The Unholy Mother

             This past weekend, just a couple of days after Thanksgiving, we baptized baby Charlene. This was at the end of a joyous week in which Scott and I got to host both of our families in our new home. For me, it was emotional for many reasons. As we gave thanks to God for a home that was filled with the love and laughter of a family that can easily come together and be joyful despite our differences, I found myself feeling moments of sadness for Charlene as I looked at her life and what she will become.

From the moment Charlene was born, she has had quite the personality. I knew that between both of our genetics, Charlene was destined to be fiercely intelligent, bold, kind, compassionate, artistic, and joyous. My little miracle baby, has proven me right and has exceeded what I ever thought she could be. I remember so much growing up that my family and our friends would compare me to relatives that have gone before me. “Oh Pilar has her mom’s eyes and her dad’s smile.” “Oh Pilar sings like her mom.” “Oh Pilar looks like her grandmother when she scowls.” While all true, I was determined to let Charlene be who she was and try not to do that too much to her. But alas, Charlene was born and I can see so much of my mom and grandmother in her smile. I see so much of Scott and his mom in her eyes. I see my grandmother in her facial expressions. And her auburn hair and pale skin is apparently a Parnell trait. She is perfect. And she is a reminder to me that while she carries the traits of a past that she will never fully know, she also moves us into a future that most of us will never see. She is our past, our present, and our future.

               I understand why people hold on to traits they carry because it reminds them of how we are all connected. Getting to know and loving my child, has made me prouder to be who I am. The crow’s feet and puffy eyes that have been passed on to me from my grandfather’s family are signs that I have smiled daily and give me expressive eyes. The smile that clear as day is my father’s, reminds me of the joy his family fought to have in the face of adversity in a war-torn country.  And some day when Charlene looks in the mirror, I hope she remembers and takes pride in her features because they are traits her family has carried for generations. I hope they serve as a reminder to her that her soul is connected to something larger than herself and that she was never ours to begin with, but rather she was God’s.

            So as all of this swam around in my head, we prepared for her baptism. Two days after Thanksgiving, Charlene sat on my lap, in a gown made from my wedding dress, and she watched intently as the preacher spoke to all of us about why we baptize infants and why we dedicate our lives to following Jesus. She said she hoped that Charlene was kind to strangers. She hoped Charlene was compassionate and sat with the lonely and friendless at lunch. She hoped Charlene loved as fiercely as God loves her. Truth be told this is the first time someone other than myself or my husband has spoken about Charlene’s life and I looked at them and thought “you get it”.

            As you know, Scott and I lead very public lives, so on top of family pressure there is this added layer of community that places expectation on not only us, but the children we have. Charlene has been no different. From the womb she was called a “double PK”, that is, a “preacher’s kid”. From the womb it was a back and forth of “You will have her in church, won’t you?” or “how will you manage to be a priest and a mother” or better yet “she will come to church with you, but she will be quiet, right?”. Not to mention the comments about my body. My favorite was, “You need to suck in your stomach. People may be offended by your bump”.

Thanks for the advice Karen. I will get right on that. *Insert major eyeroll

(Karen is a fictional character created during seminary who we blamed everything on. She will make more appearances in the future).

*As a side note. We are followers of an incarnate God, who by his very nature was birthed from the body of a woman, so the idea of any Christian being upset by the vision of a pregnant woman/mother as a leader of the church is absurd in and of itself*

But I digress, so let’s get back to it.

From the moment the rest of the world found out that Charlene, my beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of God, daughter, was growing inside of me, she has been a person with higher expectations placed on her simply because she is the daughter of two priests.

           The problem is, is that I highly resent this idea. And it was in this that Scott and I decided long ago that we wouldn’t be the ones to baptize Charlene. When Charlene looks back at her baptism in pictures, she will see her parents with her Uncle Seldon and Aunt April, surrounded by priests who were not her parents. And it is our deepest hope that she knows that she wasn’t baptized because we are priests, she was baptized because we believe that in the life of Jesus we have come to know the fullness of God and we baptized her so that she may share in the gift of eternal life given in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. She is special not because she is a “preacher’s kid”, she is special because she is a child of God.

