On Being Pro-Life At The Women's March

A few days before the March I started to see articles on my Facebook feed about a pro-life organization being asked to withdraw it's support as an official sponsor for the Women's March on Washington that was accompanied by the reiteration of the pro-choice Unity Principles of the March. Before these articles surfaced, I had not given a second thought to whether or not, as a women morally opposed to abortion, I was welcome to stand with my sisters against injustices perpetrated against women. Of course I would be welcome.

Out of a deep passion and strong conviction on nearly EVERY other principle of the Women's March (including the REST of the Reproductive Freedom Principle), I decided to attend.  And...I WAS welcome. My fellow sisters and I applauded when a young Muslim woman asked us to treat one another with respect regardless of our differences. We applauded when we heard a Jewish rabbi promise to stand up for Muslims if, like the Jews, they were ever required to register. We applauded when a black imam advocated for responsible policing. We applauded when a LGBTQIA advocate asked to be treated with dignity. We applauded when a rape victim stood up to say that she would NOT be shamed by law enforcement and public opinion for being raped. We applauded lots of people with lots of messages. No one ever asked me to make any allegiance to the cause of abortion.

When the ONE abortion rights presenter spoke, I did not applaud her points. I heartily disagreed with her. I saw my own babies little heart beats at six weeks gestation and I would never, under any circumstances, terminate a pregnancy. I believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is infanticide. But, though I disagreed with her, I did listen to the story she was telling. What I heard was a rational, caring woman who, in her deepest heart, felt that abortion was a kindness for her child with severe congenital defects....a child she wanted and loved and mourns.

It is not OK that the official platform for the Women's March intentionally excluded a large group of women who think differently about abortion than they do. It is my opinion that all types of women need to come together to dialogue about reproductive rights. Pro-life women need to come into the conversation with swords sheathed. Pro-choice women need to come into the conversation with shields down.

We, as a faith community have made this (as well as several other social issues) an issue without nuance and devoid of humanity. We've painted a picture of a selfish, morally loose, murderous, pro-choice woman that isn't accurate. They have created images of pro-lifers as people who point fingers of shame and joyfully damn them with self righteous smirks on their faces while simultaneously denying them the help they need to raise their children. None of these caricatures are helpful for anyone.

We gain nothing by surrounding ourselves with people who think and act exactly like ourselves, If we can't find ways to labor together on common ground nothing will ever change.  During the rally I stood alongside my friend who is both pro-choice and a loving mother to her daughter. She knows my beliefs about abortion. We care about each other, even though we fiercely disagree with each other on a lot of fronts. We stood together in defense of justice and equality for millions of other humans. If I, a pro-life woman, do not show up to the conversation, how can I communicate my heart for life in all it's stages of development and diversity.

Bleeding Heart Moderate

I knew as a young woman that my politics were vastly different from those of my parents. Dinner time would wind up turning into a heated debate between my father and my eleven year old self. The argument would often end with my dad admonishing "You're just a bleeding heart liberal!"

NOTE: Lest you think my father was an immature bully, in his defense, I have always been a very cerebral person, capable of meaningful conversation about a great many topics, even as a child. 

Even in my youth, I was aware that being termed a "bleeding heart" anything was not meant as a compliment. The term was a way of communicating to me that I was being led to make decisions based on my emotions. Political discourse was, instead, supposed to be logical and sober. I, however, did not waver in my belief that humans had an obligation to take care of other humans. If it took government intervention to get people the help they needed...well, so be it.

I held fast to these tenets UNTIL...

When I was a sophomore in high school, I became a Christian. This life choice was made outside the confines of a church environment but as a eased into evangelical life, I came to understand that I hadn't only accepted Jesus, I'd adopted a whole new worldview. In my naivete, I spent my late teens and early twenties striving to be a "good" Christian. My endeavor for church perfection meant that I professed to tow all of the party lines...conservative, pro-life, anti-gay rights, pro-traditional family values, anti-welfare, pro-abstinence, anti-democrat, etc. Of course my inborn inclination railed against these precepts but I internalized the struggle.

