The Glamorous Life of the Pregnant Teenager

Do pop culture's portrayals of teen pregnancy harm young women?

Laura Leonard

When fast-fashion chain Forever 21 announced this month that they were rolling out a maternity line in five states — three of which have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country — they were accused of what has become a common charge: glamorizing teen pregnancy. Like Juno, Jamie Lynn Spears, and Katherine Heigl’s character in Knocked Up before them, Bristol Palin, 16 and Pregnant, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager have all faced criticism for promoting a deceptively attractive view of teenage motherhood. Have the baby, their implicit argument seems to go, and you can still look cute, have a career, and maybe even marry the father of your child.

Certainly reasonable arguments could be made that each of these pop culture icons have contributed to a softened, normalized view of teenage pregnancy. Kendall Jenner, the Kardashian half-sister and the face of Forever 21, is only 14. And the store’s omnipresence in malls across the country, along with its trendy, low-priced fashions and frustratingly small sizes, certainly targets teenage girls. But as a 24-year-old, I confess that I still shop there, as do most of my friends — many of whom are going through their first (or second) pregnancies and love cheap maternity clothes that don’t sacrifice style. Forever 21 already has a plus-size line as well as a “contemporary” line geared toward young professionals. Diversifying their offerings seems more like a good business strategy than a plot to convince U.S. teens to accessorize their pregnancies.

Is it true that young women see examples of young moms and decide they might want the same for their own lives? True, Bristol Palin has parlayed her high-profile pregnancy into tabloid covers, a lucrative job as spokeswoman for the Candie's Foundation, and even an acting gig on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, an ABC Family show slammed by The New York Times as “didactic and soulless cheerleading for anti-abortion sentiments.” But surely girls can recognize the unusual circumstances of Bristol’s life, as well as her own admission that being a teen mom “kind of sucks.”

So what would the alternative look like? The recent depiction of a 15-year-old’s decision to have an abortion on Friday Night Lights, a show about a West Texas football town, was praised for offering what New York magazine called “the best and most honest portrayal of the heartrending decision to end a teenage pregnancy that we’ve ever seen.” The episode, titled “I Can’t,” seemed to offer the antidote to the seemingly endless stream of affirming portrayals of girls who chose to keep their babies and actually addressed the complexities that surround the decision. Implicit in the critical praise of the episode is that an honest confrontation of the difficult realities surrounding an unwanted pregnancy will result in an abortion. Unfortunately, the show portrayed the Christian perspective, embodied by the father’s parents, as out of touch: the boy’s mom encouraged him by explaining that Joseph and Mary, too, found themselves in a difficult situation. “[We] are not Mary and Joseph,” he replied.

After the success of Juno, a 2007 movie whose main character chose to carry her unplanned pregnancy to term and offer the baby up for adoption, many theorized about the potential of “The Juno Effect”: Positive portrayals of teenage pregnancies would result in an upswing of actual teenage pregnancies. But figures released earlier this year show that the rate actually decreased by 2 percent between 2007-2008, causing Salon’s Broadsheet blog to declare “Death to ‘the ‘Juno’ Efffect’.” “Turns out, depicting teen parents may not glamorize them, so much as humanize them,” writes Amy Benfer.

And this should be the goal: to show that, behind all the numbers and campaigns on both sides of the abortion debate are real girls who are facing very difficult realities. It seems inevitable that in this highly politicized age, every depiction of unplanned pregnancies will be dissected to reveal its agenda. But sometimes, a dress is just a dress, a garment to be worn by a woman or girl. One girl’s story is just that — her story. The more stories we tell, the more the issue becomes one about people, about individuals making choices — sometimes choices we agree with, sometimes vehemently not. But that is what will move the conversation forward. When we address such an intensely personal issue like abortion as exactly that, we can portray the real, whole truth of an intensely important issue.

What do you think? How do pop culture portrayals of teen pregnancy shape behaviors? Are these examples dangerously glamorizing a much more difficult reality? Or are they humanizing the options available? How could we do a better job of discussing teen pregnancy?

News Flash: Dads Are Nurturing

More fathers want an active role in caring for their children. Will U.S. employers be able to adjust?