         In my ministry, this is something I strive for everyone I baptize to understand. By the nature of their baptism, they are called to have compassion and show Christ’s love to the world. They will make mistakes, they will be unkind, but that is when they turn back to God and are welcomed back into His loving arms. This isn’t a privilege that you get if you are worthy enough or have priests for parents. This is a gift that is given to all who follow Jesus. And sometimes when I hear the term “double PK”, I just want to say “shame on you if you think that makes it necessary for her to be better than the rest of you. You have completely missed the point. By nature of your baptism, you should do better.” We should all strive to show God’s love because of the love God has shown us.

         So as the preacher invited Charlene to live boldly and show God’s love to a broken world, I know that she will because we have surrounded her with a fierce band of Jesus loving people that choose this life, not because someone made them, but because they believe in it. This miracle is what we are most thankful for.

            

This week, I am sharing something deeply personal. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, but while I want to write lightheartedly as much as I can, my experience of birth has deeply influenced who I am as a mother and why I need this blog.

My journey into motherhood was one that didn’t begin like I thought it would. When I first found out I was pregnant, I immediately started planning for a very holistic, natural experience. For anyone who knows me, this was completely out of character. There is nothing about me that says crunchy, organic, or granola. Seriously y’all, I don’t do nature and other than rubbing essential oils on my forehead when I am sick or have a headache, I have no problem with modern medicine. Pregnancy changed something in me though. I immediately felt this sense of being connected to my body and I wanted to see what it could do and I wanted to experience what God created it to do (I am also competitive to a fault sometimes and I was determined to have a low intervention birth). So anyway, when I found out I was pregnant the wheels started turning and I began preparing for natural child birth. My goal was no drugs of any kind and to labor at home as long as possible. Almost a year since I found out Charlene was on her way and I realize that those thoughts and ideas of what motherhood and birth looked like, would set the tone for not only my stress level during pregnancy, but also for birth and the three-month period that has followed.

                 Within weeks of finding out I was pregnant, I had already put enough pressure on myself to make this an experience that was one hundred percent not going to go how I had planned. One of my simultaneous strengths and weaknesses is that I try to do everything myself and I will always believe that I can do anything and everything I set my mind to. As a child it looked like my parents getting frustrated with me. As an adult it looks like me tying myself in knots trying to do it all until I get overwhelmed.

                So many times while I was pregnant I had conversations with men and women who spoke about what it is like to get to know your child after he or she is born. During one conversation in particular I spent time reflecting with someone about how babies come with personalities and temperaments that are out of our control. I never truly understood what that meant until our daughter was born. I remember my parents talking about how different my sister and I were from birth, but it wasn’t until Charlene was born that I realized just how deeply God makes our personalities within us. I may stand corrected in twenty years, but I believe that so much of who we are and who we will become is with us from the moment we are born. So, I guess I can blame my stubbornness on nothing, but the circumstances of who I am.

          As I grow into this new part of myself, I am starting to believe that the same is true for motherhood. As I have journeyed through the past almost four months, I have experienced so much joy and simultaneously so much uneasiness. I have started to notice how my experience in life has been carried into motherhood. On the day Charlene was born, I too, was also born into something new and different and I carried things with me into this experience that I didn’t know I would.

          The week Charlene was born, began like any other week. It was my last week at work and it had been a particularly stressful few weeks. I think we buried 6 people the month before I was due (which is pretty normal for life in an aging community), but chalk it up to hormones or stress, my vocation was weighing heavily on me. Being a priest is so beautiful in so many ways. Every day I am still shocked that God called me to experience the intimacies of his creation in such a truly unique way. Nonetheless, these intimate moments were causing some stress. At around 37 weeks my blood pressure started to go up. The doctor wasn’t worried at first, but we were watching it. On my last day of work, I had my 39-week appointment. Bloodwork revealed that my blood pressure may be a concern now. I was given instructions that if I felt sick at all or if my blood pressure went up at home, I was to call the doctor immediately. I slept most of Friday, but Saturday I woke up and had a horrible headache. I have been a migraine sufferer my whole life, so my experience of pain isn’t normal. I convinced myself I was fine. My husband was worried though, so we tried to relax that day. By 4pm after mani/pedis and froyo, I still wasn’t feeling well. Our home blood pressure cuff revealed that my blood pressure was higher than we were comfortable with, so we called the doctor. The on call OBGYN sent us to the hospital. Within two hours I was admitted and they had started an induction. Remember that all-natural birth plan? I was still determined to have a natural experience, so the doctor said I could be induced “low and slow”, taking my time and letting Charlene greet the world when she was ready. This started a 69-hour process. My doctors monitored me closely and promised that as long as neither of us were in distress, I could create my own birth experience. After using every form of induction possible, I was finally given Pitocin and started contracting regularly on Monday morning. By 10pm that night I wasn’t moving quickly enough and Charlene showed no signs of wanting to come out. Through many tears and a whole lot of fear I was given an epidural at 10pm on Monday night.

