When I came back to the Church in my late twenties, I remember a priest one Sunday saying in his homily that marriage was a vocation. “Yeah, right,” I thought. “A second-rate vocation for those who can’t stomach the rigors of religious life.” It wasn’t until a few years later when I got married and had children that I understood the true import of that priest’s words. Marriage and child rearing are a vocation, a calling, a means of sanctification. Every day when I change diapers and fix snacks and wipe runny noses and correct and cajole my three little girls, I realize that not only am I helping them to become saints, they are helping me on the long, narrow path toward sainthood.
In the five years since my first daughter Rebecca was born, I have learned that caring for children provides opportunities for service and mortification that I never would have sought out had I remained single or childless. Like taking care of sick children.
When I was single, I hated being around sick people. I saw illness as a sign of moral weakness. Hearing some poor soul at my office coughing and sneezing in his office, I would think, “If he just took better care of himself, he wouldn’t be sick in the first place.” I also worried about getting sick myself. Rather than heeding the Church’s admonition to visit the sick, I ran in the other direction at the sight of a sick friend or acquaintance. I was too busy. I couldn’t afford to be sick.
My attitude has changed since I started having children. I would like to say that it changed overnight, that the first time Rebecca got sick I set aside all my selfish inclinations. But I would be lying. The first time Rebecca got sick, I got angry. When she was three weeks old, Rebecca caught a cold. Because she was four weeks premature, I had to feed her every two hours around the clock. We’d had some trouble with nursing in the beginning. All Rebecca wanted to do was sleep. I would work for forty-five minutes to get her latched on. She would take three swallows of milk, then fall asleep at my breast. I tickled her feet. I took off all her clothes to make her cold. I’d work for another half hour to get her latched on. She’d go suck-suck-suck and fall asleep.
Finally, at the end of the second week, she began to eat better. She stayed awake long enough to nurse a good twenty minutes. She started gaining weight. Then one morning, I noticed shiny, clear mucous running from her tiny nose. She sneezed a few times when I woke her up to feed her. When she tried to nurse, she couldn’t breathe. She would pop off, wave her arms, and look around with a pained, panicked expression. “I can’t believe this,” I moaned inwardly. “It’s already so hard to get her to eat. Now she can’t breathe.” I was concerned for Rebecca. I wanted her to get over her cold so she could eat and gain weight. I was equally dismayed at how much work Rebecca’s cold was going to mean for me. Would the cold go away? Would it turn into an ear infection? Would I have to take her to the doctor? Would I have to give her medicine? In my first-time-mother, hormone-crazed, sleep-deprived brain, my responsibilities seemed overwhelming.
Rebecca’s cold got better. She ate more and gained weight. Now she’s five years old and runs around with her younger sisters Angela and Lucy. Looking at her, you’d never guess she was a sickly baby. I’ve changed too. Not as dramatically as I would have liked. Now when my kids get sick, I don’t get angry. I’m more resigned. I try hard to thank God for the opportunity to serve him through serving my children. I strive to offer up the mortifications their childhood illnesses entail for me. I don’t always succeed.
Last month, we all got the flu. One Sunday evening, Rebecca complained about being cold and tired. When my husband, Tim, and I put her to bed, she shivered under her comforter and an extra blanket. She woke up in the middle of the night calling out, “Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy.” When I brushed her hair away from her face, her forehead burned with fever. For the next two days, Rebecca lay on the couch, listless and feverish. I tried to keep three-year-old Angela and one-year-old Lucy away from Rebecca. My efforts didn’t work. Angie lay on the couch stroking Rebecca’s hair and kissing her. “Poor Rebecca,” Angela soothed. More than once, Lucy grabbed Rebecca’s germ-laden cup off the arm of the couch and gulped great furtive swigs of warm 7-Up.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Angela complained of being cold and tired. All Wednesday, her fever hovered between 104 and 105. We pumped her full of children’s Advil and sponged her off to try to bring the fever down. At 2:30 Thursday morning, her fever broke. At 4:30 Thursday morning, I woke up shivering beneath a heavy down comforter. By the time the girls got up around 7:00, I could barely move. My head ached. My arms and legs felt like they were filled with wet cement. Each time I stood up, a tiny person inside my head stabbed the back side of my eyes with needles. Waves of nausea washed over me. Although Tim works at home and wanted to help, he was on the last day of a deadline he couldn’t break. For the morning, he holed himself up in his office. In the afternoon, he had to leave the house for three hours.
All day long, I laid on the couch and prayed the girls wouldn’t need anything. They did. Every five minutes, I got up to take care of some need. I fixed breakfast and lunch and snacks. I filled sippy cups with juice. I read books to the them. I snatched Lucy away from in front of the TV while Rebecca and Angela watched a video. I tried to offer up my suffering. Angela, no longer lethargic from her fever, felt just healthy enough to be really cranky. “Mommy,” she asked in the afternoon after Lucy had gone down for her nap, “I wanna do a puzzle with you.”
“Sure, sweetie,” I answered. “Just give me a minute.” I rolled off the couch and sat on the floor near the coffee table. The man in my head stabbed the backs of my eyes. I concentrated hard on not throwing up. For the next ten minutes, Angela and I pieced together her favorite puzzle of Beauty dancing with the Beast. When we finished, I crawled back up on the couch and closed my eyes.
“Mommy,” Angela said, “I wanna do another puzzle with you.”
“Not now, Angie.” I answered. “Mommy needs to rest.”
“Pleeeeeze, Mommy,” Angela whined.
“Sweetie, Mommy doesn’t feel good.”
“I wanna do a puzzle with youuuuuuuuu,” Angela persisted. She slapped the coffee table in frustration.
“NO!” I exploded. “I can NOT do a puzzle with you.” I could tell that my voice sounded angry and edgy and scary. I kept going. “Now please just let me rest.” Angela burst into tears and ran to her room. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
When Angela walked back sniffling into the living room, I gathered her up beside me on the couch. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I’m very tired and very sick. But I still shouldn’t have yelled the way I did.”
From her perch on the other couch, Rebecca looked at me and said, “You shouldn’t yell like that if you want to be a saint, Mommy.”
I had to pause for a moment. “You’re right, Rebecca,” I answered. “If I want to be a saint, I need to ask God to help me be more patient.”
“I want to be a saint, Mommy.”