Rachel Stone, guest blogger

Boston College’s Center for Work and Family released a study last month that tracked changes in the way American fathers view themselves and their roles at home and work. The study looked at married, educated, and employed first-time fathers of children between ages 3 and 18 months, and suggests that the concept of dads as primarily breadwinners is outmoded. Today’s dads are defining good fatherhood as a relationship involving lots of time, attention, and nurturing. The study also suggested, though, that while fathers may understand their role in these terms, their employers (and others, such as extended families) do not.

In her New York Times article highlighting this and other recent studies on fatherhood, Tara Parker-Pope suggested that dads now “feel as stressed as mom,” pulled between expectations to be both a provider and nurturer. “Men are typically the primary breadwinner,” Parker-Pope notes, “but they also increasingly report a desire to spend more time with their children. To do so, they must first navigate a workplace that is often reluctant to give them time off for family reasons. And they must negotiate with a wife who may not always recognize their contributions at home.”

While the challenges women face in balancing work and family are well-chronicled (though not always understood or accepted), the conflicts working dads face are not. Fewer employers see fatherhood as an increasingly a hands-on, time-intensive role. And though most of the fathers surveyed said they had considered becoming stay-at-home dads, they said finances (dad’s salary may be higher than mom’s, or both salaries are needed to maintain a desired standard of living) and lingering social stigma prevented them from doing so.

At its close, the study asks, “If we want all people to feel like 'whole persons,' that means respecting the man's role as care-giver, cook, cleaner, nurturer, and comforter every bit as much as we respect the woman's role in the workplace." Having spent most of my time as a mother in Europe, I'm no longer surprised to see many fathers accompanying their young children to the park, the swimming pool, or playgroups. Usually there are more mothers than fathers, but thanks to the generous parental leave (in many countries, fathers get some paid leave when a baby is born; in Canada, parents can elect to share a year's worth of paid leave), fathers can assume an involved role in their children’s lives, with no social stigma at all.

Of course, the idea that dads can be strong providers and loving nurturers should not surprise us Christians. Though Scripture mostly uses paternal images to describe Yahweh, it doesn’t shy away from nurturing, “soft” images either. Psalm 22 and Deuteronomy 32 picture the Lord as both a laboring mother and midwife. The Hebrew word for God's compassion is related to the word for womb, suggesting the metaphor of a womb-ache — the ache of a mother to protect her children. Jesus speaks of his desire to gather the children of Israel by comparing himself to a mother hen who “gathers her chicks under her wings” (Luke 13; Matt. 23). Paul picks up on this in 1 Thessalonians 2, describing his ministry as akin to the care of both a nursing mother and a caring father. As men are made in God’s image — which encapsulates maleness and femaleness — it's time to acknowledge fathers as “whole persons” too, reflecting the full image of God, capable of deep nurturing involvement with their children. Among other things, this means an end to jokes about fathers’ ineptitude in the domestic sphere. It’s time to put dads, as well as moms, on the rotation list for the church nursery, time for pastors to affirm a robust, multi-dimensional role for fathers from the pulpit, and time to shower new moms and dads with support, understanding, and love.

Parenting Imperfecta

Every mom has limitations. Mine are just easy to see.

Ellen Painter Dollar

"World's Smallest Mother Risks Life for More Babies" blared the headline. Stacey Herald, whose 2-foot 4-inch stature qualifies her for the “smallest mom” superlative, recently gave birth to her third child. Despite significant health risks associated with pregnancy, Stacey and her husband, Wil, are open to having more kids. This openness, along with the couple’s enthusiasm for parenthood and insistence that they have faith in God’s ability to care for their family, have made Stacey and Wil favorite subjects of tabloid-style media ever since their third baby was born last November.

Stacey’s short stature is due to osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), also known as brittle bone disease. I have the same condition, although in a less severe form (at 4-feet 8-inches tall, I am a giant by OI standards). OI complications include frequent broken bones, pain, mobility limitations, and respiratory problems due to spinal and rib-cage deformities. Like Stacey, I have three biological children, two girls and a boy. Like Stacey, I had to contemplate the risks of childbearing, although her more severe form of OI potentially brings more serious complications. Like Stacey’s children, my children each had a 50 percent chance of inheriting OI. One of my children did; two of hers did. Like Stacey, I made my decisions about motherhood in the context of my Christian faith.