Instead of questioning whether or not a believer was required to espouse these social teachings, I assumed there was something wrong with me...that my mind was overtaken by wrong thinking. After all, like politics, faith needed to be logical and non-emotional. I was just too emotional.

In my late twenties and early thirties, as I grew in my knowledge of God, my heart was stirred to pick up and move from suburban Kansas City to the urban center of the the city. When it became evident that my husband and I were really going to be city dwellers, my heart felt a thrill of  joy at the prospect of living among people who were black, gay, atheist, post-modern. I was honestly and truly stoked to jump into the work that was already happening for the glory of God and the good of the city.

We moved seven and a half years ago. It's been a very educational and humbling experience. I am certain that God is at work in me through the relationships I've formed in this place and through the things I've learned about history and humanity through the lens of my diverse neighbors and friends. The themes of these lessons have been this: life and faith and people and sociopolitical issues are much more complex than the conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat dichotomy of American politics. People are complicated. Situations are nuanced. There are a great many ways to flesh out the Christian faith that are holy and right and good. There is room for emotion in the life of a believer. There is a place in the Body of Christ for a Bleeding Heart Moderate.

That brings us to this day.

Today America inaugurated a president that I am vehemently opposed to. Donald Trump actually triggers a negative physical response in my heart and gut. He stands against a great many deep, God given, convictions that I hold. I don't just disagree with his politics, I legitimately fear that the policies which he promotes will be harmful to people that I have, in the spirit of Christian Love, linked arms with as friends and neighbors. To support Donald Trump would be at direct odds with the commandment to love my neighbor. To show kindness to his supporters means I am faced with the equally weighty commandment to love my enemy.

On this weird, misty, gray January day, I am steeped in an ironic contradiction...in this matter, my enemy is very likely to be singing hymns right next to me on Sunday morning.  That isn't the way I learned that doctrine. People who are opposed to my beliefs come from OUTSIDE the church, right? In God's family we're all on the same team, right?

Frankly, that has been the most challenging thing about this whole Donald Trump business. If I wasn't a member of the evangelical Christian faith community, there would be ZERO doubt in my mind how I should behave regarding the new president and his agenda. But as it stands, my relationship with God puts me in the position to make peace with my Christian brothers and sisters.

I am going to be honest. It is going to take a miraculous work of Jesus for me to choose an emotion other than disgust when other Followers of Christ  joyfully lend support to policies that I believe are unjust. And while the security of my soul does not rest on the United State government, the health of my soul rests on being obedient to the Word of God which says, love your neighbor and love your enemy and love one another as I have loved you. I'm just unsure of what that looks like on a day like today.

Quick and Dirty Author Reflection: A Bulleted List

Things I Learned About Myself As An Author In November 2016

(in no particular order)

• Writing is not a one woman show, at least for me it isn't. 

• During this month I relied heavily on my husband for both emotional and practical support.
• My little sister graciously served as my sounding board and my pre-Alpha reader. 
• In addition I have discovered that I am surrounded by friends and family who are willing to cheer me on as work to discover what I am capable of as an author.
• Finally, during November, I was blessed with a motley little crew of like minded writers in the city who offered wisdom, encouragement, and levity during this 30 day challenge. 

• I like to write in public...BUT just as I talk with my hands...I tend to write expressively...so if you see a beheadphoned thirty-something making weird faces and flailing her hands about in your local Starbucks...it would be safe to assume she’s writing a novel.

• I am not a quick typist. Therefore, I have to put in more time than some of my NaNo cohorts. I average about 1,000 words an hour...which, believe it or not is SLOW when compared to other authors who can hammer out 500-700 words in 15 minutes.

• I definitely get in a zone when I am writing. Here is a clip from one of my favorite films, written by one of my favorite authors, that describes what “the zone” looks like...especially to my children.

