Chechen mother, a Northern Irish mother, a Sierra Leone mother. What an extravagant luxury that I could just stop looking at it. I could just turn and point myself inward to my beautiful happy middle-class white American family. How extravagant. How luxurious.


But, I'm looking at these mother's faces. They are looking back at me. Their eyes are pleading, or worse they are blank, dead. And then as they look at me my computer screen goes blank. I'm gone. Her face falls. Her moment of fleeting hope, has passed. I've turned away because it was just too much. too horrible. Their tragedy was effecting me too much. And then what? What happens to the mothers when I avert my eyes? What happens when I turn myself away? It all goes on the same. the atrocities continue. And in turn, what happens to me?