Our similarities accounted for my growing outrage as I clicked through dozens of articles written about Stacey and her family, many of them on sites devoted to “odd” and “weird” news. Most, including the ABC News article, used hyperbolic, inaccurate language. Stacey doesn’t just have OI; she “suffers” from it. She doesn’t just use a wheelchair; she is “confined” to one. A doctor asserts that pregnancy in OI women can have “disastrous consequences.” I am privileged to know many women with OI who have had children. While some of those children also have OI, the most disastrous consequences of these mothers’ fecundity are that they can’t remember how it feels to sleep through the night yet know every word of Barney’s clean-up song. A spokesperson for the national OI Foundation provided a more accurate assessment: While women with OI face increased risks during pregnancy, those risks can often be managed.

The articles made me mad, but the comments made me sick. Readers called Stacey and her husband selfish, cruel, and stupid. They said that OI is a “horrible disability," that she is “sentencing her kids to suffer.” Online comment boards do not provide the most accurate snapshot of society, but so much vitriol directed toward people with disabilities offers a pretty bleak picture.

Choosing to have children despite health risks raises important moral questions that people of faith need to engage seriously. Stacey and Wil’s faith was central to their decisions, but their interviews did not go into much detail about how. I don’t know if their citing of God’s providence stems from thoughtful reflection or a superficial belief that success in any endeavor is a sure sign of God’s favor.

I will stick to what I do know:

Avoidance of suffering — ours and our children’s — is not our highest moral duty. Our God, incarnate in Christ, knew bodily pain and a tortured death. Jesus’ suffering does not mean we should seek pain or that suffering is a good thing in and of itself. But it does suggest that suffering is not the ultimate disaster. The Great Commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself — not to make sure everyone is healthy, happy, strong, and pain-free.

While the physical and emotional pain of OI can be terribly hard, pain is not the hardest thing about being a mother with OI. The hardest part is knowing that I don’t measure up to cultural ideals of the competent mother. I could not pace with my children when they were fussy infants. I cannot kneel down to look them in the eye. I cannot carry an exhausted child to the car. I can’t ride bikes or practice soccer kicks. My inability to run and carry anything heavy would make me useless in a true emergency. Day after day, I have to relearn the truth: I am the best mother for my kids simply because I am theirs. No mother is perfect; every mother has limitations. Mine are just easy to see.

Everyone who has babies subjects themselves and their children to risks, some of them known, most of them unknowable. If we judge those whose risks are obvious, we open ourselves to the same judgment. All of us carry genetic risks (and technology is increasingly able to tell us which ones). All parents bring children into a world where disaster, illness, injury, and pain can bring “normal” life to a screeching halt. All of us are dependent on others to make it through the day. “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1).

Grieving a Miscarriage

An excerpt from Shauna Niequist's new book, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way.

Shauna Niequist

Today all I can think about is what might have been. It’s a Saturday, bitter cold and bright, harsh, splintering. We’re doing normal Saturday things, and since we recently moved into our new house, “normal” includes unpacking the remaining boxes, assembling furniture, making endless Target and Ikea lists.

Today is the day that would have been my due date, had my pregnancy been a healthy one. Nine months ago, the world was so different. I was so different. The concept of pregnancy was so different to me, so innocent. Of course I knew women who had miscarried: my mother, my cousin, my friends. But like anything, when it happens to you it’s like waking up to a conversation you’ve heard before and only now grasp, and you realize entirely anew what they were talking about, what they were trying to find the words to describe.

So that’s today, the day of what might have been. Someday we might have another child. But we’ll never have a child born on January 31, 2009. The baby I found out about on Memorial Day weekend, the happy secret I shared with Aaron on the phone, standing outside the Phoenix Street Café, the baby I carried inside me to Fiji to visit Todd and Joe on the boat — that baby will never be. And it seems worth stopping for today, just for a moment.

