Tag: motherhood

Gentle & Lowly as a Viper

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

I have a necklace that I’ve not taken off since I got it two Christmases ago. It’s a thin gold chain with a circle pendant that says “Gentle & Lowly” and has two heart-shaped tags with David and Tov’s initials on it.

I chose to engrave “Gentle & Lowly” on my pendant in reference to Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, which draws from Jesus’s own description of himself as “gentle and lowly in heart” in Matthew 11 to point out the essence of God’s heart for His people. It was written for, in Ortlund’s own words, “the discouraged, the frustrated, the weary, the disenchanted, the cynical, the empty. Those running on fumes. Those whose Christian lives feel like constantly running up a descending escalator. Those of us who find ourselves thinking: ‘How could I mess up that bad– again?'”

Reading Ortlund’s book made me look at Matthew 11:29, a familiar verse– “take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”— in fresh eyes. Ortlund points out that of the four gospels, this is the only instance in which Jesus describes his own heart— and if that’s the case, we ought to pay attention: Jesus, the Son of God, King of Kings, describes himself as gentle and lowly in heart. His orientation towards us is that of mercy, love, compassion, self-sacrifice. He hates sin, to the point of dying on the cross because of it, but his heart towards the penitent is open, wide, and forgiving. That has profound implications on our relationship with God, and our relationship with others.

I was moved by the heart of Jesus. His gentleness and lowliness taught me what it means to be “Christlike,” to be “the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:15-17)

If the Jesus who lives inside me through his spirit is gentle and lowly, then I too want to be gentle and lowly. I too want that to be the key descriptor of my heart and posture.

There’s just one problem. I’m about as gentle and lowly as a viper. Anyone who knows me would never think to use “gentle” or “lowly” to describe me. In fact, it’s the people who are closest to me who have been bitten most by my viper moments.

Just a week ago, while my parents were visiting us to meet Woori, I had another viper moment. It was the hottest week of the year, but that’s not what turned me into a viper. I actually cannot always explain why I get so snappish and irritable sometimes. I’d like to blame the sleep deprivation, or postpartum hormones. I’d like to blame my frustration with the lack of improvement in nursing Woori. I’d like to blame the increasing meltdowns from Tov, who have been crying and screaming so often his voice is now as hoarse as a chronic smoker’s. But I cannot. Sometimes, I’m just a bitch for no reason.

David had just clambered up mid-afternoon to get a snack, and he asked me what was in the mixing bowl sitting on the kitchen counter.

“Bread,” I said.

He made a face. “Can we not use the oven today? It’s too hot. I don’t want the AC running all day.”

I ignored him.

“Sophia? Sophia?”

I felt a hot flash of irritation. The dough was already rising, and I was so sick of hearing David complaining about the weather. “Whatever,” I snapped. “Just shut up.” Then I walked away.

My mother, who was present at the time, observed the whole interaction. She went up to David later and told him, “Sometimes, she can really stab a dagger into your heart. She does that to me too.”

I only know because David told me later, while I was nursing Woori. “You really need to watch the way you talk,” he said. It’s like a whiplash, he told me. One moment I’m fine and happy, and the next moment— whoosh! The viper strikes.

I felt like such a fraud. I call myself a Christian, yet there’s very little Christlikeness in me. I am a mother who’s thinking and talking about raising my children in the faith, yet my faith does not primarily shape the way I think, speak, and act.

Gentle and lowly I am not. I am not gentle and lowly with my husband when he annoys me or does things that make me feel misunderstood or unappreciated. I am not gentle and lowly with Tov when he is being particularly whiny and screamy, and my nerves are all frayed from over-stimulation.

All the more ironic that I wear that engraved in my necklace 24/7, and also all the more reason why I should wear it constantly as a reminder. During these moments though, long after I had already struck my head out and sunk my fangs into my prey’s heart, I wear that pendant like a scarlet letter, an ugly red brand of shame and regret.

I feel stuck in this cycle of striking and remorsing. I of all people know best that I need to watch the way I talk, to be slow to speak and slow to anger. The consequences of my speech and action get more and more serious as I age. With my parents, I know they’ll always love and accept me, no matter how poisonous my fangs are. With David, I know there’s a limit before the toxins reach the bloodstreams of our marriage. And as for my children, I am terrified of scarring them for life.

