A Burden to Society? (On Friendship and Love)

Ellen at Love That Max recently wrote a post called My child with special needs is not a burden to society. In this post she (very rightly) combats the idea that only people who are "productive" members of society are valuable to it.

Should you argue that these [famous people] are men who contribute more to the world than my son ever will, well then I say that's an incredibly narrow-minded way of looking at life.

(I encourage you to go read the whole post. It's very good, as is the blog as a whole.)

I am now playing the what-if-I-had-written-this-post game, and I must say that I think I would have written a very different post than Ellen did. Before I continue, I want to add a few disclaimers. Firstly, I am not a parent of children with special needs, or even a parent at all. So, although I don't intend to speak about parenting per se, or to say anything that's super controversial, I will, just in case, quote Clare Coffey on another subject and say "if anything I say seems presumptuous, unrealistic, or stupid, just chuckle." Disclaimer number two is that while it's going to look like I disagree with Ellen, I actually don't think I do. I think what looks like a disagreement is a semantic question, in that she and I mean different things when we say "burden". Ellen says:

Burden? My child? Expensive, yes. Demanding, yes. Emotionally draining at times, yes. "Deadweight/encumbrance/misfortune" (all synonyms for "burden"): NO.

In this sense, I 100% agree, children with special needs are not burdens. But here's why I would have written a different post: when I hear someone say, "So-and-so is a burden," my gut response is not "No, he's not," but "Yeah, so what? So are you."

When I say that something is a burden, I don't mean that the trouble it causes outweighs its benefits (I think this is Ellen's idea of what it means to be a burden). I mean simply that the thing in question causes a lot of trouble. This is roughly the sense that Merriam-Webster online gives. And in this sense, yes, beautiful, amazing Max is a burden. Every child with special needs is a burden. Every child on Reece's Rainbow is a burden. But so is every typical child. So are you. And so am I.

No one is perfect. Even those of us who are physically and cognitively "perfect" (I put the term in scare quotes because I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding the use of terms like perfect or normal and I do not intend offense; I use the word because it conveys my point) are not morally perfect. And our moral imperfections are burdens to others.

When I lose my temper and yell at my friends, it's burdensome. When I forgot my driver's license and couldn't help drive on our road trip, it was burdensome. When I have a day bad enough that my friend cancels his plans because he doesn't think leaving me alone is a good idea (yes, I know that the rain wasn't the real reason you spent the evening with me), it's burdensome.

Of course not everything I do is burdensome. I have also cancelled plans to help friends. I make pretty things. I write papers that make my professors happy. I am not a 100% burden, but a mixed bag of burdens and joys. Sometimes the balance tips one way, and sometimes the other. This is true of everyone, including children with special needs, who bring more challenges than typical children, but most of the same joys, as well as joys unique to them.

But my friends have not run an analysis and decided that, on balance, the joy I cause outweighs the burdens I cause. They are not my friends halfheartedly, putting up with the bad for the sake of the good. My friends know that I am a burden, and they accept that burden itself; gladly, even joyfully, accept it. "I love talking to you," A once said, right after he had spent about half an hour chiseling away at a black pit of my despair while I sat on his futon and cried. "Even if what you have to say might hurt me, tell me anyway because I need to know in order to love you more," K said to me early in our relationship. My friends, in short, know that I can be a burden to them, and choose to make me their burden.

Isn't that love? When you take someone who is a burden to you and choose to make him your burden? If I am a burden to you, you try to get rid of me, try to minimize the damage that I cause to you. Sure, you might be okay with having me around later, when I'm not being such a pain in the neck, but right now, I'm an obstacle to your happiness. If I am your burden, you accept me and care for me, and thereby truly love me (in the Thomistic "willing the good of another" sense of the word). (Conversely, allowing yourself to be loved means allowing yourself to become someone else's burden--admitting that you impose on others, and you need them to let you do so.)

So are children with special needs burdens to society? In the sense in which I've been using the word, sure. They make noise in places where it would be better if they were quiet. They have tantrums in stores. They are unable to do things their parents wish they could do. Typical children do these things too, and adults, while most of us outgrow throwing tantrums in stores, have their own problematic behaviors: We talk when it would be better to listen, we are short with cashiers, and now we fail to live up to our own expectations as well as our parents'. Yes, they are burdens to society, but not worse burdens than we are. And maybe we'd all be better off if we were willing to let them, and us, become society's burdens instead.

Realizations

It's been an interesting week. Some good things have happened and some bad things have happened and some very stressful things which are ultimately good have happened. Part of me would like to be more specific, but I am not going to share the details right now.