For me, as well, the specifics of the miscarriage changed me from one kind of mother to another. It’s a broad sisterhood of women who don’t have easy conceptions and pregnancies, but to be honest, I liked being in the other group. It was so deeply moving to me that my body nurtured and nourished Henry, delivering him safely into the world, whole and healthy, and this miscarriage and its aftermath have forced me to ask some questions: Did my body fail me? Did I somehow fail it? We’ve had such a tenuous relationship in the past, my body and I; was this a breach of trust?

I went to a wedding six months after the miscarriage. The wedding was absolutely perfect, the first of my ten small group girls to get married, a sweet celebration on a hot Austin night. Christel was gorgeous, all eyelashes and happy tears, and we all danced together and took pictures and laughed. And then for a little while, Kristin, another one of the girls from my small group, left, walked to the front of the old house alone, stood on the sidewalk, listening to the music in the distance, heart heavy with what might have been.

Kristin does this at every wedding. She dances and laughs and hugs and smiles for pictures, and then, at one point or another, she slips away and lets a few tears fall for the maid of honor who will never stand at her own wedding someday. Kristin’s sister Laurie ended her own life four years ago. They were stepsisters and best friends. And then when they were both twenty, Laurie chose to end her life in a heartbreaking, confusing tangle of hurt and accusation and broken friendships. I remember the first everything — the one-month mark, the first birthday after she was gone, the one-year mark.

Kristin, of course, remembers Laurie all the time, but the ache is never more acute than at weddings, because when Kristin gets married, the sister she dreamed about weddings with for years won’t stand with her on that day. Weddings, more than anything else, bring her to what might have been.

And now Kristin and her fiancé, Sean, are getting married, and she’s thinking about how to walk through the months of her engagement and the day of her wedding without her sister. The ache for her sister has deepened in the season before the wedding. Kristin decided she won’t
have a maid of honor, so that no one will stand in the place of Laurie’s memory on the day that the two sisters had dreamed about for so long.

The night Sean proposed, Kristin started to cry in between phone calls to friends and family. Sean asked her to dance in the living room, surrounded by the flowers and candles he’d set up for the proposal, and as they danced, she realized the one phone call she still wanted to make was to her sister Laurie. Kristin felt both angry and sad in that moment, remembering Laurie’s exuberant phone call to her just a few months before her death — “I’m engaged!” Kristin wanted so badly to make that same call to her sister and best friend that night, and it felt deeply unfair that Laurie wasn’t there to pick up the phone.

If you’ve been marked by what might have been, you don’t forget. You know the day, the years. You know when the baby would have been born. You know exactly what anniversary you’d be celebrating, if the wedding had happened. You know exactly how old she’d be right now, if she were still alive. You’ll never forget the last time you saw your child, or the last time cancer was a word about someone else’s life, or the day that changed absolutely everything. It makes the calendar feel like a minefield, like you’re constantly tiptoeing over explosions of grief until one day you hit one, shattered by what might have been.

On most days, for me, it’s all right. We’ll have another baby someday. I hope we do. But for today, for a minute, it’s not all right. I understand that God is sovereign, that bodies are fragile and fallible. I understand that grief mellows over time, and that guarantees aren’t part of human life, as much as we’d like them to be. But on this day, looking out at the harsh white sky of a Chicago winter, I’m crying just a little for what might have been. . . . No one might ever notice January 31, and what it means for me. But I’ll always know.

I don’t know what date it is for you — what broke apart on that day, what was lost, what memories are pinned forever to that day on that calendar. But I hope that, like Kristin, on that day you leave the dance floor and hold yourself open and tender to the memories for just a moment. As one who grieves today, I grieve with you, for whatever you’ve lost, too, for what might have been.

Shauna Niequist is the author of Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet. She studied English and French literature at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and lives outside Chicago with her husband, Aaron, and their son, Henry.

Taken from Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist Copyright © 2010. Used by permission of Zondervan.

Why I Can't Boycott Mel Gibson

And it's not because he is "too talented," as Salon wrote last week.