And yet. There are those viper moments, when my fangs rear up before my brain even recognizes what I’m doing. If Jesus’s essence is gentleness and lowliness, my essence seems to be sharpness and haughtiness. It is what spills out of me the instant I’m poked and punctured. It’s hard for me to even ask David for forgiveness then, or pray, when I’d rather tuck my head into a hole and hide, or worse, root around the dirt looking for justifications for my behavior.

There was a time when I wanted to go to seminary to study theology. I read Wayne Grudem’s Systemic Theology for fun. I loved gathering knowledge and understanding, like picking fruits into a basket, and debating things like predestination and complementarianism. I am by nature a nerd and love learning new things, but all that knowledge also puffed me up, deceiving me into mistaking education for sanctification. The fruits of knowledge I gathered in my basket, hoarded but unused, rotted into brown, putrid mush. What’s the use of learning about the fruits of the Spirit— gentleness and self-control in particular— when I don’t manifest them in my own life? So much of my theology has become like my necklace— it’s there, and I’ve gotten so used to it being there, that I no longer put any consciousness into why it’s there, what it’s for. It’s become little more than a pretty decoration, like the wedding ring of an adulterer.

These days, Woori likes to grab at my necklace. She’s still too young to intentionally grasp at objects, but she can wrap her tiny fingers around the chain and tug at it with a firm grip. I’ll have to untangle her fingers, gently removing each finger, careful not to hurt her delicate pink skin. And that’s how I remembered: Oh yeah. The necklace. Gentle & Lowly. With the initials of the two people with whom I’m the least gentle and lowly.

It’s not so much that I’ve forgotten to be gentle and lowly. It’s that I’ve forgotten Jesus, forgotten his heart for me, forgotten to fall in love with his heart over and over again.

Last Sunday, I sat in the church’s nursing room with Woori and listened to a sermon about the historical reliability of the gospels. It was more a lecture than a sermon, the nerdy kind I love, with lots of historical facts and intellectual stimulation. It was an engaging sermon, but I was half-distracted. I listened while struggling to nurse Woori, getting frustrated and discouraged by her lack of improvement, and then fumbling hot and bothered underneath a nursing cover trying to pump as discreetly as I could, silently cursing the men present in the nursing room.

The sermon ended, and worship started. The worship band sang “King of Kings” by Hillsong, a 5-year-old song I’ve heard and sang many times. In fact, I remember grousing internally, Ugh, another Hillsong song. I want old hymns! They’re so much richer and deeper than these contemporary Christian music.

They started singing:

In the darkness we were waiting
Without hope, without light
‘Til from Heaven You came running
There was mercy in Your eyes…

And then the chorus:

Praise the Father, praise the Son
Praise the Spirit, three in one
God of glory, Majesty
Praise forever to the King of Kings

I don’t know why. But I started weeping.

It wasn’t the beautiful melody. It wasn’t just the lyrics. It was just, at that moment, so spiritually parched, I felt the first drop of a light rain, and man, it felt so sweet. So sweet it broke me.

It was the power of worship. Praise the Father. Praise the Son. Praise the Spirit, three in one. Praise forever the King of Kings. A simple praise. A simple reminder of the majesty and glory of God. And I remembered, then, how awesome, how incredibly freeing it is, to simply lift my head up and worship Him, not just for what He’s done, but who He is.

Even when I chose the engraving for the necklace, I was more fixated with what I must become. When I failed, I berated myself, excused myself, hid myself. If I counted all the ways I failed as a wife and a mother and a daughter and a human being, I would get too overwhelmed to do anything about it. I can’t will my heart to change. I need a whole new heart. I need the heart of Jesus.

There is a time to study the Bible like a theologian, to analyze verse by verse with commentaries and highlighters. I don’t have that time right now. Much of my day is spent nursing Woori round the clock, pumping while trying to keep her from fussing and crying, dealing with Tov’s tantrums and antics, cooking and cleaning and oh God, endless loads of laundry stained with pee and poop and breastmilk, a domestic potpourri of sourness, pungency, and sticky sweetness.

