It's Not That Complicated: Wrap-up

I've spent more time thinking quietly in the last three months than I have in years.   Truthfully, I didn't think about the Botkin Sisters or CP/QF until late last week.  Taking an unplanned break has brought a painful truth home:

By following the rules of Christian Patriarchy, the Botkin Sisters have missed life.  

Life means seeing people as fellow humans made in the image and likeness of God:

• My husband and I were waiting for an elevator at my son's hospital when a Mennonite couple exited a down elevator.  We waved at their robustly healthy son who looked to be about 2.  The mom saw my bag of breast milk (which means I'm headed to the NICU) and said quietly to me, "Our son and his twin sister who is upstairs (e,g. is in the hospital) were born very early here, too.  I promise it will get better soon."  I teared up and thanked her.  I replied, "My twin sister and I were born very early.  I got better right away but it took my sister longer.  She was in and out of the hospital when we were toddlers - but now she's wonderfully healthy.  It will get better for you, too."
• My son's biggest cheerleader is a Somali cleaning woman who gives us an update of how well he was doing when she was cleaning his area.  Understandably, the election of Trump terrified her especially when he closed the borders to Somalis.  I hope that my explanations of her rights as a permanent resident of the United States and how the Judicial Branch can block the Executive Branch from acting against the Constitution gives her as much comfort as she gives me every time she tells me my son is a "big, big, healthy, boy!"
• Has the Botkin Sisters book prepared any of their readers for interacting with all people as befits an understanding of people created in the image and likeness of God?  No, this book has given explicit examples of treating people who fail to conform to upper-middle class standards of respectability in the US as fallen scum.

Life means giving pieces of your heart away:

• I am grateful for my husband's ex-girlfriend in Ireland.  He clearly loved her and she loved him - but he couldn't move to Ireland and she couldn't leave her younger siblings at least one of who would be too young to remember her well.  Under Emo-Pure (emotional purity) rules, I should hate her and be anguished at the loss of a chunk of my husband's heart.  Instead, I am grateful for the time they had together, happy that my husband and I have created a life together and hopeful that she's formed the wonderful family she deserves.
• Emo-Pure implies - and occasionally states - that reserving your heart for your husband will keep you safe from heartbreak.  In truth, all things this side of heaven will end. 
•  I saw the terror in my husband's eyes as he realized our son might die due to a severe premature birth.  He didn't tell me until months later that he was terrified because he realized that I might die during the c-section if the doctors couldn't control the bleeding because my platelets were so low.  
• I started sobbing just before being taken for the c-section because because the doctors were going to have to do medical procedures on my son that would cause him pain to keep him alive - placing IVs, placing an ventilator tube - and there was nothing any of us could do because the other option was both he and I dying.
• This book has failed to prepare their readers for the messy, painful realities of being a loving human and offers instead a sterile, crushing form of self-protection that will crush and destroy the hearts of the people who practice it.

Life means working with the talents God gave you:

• The OB and NICU units of our local hospital - which is a regional center - are staffed mostly by women.  My OB is a woman. Of the team of 8 medical staff who ran my C-section, only the anesthesiologist was a man.  The neonatologist who lead the team who stabilized my son is a woman as were the NICU staff members who helped her.  All of the neonatal nurse practitioners are women.  There are over 200 RNs in the NICU; less than 10 are men.  
• Now, according to the Botkin Sisters, these are women who traded off marriage and a family for a career.  The doctors underwent 8 years of post-secondary education and a three year residency; the nurse practitioners did 6-7 years of post-secondary education with at least one year of nursing full-time in between college and their graduate degree.  The nurses have a four-year nursing degree.  Clearly, that's completely incompatible with being a wife and mother.
• Alas, no one remembered to tell the women this - the majority of the women are married and have children.  
• There are plenty of options for people who don't want to do a full 4 year degree.  A two-year degree leads to a LPN, a physical therapy assistant or a respiratory therapist.    Shorter training programs exist for phlebotomists and surgery technicians.
• Heck, there are tons of options for people who don't want any post-secondary training.  The Botkin family is emblematic of Christian Patriarchy's disdain for people who work as employees rather than owners of their own business.  Yet, a cashier who who is pleasant, cheerful and capable can make his or her many customers in a day feel a bit better about life.  
• There is one particular cashier at the cafe at my son's hospital that I'm thinking of right now.  She's fast and very, very pleasant.  Our interactions are short - but the relief I've gotten from knowing that I can pay for my lunch without any complications or delays while also seeing a smiling face has been a ray of hope and comfort during times where both seemed to have disappeared behind clouds.  (I only wish that more people had told her how much her work means to parents at the hospital.)
• This book fails miserably at showing readers how to live as a follower of Christ.  There is no emphasis on feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned or any of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  Instead, a self-important and self-centered form of Christianity where personal and family image is idolized to the detriment of God is celebrated.
  
  I'm glad to be done with this book.  Sharing my home with the glassy, brittle images of the Botkin Sisters was unpleasant.  Next on my reading list is "Before You Meet Prince Charming" by Sarah Mally.  
  
  Side note: Is writing a book about living as a CP unmarried daughter the kiss of death for getting married?  Sarah Mally is older than I am by a few years and unmarried.  I'm starting to see a theme.....