Anna Broadway, guest blogger

From Arizona’s controversial immigration law to Mel Gibson’s recorded rants, I’ve heard a lot about boycotts lately — and I can’t get over who’s encouraging them. For me, boycotts conjure up my childhood, when trips to K-mart were rare because of dubious dealings, and the Waldenbooks chain was shunned entirely for selling pornography. Those are just the boycotts I remember, but they always seemed religious in nature.

So it was strange to learn at Salon about a movement under way within Hollywood to boycott Gibson’s work over newly released taped “conversations” with his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva (don’t believe his rants were bad? Read the transcripts — then decide if you want to hear the recordings). Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams makes no reference to a particular moral or philosophical viewpoint as a context for her piece, but she nonetheless plunges into the moral and aesthetic quandary of shunning Gibson films altogether, musing that he might be “too talented” to boycott.

Yes, it was strange to see boycotts discussed in a mostly secular context, but not altogether surprising. If I were traveling abroad and asked for a summary of U.S. Christians’ view of The Passion of the Christ and Gibson — especially after some of the charges made against him — I’d say that generally speaking, he got a pass. When The Passion came out in 2004, a friend invited me to a talk by a scholarly Jew who persuasively argued why he saw anti-Semitism in the film. I didn’t know enough to confirm or disprove most of his points, but his argument seemed reasonable, without excessive reliance on emotional appeals. Yet among Christian friends, the buzz about the movie was unabashedly positive, often excited. We seemed too delighted that “our story” was getting major, positive play to engage the more troubling questions possibly raised by the film. It seemed disloyal to admit possible shortcomings, possible prejudice, possible . . . sin.

Gibson’s rant is not the main issue here. The issue is, what do our opinions of him and those like him — and our decisions of whether to support or shun them — say about our beliefs about humanity? If it were the case that The Passion were a praiseworthy film, and that Gibson were a racist, violent man, need acknowledging the one fact entail denial of the other?

It shouldn’t.

Christians serve a God who had no problem giving words of truth and blessing to Balaam, a man described as angry and abusive to an animal and later reported as among the slain when the Israelites sacked Midian (contrast this with the mercy shown to Rahab and her family). Balaam’s sin and inclusion in the subsequent judgment on the Midianites did not make his early words less true, but they do make an honest accounting of him more difficult.

Or, back to movies, take the 1997 Robert Duvall film, The Apostle, about a minister who discovers his wife has cheated on him, attacks her lover (leaving him in a coma), then starts a new ministry in a new town until his past is exposed. When I saw it in the theater, I was in college and at a place in my faith where I didn’t like seeing such a flawed man depicted as a passionate follower of God. In my mind, he couldn’t be so connected to God and so willfully disregard the basic tenets of his God’s character. Either he was “walking with the Lord” and seeking obedience, or had fallen away and, in all his fervent moments of the film, was in denial about his spiritual state.

Looking back on the movie, of course, I can see the parallels to King David much more clearly. But King David has somehow never made me wince as much as Duvall’s preacher did. The difference? In one man I see the Psalms; in the other, the sin. But in neither am I seeing much of the God who sees both, yet loves enough to pass the judgment of “death deserved” and run out to welcome home the prodigal son.

That’s probably the greatest loss of all, in our tendency to snap superficial judgments of friends and exes, pastors and celebrities alike. Not only are we missing part of the truth about them, we’re also missing a bigger picture of God revealed when we acknowledge the pain of seeing tremendous sinfulness and inordinate worth in the same dusty being. And, really, think of that — think of someone whose deeds you find repulsive, then ask yourself what future God would have for them. Is it a life at best lived in penance for his or her crimes to date? Or could even that debased, destructive life be transformed by God into something truly beautiful?

I don’t know about you, but if the pain of admitting a person whose films/books/projects I really like is a pretty foul human being in ways that cannot be whited out — if the pain of that could show me just a bit of God’s real beauty, I’d rather do the uncomfortable work than redo my shopping or entertainment plans — even knowing that divine beauty will make me give up far greater, harder things.

Anna Broadway is a writer and web editor living in the San Francisco Bay area. She is the author of Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity.

How Many Kids Should We Have?

To answer the question, Christian couples need more than a few select Bible verses.

