Do Not Avert Your Gaze: On Teen Motherhood

Do you believe, as I do, that we are summoned into being by a Presence and that our lives begin at conception?

Then you are what our culture calls "prolife." But supporting "life" in the abstract and supporting, really supporting, life as lived and experienced by real human beings is very different. Our lives can be messy, vulgar, joyful, unfair and pocketed by violence. To support those lives - from conception to their natural deaths - is radical, counter-cultural, and, some might say, nonsensical.

Our culture is full of ugly messages about  girls and the consequences of teenaged sex. How can you knit a baby blanket for a teenager? Isn't that just supporting her poor decision making? How can you accommodate pregnant teens at a high school? Won't that make more young ladies pregnant? Why didn't she use a condom? What was she thinking? Why did she let this happen? Isn't her mother angry?  If she had had an abortion, none of us would have to deal with this scandal. ACCIDENTS HAPPEN: call your local Planned Parenthood and we will give you a morning-after pill, no questions asked.

In these days, I am praying for a young lady I know. She is mentally ill and the victim of violence by boyfriend. She is 17. She is pregnant. She is making a brave and difficult choice to carry and raise their child.

I am remembering a story from years ago, when I was living in Raleigh, NC and a high school student became pregnant. Her private Episcopal school kicked her out : not because she was pregnant but because she chose to carry the child. You see, her pregnant belly was causing a scandal. And I wondered then how a church-affiliated school averted its gaze when their students got abortions. Noone had to know about that, you see. No reputations lost, was the thinking.

I stumbled across a poem from a website I love called "Fried Chicken and Coffee." The writer is 29 (pictured here ) and writes with heartbreaking clarity about another mom in another difficult circumstance.

We must not avert our gaze from what is real, what is true, what is life. Only Beauty can save us.

Read Misty Skaggs' poem here.

Link Up: 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Me

I swindled this idea from Granola Catholic Why don't you do your own and post a link in the comment box? That way, we can all get to know one another better!

1.  I took an extra year for college because I took extra science courses in the hopes of being a pre-med. I worked very very hard, but simply did not have the grades to continue on that path.

2.  M.D.s  run in my family; my dad is a doctor, as were his two brothers, as is one of my sisters.

3. My mother is a retired public school teacher. So is my mother-in-law.

4. A few summers ago, I voraciously read through three of the four books in the Twilight series. I stopped because I felt ridiculous being obsessed with whether Bella would fall in love with the werewolf or the vampire. Plus, a girlfriend told me the fourth book was icky.

5.  I met my beloved 20 years ago at a Thanksgiving dinner in Statesville, N.C. We talked until about 3 a.m., but  didn't start dating until about six months later. (My idea not to date; not his! Silly me.)

6. I  spilled a plate of fried eggs on a customer at a diner where I waitressed after graduating from college. I quit the job that very night. (I was working a 12 hour overnight shift).

7. I was a lousy waitress (in case that wasn't already clear from #6). Too much to keep straight in my head - this one needs dessert; this family just showed up; the other guy's soup is ready etc.

8. I am not an auditory learner. In one ear, out the other. If I write something down, however, I rarely forget it.

9. Many many things I don't write about; most have to do with struggles of my siblings or my husband's' or of the challenges my students face.
 
10.  My husband is the oldest boy in a family of three boys and a girl. I am the youngest in a family of three girls and one boy. This is one more way we complement each other.

After Whitney Houston's Death: Reflections From A Grateful Alcoholic

Jamie is a family friend, a soccer coach to our younger son and a beloved neighbor.

By James McCrone

I celebrated eight years sobriety last week (Feb. 3). Whitney Houston died last night.

My wife and I will commemorate and celebrate those eight years with dinner out tonight. While our discussion will not dwell on things past, whatever we end up talking about, the subtext will remain that this dinner, the health and well being of the children and the continuation of a (now) happy marriage, could not have been foreseen eight and a half years ago. We’ll certainly talk about Whitney Houston, who was barely six months older than I am.