Discernment.

I have been thinking some more about the how-close-to-space-kids question.  Regular readers know that this is an area that feels unsettled in my life.   My three children are spaced three years apart, and it works great for our family, and all the unsettledness in my heart is — ought I to challenge myself more?   Or ought I to go with what I know "works" for our family?  What is God calling me to do? 

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I wrote that paragraph very carefully.  Did you notice what’s missing?

Did you notice who is missing?

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Lately I’ve been reading a lot of discussion about child-spacing.  Lots of excellent, in-depth, personal, deep, from-the-heart discussion, from deep within the archives of various Catholic mom-blogs.   This thread at Danielle Bean’s blog is a good sample.

And I noticed something about the discourse at the same time I noticed something about my own family.

I don’t write about my husband’s point of view in this area.  I have a good reason not to.  I am trying to protect his privacy, and our marital privacy. 

We do talk about our fertility and our next child a great deal.  We talk about how to space the children in our family.  When to have another child.  How many children we think we are likely to have.  What principles guide us.   Where we differ in our philosophy about child spacing.  Where we differ in decision-making.  In concepts of risk and safety and comfort.  Whether we are open "enough."  Whether we are on the right path or not.  We talk about how one of us is inclined to be more conservative in chart-interpretation (and execution) and one less so; and that’s not always the same person.  My husband’s voice, his perception of a "calling," or a "not-calling," is as important as mine.  It is not my fertility, it is ours.

But you wouldn’t know it from a lot of what I write.  It might seem that I only think about myself, my spiritual situation, my calling, what God leads me to, what I can and can’t handle.  Because I only write about myself.  But that’s because I can’t write about my husband’s experience without putting words in his mouth or violating his privacy.  I can’t even really write honestly about "our" experience, even though (when it comes to fertility) there is nothing but "our" and "us," there really is no "me" that stands alone here.  And so — I am stuck writing about a shadow, not a reality.  My shadow.  The reality is much greater than the shadow I can write about.  It is two become one. 

But when I write, I am just "one."  I don’t think I can write truthfully about family-size decisions.  The Church is very clear that such decisions are between husband, wife, and God.  If I’m only writing about my own spiritual struggles with respect to child-spacing, with respect to any aspect of marital sexuality in fact, you’re missing 2/3 of the discourse.  I cannot write well and truthfully about the rest.  I ought not try.

So as I was reading over and over the testimony of many thoughtful individuals, it occurred to me that all of them have the same limitation.  They can’t, they ought not, truthfully explain their callings, their decisions, because none belong to an individual; all are rightfully made by a couple working with the Lord.  There is a privacy and an intimacy that mustn’t be betrayed.  In an effort to maintain that intimacy, I know that I unconsciously write as if only the individual and God matters.  I see this kind of "me"-ization in other women’s comments.  For instance, one commenter writes,

In prayer I really seem to hear God saying that my fertility was given to us by Him and given back to Him by spiritually by me.

And another:

With regard to NFP… I feel called to dismiss it for now…

It’s not that women don’t choose to write some about their husband’s feelings.  In the thread I linked above you can read one mother writing that she and her husband are "of one heart and mind… with respect to having more children." Another writes, "both my husband and I want a baby but we are concerned for my health too."   I believe them.  But these words, the words chosen by these women to represent their husbands, are only representations.  Shadows of something much greater.

I’m not saying this is a problem, that we can’t really write about our spouses’ hearts.  Thank goodness we can’t.

The problem is when we forget that we can’t.  The problem is when we (mostly women) read and read and read and read these threads and we start to think that they adequately represent reality.  We start to internalize the idea that it’s about me.  We run the risk of the heartfelt discussion, the interpersonal discourse about child-spacing, being between me and these other mothers rather than between me and my husband.  We feel inadequate sometimes.  Inspired other times.  But even being inspired, encouraged, can be a problem, because it’s still leaving our spouses out!  My husband is not reading these threads, after all.  Shouldn’t our own marriages be the source of the inspiration and the courage?  If we think we aren’t getting enough inspiration and courage from our spouse, maybe we’re making it worse by seeking it elsewhere?  Especially when what we read is necessarily so limited?

I’m not saying we should stop reading and discussing among ourselves.  Just that we have to be aware of the missing voices, and especially aware because for each of us one of those voices is the voice that we need to listen to most.  And there is another ear that needs most to hear what is coming from our own hearts.