Amy Julia Becker

"One and Done," Lauren Sandler's Time cover story this week, offers a series of reasons why many parents in the West are choosing to have only one child. First, the economic strain: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that the average child in the U.S. costs his or her parents about $286,050 — before college,” reports Sandler. There’s also the happiness and freedom that apparently come to parents with only one child. Sandler says the vast majority of married couples understand marriage as primarily about happiness and fulfillment, rather than an institution designed to facilitate the “bearing and raising of children.” And if marriage is about personal happiness, as one sociologist writes, “You should say that you’ll stop at one child to maximize your subjective well-being.” And, on a related note, “Parents who intend to have only one say they can manage the drudgery with an eye on the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Sandler also addresses some of the reasons parents traditionally have chosen to have two or more children. There’s the concern that only children will grow up to be selfish and spoiled. But current research suggests that even if only children are “highly indulged and highly protected,” they also tend to “score higher in measures of intelligence and achievement” than children from larger families. There’s also the concern that only children face an untenable burden in caring for aging parents, and will be lonely.

As the mother of two children with a third on the way, I found myself bristling at Sandler’s reporting. Her data about academic achievement seem insignificant. I want to value our children not for what they can produce but for who they are becoming. Furthermore, the data suggest that only children’s achievements are the same as first-born children and people who have only one sibling — which is to say, the majority of children in the U.S. And the concerns about aging parents and loneliness outweigh, in my mind, the economic and social freedom parents experience with only one child.

But it doesn’t really matter what I think. For Christians who are considering starting a family, what matters is what God thinks. And, on this and many other related matters, it isn’t always easy to figure God’s perspective out. Sandler herself writes, “As much as family size is a deeply personal issue, for many people it is also a spiritual one.” God’s word on families comes early on in the Scriptures: “Be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen. 1:28). The biblical writers generally assume that children are a gift from God desired, in large numbers, by every married couple.

Yet it’s not hard to look at current population statistics (the global population has more than doubled in the past 50 years) and conclude that we’ve fulfilled the Genesis mandate. Also, as stewards of the earth’s resources, might there be a Christian argument for limiting family size? Even if we weren’t concerned about the global population, there’s also the question of personal stewardship. Biblical writers counsel wisdom in economic concerns, and family size certainly impacts family economics. If having another child means it will be hard to put food on the table, perhaps the wisest choice for some families is to have one child. Finally, there are personal health concerns. Some women's lives will be endangered by having more children. Again, perhaps the responsible, godly choice is to accept those physical limitations and keep the family small.

The Bible is not our only resource when we face these types of questions; it’s too easy to find the Scripture passage that supports whatever position we already have. For questions like these, accountability relationships and Christian community play a crucial role.

For a long time after marrying, my husband and I considered never having kids. We could justify our desires according to our Christian beliefs. We worked with students as full-time Christian ministers. For us, having a family seemed to detract from our ability to spread the Good News. It may well be the case that there are Christian missionaries called to limit their family size for the sake of the gospel. But in our case, those arguments were a façade, covering up the fear and ambivalence we had about limiting our lives by the presence of children. It took the gentle questions and witness of other Christians to convince us that we were using Christian-sounding arguments to cover up a selfish and fearful motive.

Now, every other Thursday morning, my husband talks on the phone with his friend Jon. They’ve given each other permission to ask the hard questions: “How are you treating your wife? How’s it going with your kids?” They admit their weaknesses — impatience, pride, self-centeredness. And they challenge each other, with love, to address those weaknesses with the strength that comes from a relationship with Jesus.

We need to consult the Bible whenever we face a major life decision. We need to pray on our own. But we also need to be in relationships with other believers who will challenge us and help us to see the ways we deceive ourselves, even with Christian arguments.

One, two, three children or more, we need one another to help us do all we do to the glory of God.

Multitasking: Bad for the Soul

Sure, I was getting a lot done as a mother of four. But I was having a hard time obeying God.

Jennifer Grant

My husband and I had been married for eight years when I gave birth to our first child. Two years later, his brother was born. Eighteen months later, their sister. And less than two years after that, we started the adoption process and soon brought home a daughter.

