father. In fact, at some points God tries methods of discipline that I shudder to think of a parent using with children they love. Sometimes we are not mothering either. We are doing good work that needs to be done for future generations even if they will not be “our” children.
If we check the verbs—of our actions and God’s—we might just be parenting without the title. God heard their cries, instructed, lamented, grieved, cried out, warned, and disciplined her children in between redeeming them from slavery in Egypt and sending them into exile in Babylon. She yearned for them to listen and to turn back to her. These may not be the actions mothers are most proud of, but they can certainly be used to describe some of our activities. When the identity of parent is breaking down for God or for us, perhaps we are in a waiting period, when that deeply invested, caregiving identity is not primary but it is certainly not gone, just like for our friends who are not recognized as parents, yet are behaving in parental ways. To name that waiting and the variety of parental actions will allow many people to know that they are seen by their faith community and by God. For clergy women to give ourselves permission to speak honestly about the Wait can be a gift for open, mutual pastoral relationships.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
Clergy Women:
1. Which words or actions of others were most helpful to you, during periods of waiting for children?
2. How do you understand the Wait to become a mother to have affected your spiritual life or relationship with your congregation?
Support Network:
1. What has been your understanding of God’s involvement in pregnancy or adoption? Have any of those ideas changed through reading this chapter?
2. Which of the ways God “became a parent” named in this chapter surprised you to think of it that way? Why?
3. Does it shift any of your expectations of God or your pastor, to acknowledge the pressures of the Wait?
In many families there is a parent who is treated like the president, and one who is the vice president. If the president is unavailable, the vice president will do. If the president is there, however, she (and it is most often “she”) is the one the children go to for help, solace, or affirmation. The caregiver who bears that honor and responsibility may shift and change as our responsibilities outside the home change, but we all know who the president is in our family right now. This language and comparison came from a parent educator in the public school system, but the same could easily be said of our congregational life. Everybody knows who is at the center, and the Central One sets the tone for all the other relationships. Here’s a clue: It is often the primary caregiver, the one doing the mothering.
Trust
None of us are born attached to our parents or caregivers. We are born needy, certainly. When a child’s needs are met consistently by a primary caregiver, the child seems to establish a trust and bond with that caregiver (so often the mother). This bond is not innate; it comes through consistent care and affection, which is a great deal of work, especially in the middle of the night. It takes deep commitment to love and care for a child no matter what. Every. Single. Time. Parents must respond while carrying our own wounds, losses, upheaval, and even postpartum depression.
Postpartum depression can affect birth parents or adoptive parents, as it is intertwined not only with hormones and brain chemistry, but also with our own shifting identity. The reality of holding our children’s lives in our hands is terrifying and more demanding than we could have imagined. Depression tells us we are not up to the task. Scripture portrays God having some of these responses too, regretting making humankind in the first place in Genesis 6:6–7: “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’” God’s emotional responses to humanity can seem unpredictable too; sometimes anger surfaces quickly, or sadness. Postpartum depression is complicated and multilayered, but these details might connect God’s experience to human responses of new parents. The Holy Spirit can speak through the honesty of others who have been through it, and even through the screening questions at our doctor’s appointments. Thanks be to God that we are not alone.
While parents adjust to our new roles in an adoption, our children are navigating how to respond, too. Adoption psychologist Nancy Verrier describes a “primal wound” in the lives of adopted children whose first central relationship (with their birth mother) was broken. That severed attachment can become a defining characteristic, showing up later as a sense of loss, anxiety, or uncertain identity. Perhaps not all adoptees experience it: we all respond differently to our circumstances. Yet that this theory exists at all testifies that the relationship with our mother is central for most of us, to who we become and how we relate to others. Congregations might consider how their attachment to a founding pastor or one who shaped their most significant years echoes in this theory.
When my husband and I adopted our elder daughter, attachment was the primary initial focus of our lives. Prospective adoptive parents are counseled on how to establish that they alone are the ones their child should attach to in their new life, which can seem harsh to grandparents, friends and other caregivers. Parents must be the ones to meet all their child’s needs for physical affection, emotional comfort, and basic needs like food. No one else, for six months, we were told. It was not a threat, to heed or feel guilty about (there are circumstances outside of our control). It was advice from those who know how delicate and difficult it can be for humans to form new secure attachments, to trust and live as though this new relationship will be forever. To do that, we need our focus narrowed down to only one or two people, until it sticks. There will be developmental stages, especially in the teenage years, when everyone questions their identity and belonging, but the goal we keep in front of us as adoptive parents is to pay attention to nurturing attachment and never to sow any seeds of doubt about the permanence of our family. As Paul writes, when we cry “Abba! Father!” it is the spirit bearing witness to our trust that God our Parent hears and will respond to us. Every single time. This is a permanent, secure attachment. Yet even with God, it takes time to develop attachment when we have been abandoned by others.
As I began my first solo pastorate, the contradictory advice from colleagues was rampant. Start out in the way you intend to continue. Carry on where the interim pastor left off. Remember: you only have six months to change everything that needs changing, while they forgive you because it is a “honeymoon period.” Also, do not change anything for the first year, minimum. In reality, the initial challenge is to figure out with whom we are working and how we will build trust with them. One of my first actions as pastor was to attend a women’s retreat, where I met all the “mothers of the church” at once. One of the West African women with a gregarious personality seemed to me like a main figure in the group, because she was so vocal. She volunteered information about many of her peers, and I began thinking: “She will be so helpful to me! I will consult with her and learn a great deal.” I remembered her name and face, while others blended together in my memory. Yet I did not see her in church for nearly a month after that; she was not as much of an insider as I had guessed. I gradually learned that one of the least vocal women was the quietly dependable and revered leader among the African women of the congregation. I should not have assumed that figuring everyone out would be simple or possible. I also waffled quite a bit between trusting my instincts and doing what I was told was culturally expected by the West African church members. Stepping into this central role was such a privilege and a huge puzzle. How do we become the central figure everyone can depend on, knowing that someday the center has to hold without us?
Jesus most certainly struggled with this. His disciples were arguing about sitting at his right and left hand, when