*As a side note, this has given me a whole new appreciation for nurses. My best friend in this world is a nurse and I don’t know how she does it. A perfect stranger held me so I was still, while I sobbed uncontrollably, so afraid that the epidural was in some way going to damage my spine. She was a saint and I am forever grateful. She was strong for me and for my husband, so he could be scared too.*

The epidural did the trick and by Tuesday morning at 9am I was fully dilated. I started pushing at 9:40am and Charlene was born at 12:27pm. The birth was relatively easy. I have said it a thousand times and I will say it again, I could birth a thousand babies, it was the induction and the experience afterward that I would love to avoid having to do again.

           After the two-hour period after birth, called the “golden hour”, Charlene was taken from my arms, but kept in the room for testing and it was time for me to get up and walk around. As I stood up I immediately had the all too familiar pain of a migraine envelope my head. I also could not stand up. They laid me back down, gave me medicine, and Charlene was moved to the nursery. Around 6pm, I woke up, had dinner, called a bunch of people, and held our baby girl while Scott took a nap (he deserved it. He is the biggest hero of my life). Around 8:30pm a nurse came to check on me and that is when things started to take a turn in a direction no one was expecting. As she came to help me up, I started to throw clots of blood. I was hemorrhaging. A nurse looked at me and said “there are about to be 100 people in here. Stay calm.” That same nurse shook my husband awake and he joined me as they started pounding on my stomach with great force. They drugged me heavily to try to get me to relax. I will spare everyone the details of what all of that felt like. I have forgotten most of the pain I experienced that night, but what I still can’t shake are the emotions it brought to me that have taken up permanent residence in my heart as a deep seeded memory.

             As I laid on that bed, I could see my reflection in the lights. They never moved me from the delivery room and the special lights in those rooms, work like a mirror of sorts. I saw Scott holding my hand and I saw more blood pour out of me than I thought was possible for a person to lose and still remain conscious. As I laid there, the only thing I could think was “I am going to die here on this table. What if I am wrong about what I believe? What if I just fall asleep and I never know I died because there is nothing I will ever wake up to? What if it is just dark?” Scott and I were terrified. I asked him to call a friend of ours to sit with him that night and his mother joined us the next day. They watched me throughout the night and surgery wasn’t off the table. I didn’t want Scott to be alone if something happened to me. That night I woke up around 3am and I was starving. The nurse brought me a blue raspberry popsicle (The cheap kind you could get off the ice cream truck as a kid. YUM.) I watched Scott sleep and I cried over what could have been. I felt the overwhelming fear that can make a home when the foundation of your faith is rattled. I went back to sleep eventually and the next morning when I woke up it was like nothing had ever happened. They brought me my sweet girl, I began the process of trying to nurse, and we got to start living as a family of three.

            The problem is, that those emotions of intense fear and feeling like I had lost my faith influenced my entrance into motherhood deeply. Just as babies are born with personalities and things they carry with them into life, I too, was born into motherhood with what felt like baggage. I cried for weeks. Every night from 6pm to about 11pm, I would just weep. We had family visiting a lot, so I tried to do this privately. Scott held my hand every night as I fell asleep because I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up and I didn’t want to die alone. During this time Scott prayed for me and over me when I couldn’t. He kept feeding and diaper charts. He held Charlene and brought her to me when I wasn’t able to emotionally be what I wanted and needed to be.