Today, however, I had a kind of spiritual epiphany. The background: As I've mentioned before, I have had depression on and off over the past few years, and even in the times when I'm not actually depressed, there are bad days. Bad days often manifest themselves in despair and the desire to quit current major life projects (school, romantic relationship) for no reason. I was talking to A once about vocations, and saying that I needed to find something that I could live with on bad days as well as good, because I would always have bad days. He said that this was an entirely too negative way of looking at the future. I disagreed. We let it go.

Fast forward to today. I was walking to Mass, thinking about depression and the shadow it has left on my life, and thinking about the future, and I thought, "Some darkness just never goes away." Then I thought of John 1:5: "And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." And two things occurred to me.

First of all, darkness does not understand light. No wonder I don't know what God is doing. He is light, and there is so much darkness in my life. Secondly, darkness cannot overpower light. Light always wins. If the darkness never goes away, it's not because it lost the battle with the light, it's because I held the door and windows closed and refused to let the light shine in.

This afternoon I went to an area meeting of People of Praise, a charismatic Christian group. From some of the things the people said I gained a few additional pieces to the puzzle. One man got up and said that the Lord had moved him to share that His forgiveness was so perfect that there was nothing you could do that made it impossible to start over. Another said that God's forgiveness was a perfect forgiveness, and the belief that your relationship with God was damaged if you had sinned and been forgiven was a lie. And the frequent requests for the Holy Spirit to come helped me to ask God to shine His light into my darkness. I imagined myself opening the door to a closet containing the things I try to keep secret from God and letting Him in.

So overall, this is what today has taught me: A was right. There don't always have to be bad days. I can't get rid of them, but God can.

I have always known this, but today I think I started to believe it.

Spring break

My spring break was awesome. It was not relaxing. We spent a lot of time in the car (over the course of the week, we drove over 2000 miles), a lot of time walking around, and not a lot of time sleeping. But it strengthened friendships. We got to know each other's families (well, mine, B's, P's, and A's). We shared problems. We helped each other out. It was crazy and wonderful. And I am so tired and I have so much homework and I wouldn't change break if I could.

Well, that's not technically true--one thing I would change. I got overtired and stressed out and was pretty uncharitable towards some people, including A, whose head I bit off for basically no reason several times. I feel terrible about this. Charity is something I have a serious deficit in. And it really doesn't make me feel any better how willing A is to forgive me all the time. Sigh.

Random thing: I'm having a major crisis (as in what to study). I am realizing that I am never going to do anything with philosophy and theology and seriously considering working in therapy. So maybe I should be in the psychology major. I have to go talk to the Career Center on campus here and see what they say. Pray for me!

On Life

Sorry for the lack of posting. It's midterms week! I'm taking a break from writing my final midterm, a logic takehome, to post this because I don't think I'll get a chance to post over the next week.

This logic midterm is stretching my brain in a good way. It doesn't have very much to do with what we're doing in class, and requires a lot of thinking about stuff that's essentially new. My modern philosophy midterm, also a takehome, was kind of fun to write, but not nearly as intellectually exciting. Psych and Greek were not fun or exciting to study for or to take. I got a 92 on Greek, we'll see what happens with psych.

My friends and I are going on a road trip over spring break. We're hitting up A's house, P's house, B's house, and my house. I'm really looking forward to it, but also somewhat worried because I'm going into it sleep deprived. I am pretty introverted and need some time to myself every now and then, and if I don't get that over this trip, which I'm not sure I'm going to, I'm going to lose my mind somewhere around Monday. My friends tend to assume that I'm withdrawing because I'm not okay, though, and then they come talk to me. I may just have to say look guys, I am okay at the moment but if you don't give me some space I will soon not be. Another sad thing is that I'll probably have less time than I do now to talk to K.

K is an awesome boyfriend. We have skyped for almost eight hours over the course of the last five days (I know, I know), and he's writing me a letter. We always end our Skype sessions with a prayer (except once when we forgot). K makes these prayers up on the spot and they kind of make me want to cry because he always thanks God for me. His faith is just so amazing. He makes me want to be closer to God. He also got me to clean up my room. All around a great guy.

I probably shouldn't post this....