• Sometimes I love what I write. Sometimes my writing is simply passable. Sometimes I write a sentence so tragically terrible that I psych myself out and have to take a break...for the rest of the day.

• Writing can be a very, very, vulnerable pursuit. I’ve written scenes that left me feeling angry or lovesick or heartbroken or ashamed for days.

• I spent the first few days of November floundering. I came up with a really great premise to build a story around...but I couldn’t get it to work. I was trying to fit my author voice into a novel that wasn’t appropriate. I wanted to be more creative...use symbolism...personify emotions... allow for fun plot twists and just let the story flow.

• Creativity is, apparently, not what I do. As it turns out, I am a straight shooter. (shocking I KNOW). Yes, I created a work of fiction and built characters don’t exist...but they COULD. They function in a world that doesn’t exist...but it COULD.

• This style of novel is classified as “literary”. That is a genre which makes me feel highbrow and snobbish; so I pushed against it.

• About the third day of Nano, I decided “f@#k it” and wrote what I wanted to write. It turned into quite the little novel...one that I like and have enjoyed writing. I ended up using my original premise as the novel’s climax.

• This novel has been, yet another, lesson in accepting who I am as a human being and as an artist. I firmly believe that my craft can glorify God...but if I try to be something He didn’t make me to be, I’m wasting a gift by wishing I had a different one.

• Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I still have a lot to learn about writing a good novel. And, frankly, I still have so much to do to fashion this mass of words into a good novel. So much. I am willing to learn. I am excited to work through the process of preparing a manuscript for publication.

Now What? A Quick and Dirty Rundown of NaNo 2016

Dear friends and family who have endured my endless novel writing posts, here’s what you need to know about the conclusion of NaNoWriMo 2016.

First of all, I did in fact complete the 50K word challenge. My final word count for the month was 50,283 (that's what my word program says...the official count was 50,066). So, according to the language of the challenge, I “won” NaNoWriMo. They use the language of victory even though there’s not really a prize (apart from the shiny new rough draft I now possess) As an author, I simply consider having written any substantial amount of words a win in itself.

The challenge goes by word count because that’s the way manuscripts are evaluated by publishers. For reference, novels such as The Great Gatsby, The Hours, The Outsiders, and Fahrenheit 451 all hover around the 50K word mark. After publishers choose a work, they get to decide how your word count translates to the page count of your novel based on font and spacing and production cost.

Here's the catch though friends, only about 70% of the words I typed are usable. The rest is brainstorming, warm up writing, genre experimentation, and pieces that i pulled out of earlier drafts that didn’t fit into the story I ended up with. However, ALL the words counted toward my final count because it’s part of the drafting process. NaNo is about pure word count, if you wrote it in November...it counts.

But, even at 50K words, I’m only about 2/3 of the way through the first draft. Upon completing the challenge, I made a commitment to edit and revise the draft I have created in these last thirty days. That includes adding content in some places and paring down scenes elsewhere.It is my hope to have a completed rough draft available for Beta Readers by Spring Break. I will be comfortable calling this rough draft complete when it gets around 70K words. A novel with that word count is a standard sized book as opposed to a novella like Animal Farm (30K) or a tome like War and Peace (587K). Books with 70K-ish word counts include The Fault in Our Stars, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Catcher in the Rye.

I'm proud of this accomplishment, but mostly I am thankful for the push to focus on my craft. Writing is part of the fabric of my heart. Giving it energy has energized me, if that makes sense. If NaNoWriMo didn't exist, I'd probably go the rest of my life PLANNING to write a novel instead of just DOING the thing.

*****Stay tuned for an upcoming post where I will give a shout out to the human beings who rallied around to cheer me on and throw out a list of take away wisdom from this insane creative writing experience.

The One Where We Put It In The Freezer

As you may have noticed, my blog has been slowly tapering off. I haven't published a post in over a month and a half. Even before that, my posts were getting more and more sparse. While I have many reasons why my little blog has been neglected, there are two circumstances which are contributing to the slow suffocation of Life Less Sweet.