But then in the midst of my hurry Woori grabs my necklace, and I think not of what I’m not, but who Jesus is.

This is a time to just think about Jesus, and fall in love with his heart, and worship him, because we become what we worship, and the one I worship is gentle and lowly.

Tov meets Woori

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

I remember the day of my first date with David.

It was my first official date ever, really, the first time a man had formally asked me if he could take me out for a date, instead of that annoyingly ambiguous “Want to grab a bite to eat?” that could mean so many things.

We were to meet at 6 pm, but I started getting ready at 5 pm. There really was no need– it took 10 minutes to do my very minimal makeup and another 3 to change from sweats to jeans– but it was the anticipation of getting ready for something exciting and slightly nerve-wrecking. I felt like a high school girl getting ready for the dance.

I felt similarly the morning after I gave birth to Woori. She was dozing deeply next to me in her hospital bassinet, and the morning sun was starting to pour golden pools through the window blinds. It had been less than 12 hours since she was born, and I hadn’t had more than 20 minutes of uninterrupted sleep. My head was light, and my heart was fluttering.

David called to tell me he’d be visiting with Tov at 9 am. By then, I hadn’t even yet announced to any of my friends that I had given birth. Only our family knew (and unfortunately, all of David’s business clients), but Tov did not know.

We had been prepping him months before Woori’s birth, of course. I told Tov repeatedly that there’s a baby in my belly. “Where’s the baby?” I’d prompt him, and he’d smile and point at his own belly. He did not get it.

A friend bought Tov a book called “You’re a Big Brother.” I pointed at the pictures in the book. “Look, there’s omma. There’s abba. There’s Tov. And there’s…baby!” He loved that book. We read it over and over again, and I kept pointing to the characters in the book: “Omma…abba…Tov…baby!” And then later I’d ask him, “Where’s Tov?” hoping he’d point at the boy, but he’d always point at the baby in the crib. He thinks he’s still the baby in the family.

As the due date approached, people asked me how Tov feels about becoming a big brother, and I told them he has no idea. “He’s in for the shock of his life,” I joked, but I guess it’s not a joke. He is in for the shock of his young life. Never ever has he not been the center of attention since he was born. He was the baby of the home, the emperor and prince. Guests came and cooed at him, not anyone else. And now, someone was about to take his place.

I wondered how Tov will react to meeting his little sister. I was nervous, but more curious and excited, just like how I felt that evening waiting for David to show up at my apartment gate. Will he show interest in her? Will he completely ignore her? Will he break down into jealousy? Will he be thoroughly confused by the appearance of a stranger who never left?

The minutes ticked down. I ate the hospital’s very bland breakfast and saved the blueberry muffin bottom for Tov (the hospital menu claimed it was homemade blueberry muffin, but it was a package from Otis Spunkmeyer). I watched Woori sleep. I tried not to get annoyed as nurses barged in every 5 minutes.

And then around 9 am, I heard him. He’s a very loud boy. I heard his running footsteps from down the hall. Several minutes later, the door opened, and Tov stomped in with David behind him.

Oh, I missed this boy. It’s only been 17 hours since I last saw him, but a whole world had changed since then. My balloon stomach had deflated. I don’t have to drink decaf coffee anymore. Another Lee-Herrmann was in the birth records. And our family dynamics will never be the same.

“Hi, Tov!” I greeted, and he bounded over to me like a kangaroo with a huge grin. I gave him a big hug and kissed him. I purposely delayed introducing him to the baby; I wanted time for him to adjust to seeing me in a strange new room, to greet him properly and make him feel like he’s the star attention.

“Look what we have for you!” I said, and whipped out a wrapped gift that the women in my discipleship group had bought for Tov. They had thoughtfully written “Especially for Tov” on the wrapper.

“Woooow!” Tov exclaimed, and immediately demanded, “Open, open!”

We opened the gift. It was a digital book about animals. While we tinkered with it, David went over to Woori and bent down to look at her, and that’s when Tov noticed the baby.

“Tov! You want to come meet her? Yeah, that’s your little sister!”