It's almost certainly premature to post this, but no one I know reads this blog (because no one reads this blog), so I'll throw it out there. Yesterday R's friend K from high school came to visit her at college overnight. A little backstory: I was the initial catalyst for B and R getting to know each other and an enzyme in their starting dating. (I hope I'm getting my chemistry metaphors right....I introduced them and encouraged him to ask her out when it was clear they liked each other.) This was shortly after I broke up with my long-term boyfriend J. R and B decided that in return for setting them up, they should set me up. But they couldn't think of a guy. R thought K would be a good option, except that he and I go to college four hours apart, live 600 miles apart, and are both very down on the idea of long-distance relationships generally due to the fact that we both had recent bad experiences in which distance was a factor. So R said that if K and I were still single when we graduated, she was going to try to set us up.

Weeellllllll.......so K came to visit.

We (me, B, R, A, P, and K) played cards (I won), had a piggyback kicking battle (first person to fall off loses. K and I lost. Twice.), and watched The Sound of Music. K and I really hit it off. There was some serious chemistry. Touching, laughing, eye contact. I think he's awesome, I think he's cute, I think he's a great guy, and I really want to get to know him more. I'm rather obsessed. And he likes me too, R and B say.

This is new to me. I've never liked a guy I didn't already know before. I had a long honest conversation with R and B about his and my strengths and failings. I think in a lot of ways, we'd be good for each other. That said, this is nowhere near settled. We are both very skeptical/anti-distance. We don't know each other all that well. We haven't talked about this. (He did give me his number.) Who knows what will happen? But oh geez, he and I hit it off like I have never hit it off with any guy before.

Lent!

Happy Lent everyone. Personally, I dislike Lent. That whole self-denial thing doesn't go over very well with me. (Yesterday A told me that he has no favorite liturgical season because none of them makes sense without all the others. Therefore he doesn't separate them like that. My response: can't you be like normal people and say Easter because you like the Exsultet or Christmas because you like the carols or something? He just laughed. Normal isn't really A's style, and I mean that as a compliment.)

Disclaimer: I'm about to tell everyone what I'm doing for Lent/Ash Wednesday. I don't mean this a la hypocrites and Pharisees. It's a reminder to myself and hopefully inspiration for others. (Not that I think my resolutions are that great.)

I'm trying something new for fasting today, and that is literally fasting. As in, I haven't eaten anything yet today and I'm not planning on eating lunch. We'll see what happens about dinner--I'm open to the possibility that I may have to eat something, but if I do, it will be small, and if possible, I'm not eating anything today. (This might be stupid--I donated blood yesterday....) The reason why I'm doing this is because the two small meals and one normal meal route doesn't inconvenience me that much (I don't have very good hunger signals, so being somewhat hungry all day long isn't really distinguishable from being sick or being tired). Also, I get so bogged down in the details (how many apples are equal to one piece of toast?) that I am not focusing on anything spiritual at all. I'm hoping this method will be more of a sacrifice and more spiritually successful.

Anyway, here are my resolutions:

• Prayer: Read the Bible regularly (as in, every day). Pray the Rosary regularly (as in, every day). Neither of these is something I currently do (even if regularly is not defined as every day), which I know is bad. This is not allowed to replace the Liturgy of the Hours or daily Mass.
  
• Fasting: No dessert! Yesterday's homily (Father V) was about choosing something that would make you a better Christian, rather than using Lent as an excuse to start a diet. Which I totally agree with (although I did give up biting my nails one year...). That said, I think a) there is spiritual benefit in self-denial, and I need to be better at saying no to temptation (I like sugar :( ); and b) sugar is in some indirect way a spiritual problem for me. Too much sugar --> depressive mood/depressive episodes --> doubt/despair. Not really sure how the science of that works, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
• Almsgiving: $5/week to Reece's Rainbow. This probably isn't enough, but I have no idea how to choose an appropriate amount. There's nothing that I can think of to give up and save the money from--living on campus means I spend almost no actual money. Also this will probably be one lump sum because I don't have Paypal or a credit card, so I'll just mail a check.
• Not sure how to categorize: Be more charitable towards B. I realize this breaks most of the cardinal rules of resolution making (hard to measure, no clear definition of success, etc.), but it really needs to be on here. (I told this resolution to A and he said, "Yeah, that's a good idea.") This is one of the areas in my life that I'm struggling most with at the moment. It's certainly my biggest interpersonal problem right now. So, stop being critical, stop making negative predictions, assume good motivations, and stop taking the things he does personally. (This I think is the root of the problem; perhaps I'll post on this later.) Thanks Father V for the idea of giving up a negative character trait!
  

It will be challenging to do all of these. So, while I think I can and should accomplish them all, I'm deciding in advance that I'm not going to tear myself apart if I don't. That's not meant in a get-out-of-jail-free card way, but rather in the way where I accept that I'm not perfect and am not overly critical of myself. (Another weakness of mine!) As in, if I miss my Bible reading, I'll feel bad, and be sorry, and ask for forgiveness, but three days later I will not be still thinking that I'm a terrible person who does not love God and is therefore damned for all eternity. (Sadly, this really isn't that much of an exaggeration as to a possible trajectory of thought.)

