my endless choice
My Endless Choice
Nursing my first baby was a nightmare. I’m redheaded and fair skinned, and my tender skin was not prepared to go up against the appetite of my 8 lb 11oz baby boy, born 2 weeks late and apparently starving. My nipples cracked then scabbed over, making that promised beautiful bonding time between mama and babe a painful nightmare. Complicating matters, I was only 20 years old, too young to have realistic ideas about what nursing would be like. But not too young to have ideas about what it should be like. I relied on professionals and more experienced others around me and gathered all the advice available to me. But the experts singularly had a variety of solutions to do one thing - keep nursing. Child Mother and Child Baby tried and cried, struggled and tried and cried some more, for six eternal weeks. It wasn’t until I spoke with my aunt, my mother’s angel sister, and a NICU nurse, that I received truly life-changing advice. She instructed me firmly over the phone, “Stop nursing that baby. You aren’t enjoying being a mother.” Whaaaaaat?! I could stop nursing?! An endless grocery store aisle of bottles came into focus, and my soul turned cartwheels down a linoleum path to motherly bliss.
I hadn’t considered not nursing not because I had never seen a baby taking a bottle, but I guess…? because I wanted to do…? what was…? right. Ringing in my brain were words like “studies show for best results”, “I cherish being able to nurse”, “formula is so expensive” and “nursing bonds mother to child”, formed the dogma I created for myself about motherhood. I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt in the undeniable Truth that to nurse was the right way to be a mother. How could I consider doing something that would make me less than right? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I certainly didn’t! ….Until true wisdom upstaged my precious, righteous dogma by appealing instead to my deepest desires. More than being right, and even more than being a good mother, I desired to enjoy my child and the experience of motherhood.
My “what’s best for me” decision to stop nursing happened when I deconstructed the authority I was giving to “rightness” and gave myself permission to act from my sovereign desire. A few short years before having this baby, I had another important experience with “rightness”, of which only recently have I understood the consequences. My baby’s daddy was my husband, and before being mommy and daddy, we were just husband and wife, and before husband and wife, we were just fiancés and before that, he was just my boyfriend. And ven before that, he was just a guy in one of my classes at college. He was playful and a little rough around the edges and always laughing and always flirting and certainly as attractive a human as I’d ever encountered. I had such a desire to spend time with him that I didn’t wait around for him to notice me, I asked him out. We dated for 3 months, and I loved falling in love. But then I made an honest mistake. I prayed. I asked God if I should marry this boy. And guess what? I felt good after I prayed! I interpreted this good feeling with my religious lens of rightness and graduated him from just being my choice, to now being the right choice. I had achieved the finding of the right eternal companion! Cue John Williams, fireworks and eternity!
After more than 30 years of shared marital bliss, and more than our share of marital distress, I regret giving the power of my choice to rightness. I wish I had kept that choice for myself. I wonder how I would feel about and act differently in this relationship if I had spent every day of the last 30 years feeling the power in our relationship fueled by our choice, instead of feeling and more devastating, acting like I’d been assigned to the right marriage. Cause you know what I’ve finally figured out? This boy and this relationship are more meaningful to me as just the desires of my heart than they are as the achievements of my right-ness.
You can only say yes to something to which you can also say no. How do you say “no” to God’s choice? The right choice? You can’t! You won’t! I certainly didn’t! I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt in the undeniable truth that to be married to this boy was the right way to be me. Unlike deciding to stop nursing, this was a choice I made with my own experience, desires and hopes and dreams. But as soon as I felt I had to check my choice against rightness, I could no longer say no, and so---- gave away the power of my yes.
I wish I had known this teaching from John O’Donohue, a Christian philosopher, when I first prayed about that boy all those years ago. “There is a place in you where there is a sureness, where there is a tranquility. The intention of prayer, of spirituality, is to visit that inner sanctuary. Spirituality is the art of homecoming; the uncertain walk into the perpetual light of sovereignty. No one will take your hand or show you the steps, for your path is set apart by the innate beauty born of your imagination.” The good, beautiful, peaceful feeling I had when I prayed to God to see if my desire was “right”, was just the joy of manifesting my choice to my-Self and to maybe even to my Creator who sent me off into the wild world to do exactly that; choose. The prayerful joy and assurance was not born in the subject of my choice, but simply in the choosing itself.
Rightness is about one way, one thing, one plan. It is a fixed point on a linear scale and when we make choices with that scale, then we are also fixed. But now I want to know as many varieties of experience as possible, instead of becoming someone good. Now I want to expand my abilities beyond proving that I’m capable. Now I want to grow my perspective past moments of achievement and validity.
When I choose the right, I am certain, I am limited, I am finished.
When I choose with my desire and my imagination, I begin again and again.
I am endless.
I am free.