             What I have learned in all of this is that my faith is still central to who I am and I still believe in the hope of resurrection. Thankfully the feelings of doubt passed as I found safety and comfort in the experience of just going to church this summer. Funerals are still hard for me to officiate, but if anything, I feel stronger in my conviction that there is something more to this life. I asked Scott the day after Charlene was born what would have happened if I had left the two of them. Without missing a beat, he said “you would wake up and we would all be together. It would be like no time had passed. You wouldn’t have to miss us.”  I could go on about this man for a lifetime and it wouldn’t be enough, but that’s another blog post. We do carry the experiences of our lives into every new adventure and I am still working on the emotional hangover that is my experience of birth, but as I look at the family Scott and I have made and I enter back into work surrounded by a community that is so interconnected, I am reminded that this is what it means to be part of the communion of saints. God wasn’t finished with me yet and this experience has only further reminded me that I will and must spend my life telling people that they matter, are seen, are loved, and are needed for us to be wholly who God desires for us to be as a people made new by His promises to us. It is my prayer every day that the fear I carry with me about motherhood and dying doesn’t paralyze me. It is my deepest hope that my experience doesn’t keep me from having all the babies we want out of fear of loss. It is also my prayer every day that God continues to give me the strength to preach the hope of resurrection, even when I am fearful.  None of us knows what tomorrow will bring, but I am committed to this life I am called to because I don’t know a way forward without being completely invested in it.

         My name is Pilar Parnell, I am 27 years old, and I am a new mom. I lead a typically normal life, with one exception, my husband and I are both ordained priests in the Episcopal Church. While not the strangest thing in the world, our vocations have made our lives very public in the rural setting of our communities in the Northern Neck of Virginia. This past June, two weeks shy of our first anniversary, my husband Scott and I welcomed our first child, a daughter, into the world. After a long and difficult labor, we welcomed Miss Charlene Marie into the world on June 25^th and while she has been an absolute blessing, motherhood has not come as easy to me as I hoped it would. As I enter into my fourteenth week postpartum, I am officially back at work full time and while I am feeling more myself with each day, I have found that my postpartum soul desperately needs a creative outlet. With that I have begun “The Unholy Mother”. The name came to me a few weeks after I gave birth when I was reflecting on how this experience of motherhood was nothing like I had imagined. I expected a “blessed Virgin Mary, crowned in glory” experience. I expected to be sipping on tea while my body produced milk and my husband cradled a child that was always peaceful. I expected to shower every day and dry my hair into a perfectly coiffed bob. I expected to be reading books while I nursed and stepping back into the world stronger than ever. What I got was not that. And while not unholy (I find the process of creation and birth deeply holy), I have never been able to identify with the experience of feeling “good as new” just days after delivery. I was never robed in white and gold nursing the man child that is often depicted in icons of Mother Mary with baby Jesus. My “icon of motherhood”, as my dear husband described it, was me nursing a child in one arm while I ate a breakfast taco with the other hand, and egg fell all over my chest and chin. Instead of peace and quiet confidence, I dealt with thrush and painful nursing for 8 weeks, postpartum anxiety and depression, crying for weeks after delivery thanks to hormonal shifts, and struggling to feel confident in this new journey. The feeling that I was not good enough and that I had done something wrong because I wasn’t my old self started to take over. All too often I gave that inner voice telling me I wasn’t good enough a place in my life and that started to make me feel extremely isolated.

       I know what you must be thinking, “Oh great, another female priest in the Episcopal Church talking about inner demons and shame”. This isn’t that kind of blog. I will leave that to Brené Brown and people with more experience with psychology. This is instead a place for women, men, parents, priests, and anyone who may just be curious or bored to come and feel less alone. I don’t plan on this becoming another place for religion to become the focus, although my posts will often have a spiritual bend, but rather I need this blog for me as a place to write and share my experiences about motherhood, being a working mom, living in community, etc.  I don’t want to be anyone’s inspiration, I too, just desire to feel like what I am feeling and experiencing is an experience that others have had. I plan on writing as often as the mood strikes me and sharing with you those experiences and reflections on motherhood and the spirituality of motherhood that I think are relatable. Here’s to 14 weeks post-partum. May this space be somewhere, where you can feel less alone in the holy and what feels like the unholy moments of life.