#1. I've been channeling my writing energy into more creative enterprises. My last post shined a spotlight on NaNoWriMo, a writing challenge that happens every November. Even though November has come and gone, one of the most valuable lessons I gleaned from the challenge was merely the knowledge that I am ABLE to create stories.

Though writing has been part of my world since I was ten years old, I'd mostly stuck with either prose-style poetry or short stories. While short stories are still TOTALLY my wheelhouse, I've discovered that longer works of fiction can be written by using chapters as short stories which are woven together to create a longer narrative. Any time I sit down to write (which I am trying to develop into a daily habit) I end up desiring to chip away at my latest novel rather than popping a quick blog post onto Life Less Sweet.

My fiction style is still in its experimental stages. I'm still figuring out my voice and discovering how to craft characters and themes that are meaningful to me. The more practice I get with working out stories, the better my work is becoming. Honestly, it feels good and right to spend my writing energies on these endeavors.

#2. I feel a TON better than I did when I started this blog. At the time of my first post of Life Less Sweet, I was in the throes of a major depressive episode brought on by a gross combination of a bad foster care placement, mothering small children, and a big ol' serotonin deficiency.  While sharing on this blog has most certainly been cathartic, the main goal of shining a light into the uncomfortable places of my heart was to reduce the shame and secrecy that surrounds people (especially people of faith) who struggle with mental health issues.

Through this blog, I have discovered that, while my story is unique to me, the elements that make up my struggle with depression and anxiety are common to many of the people in my life. Too many of us share this condition to allow the matter to be a source of stigma. I want to do what I can to bring the conversation to a healthy and productive place...thus the blog.

In the course of the four years this blog has been around, I've dealt with my depression and anxiety with a combination of medication, therapy, nutrition, and faith. It's helped. My mental health is currently very successfully managed, especially since doubling my dose of sertraline this fall.

Here's where I should tell you that I have been cured and there is no need for this blog any longer...but, as wisdom and experience have taught me, successful management of depression and anxiety are NOT the same as being cured of them. These illnesses are chronic and probably life long. I cannot know what will come up in my life that could potentially pull the rug out from under this precariously stacked management plan. Therefore, I'm not going to officially end Life Less Sweet. Instead I am going to take my cue from Mr. Joey Tribbiani and place my dear blog into the freezer where it will be available to me should I have need of it.

No More NaNo

On November 1st, two things occurred. First, I contracted my first round of strep throat for the month. Secondly, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) began.

NaNo, as it's known colloquially, is a writing challenge that began in 1999. The overarching goal is to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th. If you reach 50,000 words and get it validated by the NaNoWriMo software...you WIN. There's not really a prize, per se, you just get the satisfaction of knowing you've created a substantive piece of writing (50K is about the length of Fight Club or The Giver). And frankly, they're very laissez faire about what constitutes a "novel". There is a lot of freedom to write what you wish to write.

I've never written a novel, though I've halfheartedly tried to do NaNo a few other times. This year, however, I was struck with a really strong idea that I felt very compelled to put into novel form. In order to be more successful, I made a strong outline and kind of hammered out some details before the challenge began. I also joined the regional WriMo group, which ended up being a very valuable asset.

Waiting for Novemember 1st was tough. I felt like a racehorse pressing against the starting gate. Then, when the day finally came, my throat felt like it was filled with shards of glass and I had a fever so high I was shivering. I DID NOT feel like writing. For the entire first week, I limped along, writing when my Advil kicked in and lessened the pain. The regional WriMos had a chat group which I frequented that week. Veteran writers were kind and encouraging. The support that they offered kept the fire stoked within my writer's soul while my body healed.

The second week of the contest, I was hot. Words came quickly and ideas flowed freely. It was a beautiful thing! Though I was behind in my word count, I pressed on, chipping away at my 50k. By the 9th of November I'd hit 10,000 words (which is about 40 book pages). Meeting that goal was exhilarating. Buuuut, then I hit a wall.