I took off his shoes and lifted him up onto the bed. He crawled towards the bassinet and peered over to gaze at the tiny pink face, whose eyes were closed in peaceful slumber, her head covered in that classic newborn pink-and-blue striped hat.

“See Tov, that’s your little sister. Her name is Woori.”

“Bebe!” Tov cried, pointing. Then he got distracted and pointed at the clock on the wall: “Cuckoo!” And then his interest got drawn to the baby again. “Bebe!”

That first moment was about as anticlimax as expected. He was constantly distracted, either by the clock or the packaged blueberry muffin or the new toy, and most especially, the bassinet, which he insisted on climbing into and lying spread-eagle as though he himself is the baby.

And it was also as sweet and precious as I had hoped for. When he did remember the baby, he was enthralled. He pointed at her eyes. He pointed at her nose. He patted her on the head. He pressed his forehead onto hers. He kissed her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, over and over again, delighting in the act. It was sweeter than my first kiss, more precious than my engagement ring, more satisfying than my first byline.

I wanted to hold this moment with both palms and cradle them into the deepest groove of my heart. I wanted time to pause, and replay slowly, over and over, that moment when my firstborn met my secondborn, and my whole family bunched together in that morning glow like a fresh-picked bouquet, pure and crisp and new.

Even as I was pregnant with Woori, feeling her kicks and seeing her little figure on the ultrasound, I couldn’t imagine loving her as much I as love Tov. People with multiple kids told me your heart grows. Bitterness and anger corrode the heart, but there’s always space in the human heart for more love; in fact, the more love it fills, the bigger and stronger and healthier it gets.

My heart is the biggest and strongest and healthiest it’s ever been.

Lord, you are so good.

God, please help Woori suck

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

Woori is five days old today. As I write this, she’s sleeping on her tummy on her play mat, while David builds a mini lego set with Tov.

If you visited us right now, our day would seem pretty peaceful and calm. There’s the soft ocean breeze blowing through the open windows. The gentle snores of a blissfully slumbering newborn. A contented toddler and a present father. A woman smelling sweet from breastmilk, sitting at her desk with a coffee mug and chocolate-covered pretzels, click-clacking on her keyboard. Ah, isn’t the newborn days just wonderful?

NOT.

Two hours ago, I was fighting back tears because I was so overwhelmed. Three hours ago, I was slightly freaking out that I was going blind, because it had been four hours since a white film had covered my vision, powdering everything I saw, giving me a headache.

Five hours ago, I was at a lactation support group, watching other mothers nursing and weighing their babies after to measure how much they’ve consumed. “Up 40 grams!” Jennifer, the lactation consultant pronounced, and the women cheered. Another woman’s five-week-old baby had consumed 5 whole ounces– that’s 150 grams, that overachiever.

Meanwhile, it took 30 minutes for me to finally get Woori to stop wrestling and grunting and finally suck on the breast for 20 minutes. “Oh, I can hear her swallowing a lot,” Jennifer remarked encouragingly. We weighed her after, I holding onto my breath with anticipation.

“Oh. 8 grams,” Jennifer said in a dismal voice. “Ah, she tricked me! I thought it would be more than that.”

What the freaking hell, Woori!

Six hours ago, David was yelling at Tov because he was having a roll-on-the-floor-with-snot-smearing-his-shirt kind of meltdown, simply because he did not want to wear pants. Six hours ago, I was holding Woori and watching David fly off his handle, feeling a little gratified, remembering all the times when I had lost patience with Tov, and David’s response was that I didn’t try hard enough to control my temper.

And then 12 hours ago, I was up in the wee morning, light-headed from sleeplessness, having finally finished bottle-feeding Woori 2 ounces of pumped breastmilk and formula after trying for 30 minutes to get her to breastfeed. That took more than an hour, and now I had to dry the pump parts, still wet from the last pumping session, so I can pump again before crawling back to bed.

It’s been anything but peaceful and calm.