Yesterday I attended the Last Alleluia and Lenten Lamentations in A's dorm. I liked them very much. There are so many interesting liturgies in the Catholic Church. Speaking of which, I don't think I'll be getting to Mass until 10pm. Sadness. I like walking around all day with ashes on my head. But I have class at 11:30 and 12:10, and 5:15 won't be over before a meeting at 6, and I have to do something from 9 to 10 (which I could skip out of early to go to 10pm Mass). Actually, I just remembered a 4:45 Mass, so maybe I'll go to that.

I'm not so good at this blogging regularly thing....

Today is A's birthday, so we had a party for him yesterday. For some reason, I've become the unofficial cake-baker in our group of friends. I compromise on my moral values by buying cake mixes, because come on, I'm in a dorm. I'm not happy about this really, but the campus store does not have a good supply of baking ingredients. (I know this because I once made Valentine's Day cookies from scratch. Yeah....)

This year our kitchen has been restocked with things like cake pans, spoons, and mixing bowls. In an attempt to keep these things from being stolen, they live in a locked cabinet. There is one key to this cabinet, and a girl in the dorm has it. Unfortunately, at the time that I went to get it, she was gone. So I couldn't get at the cake pan. Luckily, someone had left the cupcake trays in the drying rack. Now I hate cupcakes for birthday parties. They are, in my opinion, too individualistic. The whole point of a birthday cake is that you share it. With cupcakes, everybody takes their own and you lose all the communality. (As A put it, "They're so American.") Am I overthinking this? Probably. Anyway, I did make them, against my better judgment. Cupcakes from a cake mix. What happened to my morals?

A's party was fun. We watched Les Mis and listened to music. His presents were a set of picture books that we had written for him and a parody video of Friday that some of the others in the group made. He thought they were hilarious. (They were.)

One of the priests in A and P's dorm gives homilies that I really like. I'm considering asking him to be my spiritual director. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that A doesn't think Father V would be very good at dealing with a crying girl, and that is going to happen at some time or other. A suggested having him hear my confession, so that will probably be step one. Also then I guess we can see how he handles crying, because apparently this priest is good at asking the questions that you don't want to hear.

Speaking of which, I had an upsetting dream last night in which I got into an argument with R that developed into one with B. It wasn't even that big of a deal originally, just us harassing each other a bit and then it got out of hand, with me telling him not to do something to one of my things, which he then did deliberately, at which point I punched him and ran away (leaving behind coat, keys, ID, and phone). In the dream it was snowing and I ran around to the other side of one of our campus lakes, to where there is a crucifix on a hill. I sat down in the snow and cried, and then I woke up angry and upset. I don't believe that dreams tell the future, but I do believe that mine provide insight to current stresses in my life, and I do have some B-related issues that I need to work through. And yes, R is (indirectly) the cause of some of them.

Keep praying for Kurt! Someone has donated $5.00 to him--thank you so much!

On husbands, children, ends, means, and God and His plans

You know, because none of those is a big enough issue for its own post....

Yesterday and the day before, I attended a conference at my college. This conference is an annual student-run conference that focuses on women's issues from a Catholic/Christian (I'm not sure how denominational they try to stay) perspective. This year's topic was vulnerability. (You now have enough information to figure out where I go to school. Go ahead, Google it, I don't mind. It's a good school and I like it.) My friend A (I need to write a post about A sometime--he is a truly wonderful person) went to this conference too, and he and I had some interesting conversations about many things.

I can't remember exactly how this particular conversation got started. He already knew that I intend to adopt children with special needs. Maybe I was complaining that it was going to be hard to find a guy with similar goals, or maybe I was just saying something depressing about my past dating life. (One boyfriend, mostly long-distance, with marriage as the goal, and then I screwed everything up by failing to communicate. More on that in some other post; for now I'll just say this hasn't helped my cynicism or insecurity any.) Anyway, he made two criticisms of my views about my future husband. The first was that he thought I was trying to have too much control over whom I would marry. The second is that I view him as a means to an end, namely children. My gut reaction was to say that he was completely wrong. Thinking this over, though, he may be more right than I thought initially. (I almost typed, "In this paper I will discuss these criticisms and whether or not I agree with them...." I clearly need to get out more.)

