“God sent his Son into the world not the judge the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:17 (NLT)
I was so frustrated for my sister who was at a crossroads in her mom journey. My frustration stemmed from the fact she didn’t feel like she could make any other decision than to breastfeed her son. Now just so you have all the facts, she had been breastfeeding by exclusive means of pumping. Her son wouldn’t latch, but that didn’t stop her. Her supply was very low, but that didn’t stop her. She was either pumping, cleaning the pump, or feeding and burping her son most of the day, but that didn’t stop her either. She is a trooper. I have told her many times, and I hope she reads this to hear it again, I am so proud of her. I don’t know that I would have had the endurance to continue the way she did. But, still after all of that work, now that she was feeling worn out and was producing less milk, she felt that the only choice she had was to continue to be miserable in this cycle of pumping and feeding and cleaning and more pumping. Why did she feel stuck? She felt that her options were limited because of Mom-shame or Mom-guilt or a combination of both.
I have wondered if I may have been part of the problem. I took such pride in myself for being able to breastfeed my daughter for the first year of her life. It was stressful and difficult, and I felt like I fed her all the time. I was irritable. I was bitter. I was tired. That’s how I marked my experience for the first probably 6 months of her life with breastfeeding. And that’s what I want for other moms? That’s what I want for my sister? No, I want other mamas to feel joy with their little ones. Part of my decision to push through and continue breastfeeding came from a place of pride and that was wrong. First of all, the pride thing is a real struggle for me sometimes. I didn’t accomplish that. God did that for me and through me. Also, I actually didn’t have it that bad.
Since Dottie has grown and I’ve gotten more experience, there are more difficult breastfeeding stories out there than mine. Finally, breastfeeding for the first year may not be the end all be all. Before you start throwing pump flanges and milk storage bags at me, hear me out. There is certainly some research out there that outlines the positives of breastfeeding. I do not believe that just because one thing is good that another thing is inherently bad. When a mama is feeding her child formula, you cannot immediately say that she is making a poor decision for her child. You have no idea what that mother and child are dealing with. What if she has a severely low supply? Without the formula, that child would not be growing. What if this mother suffers from depression and continuing to breastfeed was putting her at risk of harming herself and her child? That formula is saving both of their lives and giving that mama back her joy. My point here, friends, is that we don’t know anyone else's backstory, so mom-shaming, or anyone shaming for that matter, has got to stop. God called us to love, not judge.
How do we get sucked into this shaming culture that says, “if you don’t do it my way, then you’re doing it wrong”? Honestly, because we don’t know all the facts. We are expecting everyone to take care of their children the same way that we would or did, but their lives are not the same as ours. We are too obsessed with winning and this need to be right. We rarely take the time to stand in someone else’s shoes. And we think that just because research supports something that it makes that the only option. The problem is: we are trying to measure ourselves and other people by human standards. The truth is: we are using the wrong measuring device. We use ourselves and our opinions when we should be using God and his opinions.
So, what is God’s opinion? The verse I referenced at the beginning from John is written in red in my Bible. That means Christ said it himself. It’s not like Jesus told James, who told Mark, who told Luke, who finally told John who wrote it down here, so he could have gotten it wrong. John was there with Jesus. They were BFFs if ever there were any. This also isn’t John saying, “I think this is what Jesus would have said.” Jesus said this. That means this is God’s opinion.
The savior of the world, who was perfect and did no wrong ever, is saying that He is NOT judging you, then what right do you have to judge one another or decisions that ultimately are not a matter of life and death? We don’t have to keep beating ourselves up for whatever it is that we think we are or are not doing perfectly. We don’t have to compare ourselves to the mother of three who just built a bookshelf and knitted a sweater for the homeless guy down the street. We don’t have to measure ourselves by the mom that is breastfeeding her third child and they are on month 15. We aren’t all the same. I don’t have to be just like her, and neither do you. And she doesn’t have to be just like us. The problem arrives when I use someone else’s accomplishments to judge myself as worthless or worth-less.
I’m also reminded of a story from John 8. Jesus was beginning to teach in the morning and the Pharisees brought out a woman to him that they had caught in the act of adultery. This woman must have been terrified. She was probably shaking and crying and praying in her heart for someone, anyone to have mercy on her. The men present her to Jesus as an adulterer and demand that she be stoned according to the law. Jesus bends down and writes in the sand. We have no idea what he’s writing. I have wondered in the past if he was listing sins that those men may have committed in order to make them think about where they stood with God. Perhaps he wanted to make them think about what they were guilty of. But, no matter what he wrote he said this.
“When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7
Comments
Post a Comment