I keep thinking about how the American psyche (my own mini slice of it included) seems inclined to great frustration when things cannot be gotten for free, or at least cheap. By things, I mean essential and profound goodnesses like marriage or children. All good things come with a price: marriage at the cost of a lifetime learning how to share, children at the cost of limiting infinite possibilities of life trajectory (which were maybe not as possible as the movies tell us they are anyway), the peace and perspectives of old age at the cost of the breakdown of our bodies. We resist these realities more than other cultures, because we've been sold a lot of b.s. If advertising were right, for only minimal amounts of money or energy, we should get everything we want.
I was really pissed that this is true of life four years ago when I felt (legimitely) like I didn't have what it cost to pay the price of single mothering four kids following years of financial struggle and marital neglect. I was pissed about my weight, my stretch marks, my fatigue while everyone else in their twenties seemed happy, the cement blocks anchoring my ability to dream. This frustration was made a lot worse by the illusions my country and surrounding city believe and chase.
It's okay to me now that things cost something. That's partly because I'm not alone anymore, I have a partner willing to love me and the kids. It's also because my kids are out of the most exhausting stage and I'm starting to see some of the fruits of my labor.
The word sacrifice means "to make sacred." If marriage wasn't a challenge sometimes, we wouldn't turn into better and better people over the long haul. If babies didn't turn your life upside down for awhile, you probably wouldn't be as bonded to your kids even into adulthood, because bonds are formed over the investment of ourselves. (That's also one reason why Americans are so lonely; we don't really need each other anymore. Technological advances, the Internet, and decent salaries have taken away the necessity for others to sacrifice time or energy for our mutual survival, and bonds are shallower as a result. Wedding planning has brought this into focus for me - thanks to enough money and Pinterest, I don't really *need* need anyone to help. If I did, I'd probably be screwed because most of us don't have leftover energy for baking a wedding cake or sewing decorations anyway, focused as we have to be on making decent salaries.)
I read the phrase "productive limitation" as a reason for why our souls take on these human forms and enter this sometimes debilitating life. I liked that so much, and I've been keeping it in heart. If I exist to be loved and love, to move the God-part of me ever closer to its home in God, I can see how limitations and the cost of myself are very productive.
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