I still think he's wrong about the control issue. Generally, this is certainly an issue for me and something I really need to work on. I hate not being in control, and I especially hate it when someone who won't tell me what he's doing is in control. I find it very frightening. (God, I'm talking to you, in case you hadn't noticed. I would like to know the plot of my life, please.) But I don't think that I'm wrong in this particular instance. Of course, like any college girl, I have a list of stereotypical criteria that my husband "should" have--taller than me (not hard--I'm 5'4" when I round up), smart, funny, Catholic, comforting, supporting, reliable, knows how to dance, wants to adopt children with special needs, etc., etc. (Okay, maybe that last one is not so stereotypical.) But I'm not actually truly picky about most of these. I can only think of one, maybe two, that I would not be willing to compromise on: the children with special needs, and the Catholicism. At the moment I'm not going to talk about the Catholicism, which is the maybe, because it's not really relevant, and also because my thoughts on the subject are complicated and tangled up. The point is that I would potentially marry a stupid short guy who had two left feet, even if he didn't fit my list.

But I would not marry someone who said that there was no way he would ever be willing to adopt children with special needs. And this is what A has a problem with. He says I don't get to decide what the man I marry is like, God does, so I shouldn't make this kind of decision. But I think that if I am called to the vocation of adoption, and I truly believe that I am, then God will not choose for me someone who would prevent me from fulfilling that vocation. Maybe it's my job to convert someone to adoption, A says. Maybe it is, and so I'm not saying I would never date anyone who wasn't over the moon about adoption already. I would even date someone who said no way, at least until it became clear he wasn't changing his mind. But I would not *marry* someone hoping to change his mind about something that important. What do my (nonexistent, I know) readers think?

The other issue was the question of whether I view my husband as an end in himself or only as a means to children. This one's trickier. I do tend to talk that way. I think this is partly because I can imagine what it's like to get my children without actually knowing which children they are. It's a lot harder to imagine dating & marrying someone with no information about who he is. As I told A this morning, I already know why my children need me, but I don't know why my husband does. That being said, I think A has a point in that I do tend to think about a husband as a step on the road to children. He is, of course, a step along that path, but he is also where another, equally important path ends. And that's something I need to remember better.

More about the blog title, and some of my life

"Sleeping under God's wings," as I mentioned, is from an antiphon of Compline (night prayer). The complete antiphon is "Night holds no terrors for me sleeping under God's wings." I like metaphors and analogies, so night for me means anything that frightens me. And there are a lot of things that frighten me. But as long as I remain sleeping under God's wings, I'll be okay. It's a reminder of a promise. I especially like to think about how much this means when you live in a time and place without cities and sturdy houses. If all you have protecting you from wolves is a tent, night must be much scarier--but not if you are under God's wings.

"Prone to wander" is from the hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. One of the verses of this song goes, "O to grace how great a debtor / Daily I’m constrained to be! / Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, / Bind my wandering heart to Thee. / Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, / Prone to leave the God I love; / Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, / Seal it for Thy courts above." I identify strongly with the simultaneous contradictory feelings of wanting to stay and tending to leave (primarily in religious matters, but also in social ones). I would like it if God would just take my heart and seal it so I am never tempted to leave, but I know that the way in which He does that, unfortunately, is by offering me opportunities to choose to stay. This hymn is also where my screen name comes from. (It has the added benefit of being something I don't use anywhere else, so I can remain anonymous until I choose to do otherwise.)

Sorry for not posting sooner. I had intended to post every day, but I think that's a pretty unrealistic goal, to be honest. I tend to have busy stretches and lulls. Also my life just isn't that exciting.

These last few days have been fun though. The weather's been pretty good (it's sad when 35 and partly cloudy is a nice day!), which has had a positive effect on my mood. Yesterday I did no homework at all and skipped the daily Mass I had planned on going to. Instead I watched the pilot episode of Smash (anyone seen that? It looks like it will be a good show) and Chicago (the movie) with my good friends A and P and another friend of ours (also A, but that's too confusing, and I doubt he'll be a regular character in this blog). Somewhat irresponsible, yes, but overall I think a good choice; I needed the break, and I did the homework the next morning. Today the theology department had a "vigil for Groundhog's Day/Presentation of the Lord" party (really just an excuse to get together for Mass and ice cream). My friend (and next year's roommate!) R went with me. It was fun, but I've eaten too much sugar today so I feel kind of sick and cranky. I need to keep a lid on my sugar consumption--I have a sweet tooth, but I really think that more than the occasional dessert affects my mood negatively. (Speaking of which, in developmental psychology we talked about how depression during pregnancy can negatively affect the baby...something to look forward to!)