My mentors on the writing forum encouraged me to just keep writing. "You can take things out in editing," they'd say. So, that's what I did. I tacked on a chapter at the end called "Process" and just did some free writing. That helped jumpstart more ideas for the novel. So, by the third week I was at 15,000 words.

On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, I attended my first "write-in". Basically about 30 writers from the regional group took over a local coffeehouse and wrote together for 4 solid hours. Being with people who share your art form can be very inspiring, even if you have WILDLY different styles. Sitting at a table with a steampunk author and a scifi writer, I tapped out 3,000 words, putting my total at 20K!!! That was so HUGE for me!! I was 80 pages into my novel....80!!! That's phenomenal!

Driving home from the write in, I felt a familiar twinge in my throat. Though I desperately hoped I my strep wasn't back, time revealed that it had, in fact, returned with a vengeance. (Just a side note, this was my 8th time contracting strep throat since Little Brother was born 5 years ago. I am praying that my ENT will take these defective tonsils out of my body soon.)  The second bout of the illness was brutal. The pain was worse, the healing was much slower, and again, I did NOT feel like writing. Though a few words made it into the novel, for the most part it still hovered around 20k...which is where it stayed when the competition ended yesterday, November 30th.

I didn't even make it half way friends. That's a bummer. BUT, I DID write TWENTY THOUSAND WORDS!  That's more words than I've ever written on one project. Things come up and stuff happens, such is life. I am so excited to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo in July and to attempt to get to 50k again next November (hopefully sickness free).

Sooooo, why am I including a post about a writing competition on this here mental health blog, you might be wondering. The craft of writing is extremely important to me. On Facebook I use the hashtag #writerssoul when I post a status about writing. It's completely and thoroughly true...I have the soul of a writer. Whether or not I ever finish a novel or get anything published anywhere, there is a longing in the innermost part of me to set forth words to paper.

All of this bullshit with anxiety and depression is redeemed by the fact that I can craft soothing words of hope for the benefit of other human beings (and ultimately myself). The novels I want to write center around struggles which are common to humanity. They are meant to help and heal. Writing is a precious gift and I am honored to make use of it to the best of my ability.

Photographed Fat

Like many mothers, I teared up when I read this article about moms being in pictures with their kids (click here for article). I vowed thereafter to be in more photographs with my family and friends, even if I didn't feel as lovely as I desired to feel. My chubby, smiling, face has appeared in dozens of group selfies and snapshots since taking that vow. Then, a few months ago I decided that my family should put on our Pinterest-coordinated best and have professional photos taken.

I wanted to look pretty in our family pictures, therefore I spent countless hours shopping online (the best bet for plus sizes) for a pretty dress that would be both flattering for me and easy to coordinate with the males in my family. When picture day came, I spent extra time doing my makeup and straightening my hair. However, neither clothing nor cosmetics can hide the fact that I... am a big 'ol woman.

While the camera was clicking I did not worry whether or not the pictures would make me look fat. I KNEW they would. That's my reality. I am a fat woman...and save for a few short years after college, I always have been. Because of this reality, the photographs did not reveal some secret shame for me...they just showed...me. The images showed over sized, corpulent, aging, graying, dark haired, dark eyed, confident, outgoing, beautiful, well-loved...Me...surrounded on each ample side by my precious husband and children.

Since this summer, I have endeavored to slowly increase my fitness levels. I walked my first 5k on my birthday and have plans to train and walk another on Thanksgiving. As I move into a more active lifestyle, my body might change. Or....it might not change very much at all...there are actually many very fit, fat people (click here, here, and here for some examples). What I appreciate about the photographs we just had taken is that they show who I am right now. In the Fall of 2015, this is what I look like...this is who I am. And, when the people in my life look back at these pictures 10 years from now, they will look into my plump face and remember the laughter, the tears, and the authentic life that we shared together.