A decade ago I was 23. I was dating a good Christian boy, a journalist, whom I planned to marry but did not. I was not a mother (and therefore had no stretch marks). I was living in an adorable city apartment with my friend, Katie. I was a fresh-faced nurse and recent college graduate. I was a good Christian girl who followed the rules. I hadn’t suffered many losses. I didn’t know much about the world.
I didn’t yet know that I would witness and assist in the births of about a hundred babies (which of course were also the births of 100 mothers). I didn’t know that I would become a lactation consultant. I didn’t know that I would set out to midwife women through birth, and then veer toward midwifing misfits through faith changes.
I didn’t yet know that I would relocate to Phoenix, AZ, which may as well have been the far side of the moon. I didn’t know that I would ever leave St. Louis, that anything could compel me to, that I would come back a few years later, or that in hindsight Arizona would feel like a bizarre dream that maybe didn’t really happen.
I didn’t yet know the raw power of my body to conceive, grow, and birth children. I didn’t know that my pre-babies belly was actually fantastic, though I scorned it terribly. I was an idealistic birth junkie, but I had no idea how much it would fucking hurt to feel back labor, and the “ring of fire” as my babies tore through my flesh with their arrivals on this earth. I didn’t know that my self-righteous ideals would fall flat when I needed a surgeon’s knife to free the last child from my womb. And I had no idea that childbirth would be easy compared to raising small humans.
I didn’t know yet how ridiculous parenting is. I had no idea how hard it would be, how inadequate it would make me feel, how desperately I would love my children, and paradoxically how much I would want to truly hurt them at times (like, for real. Like I went to a psychiatrist because my RAGE terrified me). I didn’t know that, for me, breastfeeding would be the magic fixer for nearly every small child problem (“the hard reset,” we call it). Except when breastfeeding IS the problem, and in that case I didn’t know how hard it would be to get them to fucking STOP IT.
I didn’t know yet how defeating it would feel to not know how to fix the other problems that nursing couldn’t fix. I didn’t know we’d need surgeons or therapists. I didn’t know that doula-ing your child when they are constipated can be very much like doula-ing a laboring mother who is scared to push. I didn’t know how infuriating it would be to spend 2 hours to get a preschooler to go to sleep. I didn’t know just how little sleep I would get in seven years. I didn’t know that taking 3 children to the grocery store was a shitshow. I didn’t know that a certain someone would take a screwdriver to my favorite blush, or that her accomplice would stuff everyone’s toothbrushes down the shower drain, or that the toddler would take marker to my freshly-painted walls.
I also had no idea how amazing Tabitha’s laughter would be, how hysterical Phoebe’s precociousness would be, or how heart-melting Gabe’s thoughtfulness would be. I didn’t know what it meant to be adored until I had three children who adore me. I didn’t know what precious was until I held my own sleeping child.
And.
I didn’t know yet that I would grow a seedling of a child inside of me for 11 weeks only for her spark of a life to end in a torrent of blood in a Walgreens toilet.
I didn’t know yet that I would watch a mother die in the immediate postpartum of childbirth, her infant dying on a warmer a few feet away.
I didn’t know yet that I would say goodbye to my grandmother. She was 94 years old but matriarchs should live forever.
I didn’t know yet that I would lose my aunt. She was only 63 and she wasn’t sick. I needed her. I still can’t make sense of it.
I didn’t know yet that I would become a pastor’s wife. I for sure didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know that I would be confronted with the rules and systems and ugliness of evangelical Christianity. A decade ago following Jesus was so simple. I didn’t know that the Church could be so mean. I didn’t know that I would be deemed the wrong kind of Christian, the wrong kind of pastor’s wife, the wrong kind of writer, the wrong kind of mother. I didn’t know that the Church would hurt me again and again and again and AGAIN. I didn’t know I would ever be viewed as a liability.
I didn’t know yet that I was a complicit benefactor of white supremacy. I didn’t know about the patriarchy or that I would eventually want to smash it. I didn’t understand the depths of the pain the Church has caused the LGBTQ community. I didn’t know that I would reverse my position on abortion. I hadn’t thought to ask any questions about ableism, or poverty, or neurodiversity, or pronouns, or colonization. In short, I didn’t know that I am privileged.
I didn’t know yet that I would watch over 80% of evangelicals vote for Trump and sit in my kitchen bawling my eyes out the next day. I didn’t know that I would furiously Google “what is an evangelical” and realize with horror that I was one. I didn’t know the extent to which my people had sold out Jesus, my Jesus, for political and cultural power.
I didn’t know yet that I wouldn’t always be the good Christian girl I was at 23. I didn’t know I would start questioning traditional gender roles, and then the conservative narrative on sexual orientation and gender identity, and then the entire concept of “well, that’s what the Bible says!” I didn’t know that foundational doctrines would evaporate for me like steam on a mirror and I would be left feeling betrayed, confused, and desperate to hide (hello, pastor’s wife!). I didn’t know that my faith in a thousand different ways would just STOP WORKING and I would be left to figure out what was real and what I could still hold on to after the wreckage. I didn’t know that I would reconstruct my faith in a beautiful, dangerous way that makes strangers on the Internet accuse me of having no faith at all.
I didn’t know yet the richness and the ache of marriage. I didn’t know that the ecstasy I would feel in my 25-year-old body and (completely fabulous) wedding dress wasn’t enough to sustain a vibrant marriage. I didn’t know how much CHANGE would greet us (lambast us?) along the way, individually and as a couple, and how trying it would all be for our union. I didn’t know how profound it would be to continually discover, with awe and gratitude, the beauty of you’re still here. To marvel, despite everything, and because of everything too: you’re still showing up for me, championing me, and believing the best about me. Simultaneously, I didn’t know there would be days in which you’re still here would flash in our minds in a wholly different way – more like ugh, you’re STILL here. You’re still inconveniencing me, misunderstanding me, not appreciating me, etc etc etc. I didn’t know how much that part would suck. And I didn’t know how hard but necessary it would be to keep rotating our critical microscopes inward, and, with self-compassion and bravery, communicate our needs outward. And I really didn’t know that the ugh, you’re still here frustrations would make the wow, you’re still here revelations that much more meaningful.
I didn’t know yet that most of my deepest friendships would be forged in this decade. I didn’t know how much I would need them. I didn’t know how much we would relate to each other concerning marriage, how much we would vent to each other concerning parenting, how much we would confide in each other concerning faith and hope and pain and every vulnerable tender thing.
Not quite 24 through not quite 34 was quite a metamorphosis for me. I hardly recognize the ten-years-ago version of myself, and yet, she’s still here. I’m her. She’s me. And ten years can change a girl.