We are on a crazy feeding plan for Woori because she refuses to breastfeed. She’s maybe successfully breastfed only three times since she was born, and even then, as the weighing scale today informed me, she barely even put 10 ml of milk inside her. So every three hours, round the clock from morning through night, I have to try to get her to practice breastfeeding, then bottle-feed her, then pump. That takes at least an hour and a half, which means about an hour later, I have to repeat the process all over again. There is no time to rest. The moment I fall asleep, my iphone blares an alarm, reminding me it’s time to feed again, and I wake up bleary-eyed and brain-fogged, a zombie with swollen, aching boobs.

Speaking of boobs. I had never once experienced the kind of engorgement I have this time round. Tov was born premature so he had a hard time latching properly, and he fed very slowly, but with the help of a nipple shield, at least he would still breastfeed.

Not Woori. This girl knows how to latch. There’s no problem with her tongue. She’s a lustily healthy baby. Two lactation consultants and a pediatrician examined her and pronounced her physically capable of breastfeeding. No, little stubborn girl just don’t wanna. When I finally jam a nipple into her mouth, she grunts and twists her head and even worse, sometimes bites down and then twists, which releases a string of obscenities from my mouth. And then she dares complain when milk sprays her in the face.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve been suffering from clogged ducts, hard swollen lumps measuring 2 inches all around the breasts that finally loosened up only after two days of continuous, painful massaging while pumping.

And that brings us to my cloudy vision. This morning, I put on my contact lens, and as we were driving to the lactation support group, my eyes started fogging up. I thought something had gotten into my contact lenses. Everything I saw had white halos. When we got home, the first thing I did was take off my contact lenses, but the cloud did not lift.

“I can’t see,” I told David, as he was wrestling with Tov to get him into the tub to wash off what he’d randomly vomited in the car.

I poured eye drops into my eyes, rubbed, blinked. Still cloudy.

“I still can’t see!” I said, starting to get a little panicky. Meanwhile, the clock was telling me it was time to feed Woori again in 35 minutes, and I still haven’t had lunch, or pumped from the last session. And now I was going blind???

“It’s probably from lack of sleep,” David said, seeming irritatingly unconcerned.

“I’ve never had this happen before,” I said. The more I blinked, the more I closed my eyes, the foggier my vision became. I called the optometrist to get my eyes checked, and they made a 3 pm appointment for me.

I pumped. I forgot to eat lunch. I lied down in bed and closed my eyes for 20 minutes in a restless sleep of anxious dreams. Then my alarm clock went off: Time to feed Woori.

As I tried to unsuccessfully get Woori to breastfeed again, fighting through pain and stickiness and frustration, my vision started clearing. Huh. I guess David was right. My body was telling me I’ve hit an exhaustion point I’ve never reached before.

And even as I write this, Tov has skipped and galloped over to me several times, once again butt-naked, breaking my writing flow. He’s climbed onto my lap, rubbed his naked butt on my pants, and stolen three of my chocolate-covered pretzels. He’s claimed he needs to poo-poo, a clever manipulation to steal my attention for 20 minutes while we pointlessly sit at the potty, his butt and penis completely dry, but he thoroughly entertained while I read and sing to him.

But that’s newborn days for you. There’s chaos, fatigue, frustration, mind-numbing repetitive rituals, boredom. And then there’s precious rare moments of peace, beauty, wonder, thankfulness, sweetness, like the third time Tov ran over to me while I was writing, and then stopped to kneel down beside his little sister and nuzzle his face into hers. Or when Tov is napping, and David comes to lie down next to Woori who’s also sleeping, and gaze at her little wrinkly, piglety face. Or when I’m pumping while holding Woori to my chest, inhaling her natural fragrance, feeling her warmth match mine. Such moments are so fleeting, so glorious, a ray of heaven shining into the pit of hell, blasting all darkness and doom away.

So ask me how I’m feeling, five days in. And I’ll say: tired and thankful, frustrated and content, bored and delighted, a seemingly contradiction of emotions that actually meet and rise into this extraordinary, one-of-a-kind symphony of postpartum. It’s life on earth.

This is a time when no prayer seem trivial or silly. I’m not praying for world peace, or justice, or souls saved. My prayers are brief and simple but earnest, as real and raw as cracked nipples and toddler tantrums and a newborn baby who refuses to suck on the breast.

It’s the prayer David prays every evening during dinner these days: “Oh God, please help Woori suck.”