“You’re busy,” people would remark, eyeing me with my children. I never knew whether the comment was tinged with pity or admiration.

Yes, I was busy. But, more significantly, I was evolving into a different person. No longer the dreamy, walk-taking, tea-drinking, poem-writing person who baked her own bread, I had become a woman barreling down the aisles at the grocery store, baby in sling, toddlers fastened into cart. After years of toting children on my hip, my forearms had begun to resemble Popeye the Sailor's.

And I wasn’t just busy with the kids. Like many “at-home” mothers, I had part-time work and volunteer responsibilities at church and my children’s schools. Meanwhile, I was making Herculean efforts to stay close to my husband and friends. I found myself setting up interviews for a newspaper story, ordering curriculum, and making reminder calls from my cell phone in the grocery store — while, of course, keeping the kids in sight, buying food for the week, and stopping to compare the prices of varieties of pears.

In short, I learned to multitask.

In recent years, of course, we’ve learned that it is actually impossible to multitask. Study after study after study chide us for believing we can make our brains do more than one thing at a time. “A core limitation [of the human brain] is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” says René Marois, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. When we are multitasking, we are actually just switching from one task to another at astonishing speed. It’s unproductive, distracting, and dangerous to multitask, we are told.

But over the years, I became something of a multitasking expert. And I began to suffer from it. I answered e-mail from my phone while waiting for a freight train to pass. Before picking the kids up from school, I’d troll around the neighborhood, choosing a parking space based on whether I could find a Wi-Fi signal in order to get an additional few minutes of work done.

I felt, to use the old expression, that I was drinking from a fire hose. Equally compelled to answer unimportant messages (“Thanks for letting us use your car-top carrier. We left it on your front porch”) as more critical ones (“Can you remind me where I’m supposed to be for the photo shoot this afternoon?”), I was losing perspective. I was also finding it hard to hear God, what with all the text and e-mail alerts on my phone, the call waiting signal, and my kids’ voices creating a low roar.

Then, about a year and a half ago, I called an Episcopal monk who lives in Boston, hoping to get a quote for a story I was writing. The day had begun at breakneck speed. Unfinished homework, early morning orchestra rehearsal, a fresh batch of e-mails that demanded responses, two loads of laundry, and on and on.

On first hearing the monk's voice, I almost rolled my eyes — he sounded comically serene. But after a few minutes, I felt myself relax a little.

He told me that his work, as a monk, was to listen to God. Simply that. He’d taken a vow, he said.

“A vow to listen?”

“A vow of obedience.”

Oh, I thought, you can’t obey until you hear what you’re supposed to do. Duh.

“To obey is to listen,” he said, as if he were responding to my thoughts. He said that the word’s etymology reveals that “obedience” is less about complying with rules and more about listening. Deep listening.

The Hebrew word is shama: “to hear, to listen.” Samuel uses the word, declaring that “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22).

In Greek the word is hupakouo, or “to listen under.”

The Latin for obedience is oboedire: “to hear or listen towards.”

In Old English, it’s herknen.

So, he said, to obey God is to listen deeply to him — or hearken his voice.

“The monastic life is a culture of silence,” he said. “It’s not that there’s nothing to be said, it’s that there is so much to be heard.” He said that the practice of silence stands in strong opposition to a culture that is “obsessed with multitasking.”

Ooh.

“Multitasking has been normalized. It is costly to the soul,” he said.

Ouch.

I asked him what advice he gives to people whose calling doesn’t lead them into the sanctuary of a monastery. “Do one thing at a time. As much as possible, do only one thing.”

Doing one thing at a time is a terribly, wonderfully, old-fashioned idea. Since talking to him, I’ve been trying to break my multitasking habit, bit by bit. Often when I’m alone in the car, I just drive. I don’t check e-mail at red lights. I don’t listen to the radio. I just sit still. And the more I practice the lost art of doing one thing at a time, the more I hear the voice of God. Offering peace and clarity. Nudging me to interact with a person. Infusing me with an idea. Reminding me of his presence.

Weaning myself from rabid multitasking is a long process. But I’m plugging away at it — not ultimately because I know it’s bad for productivity, causes car accidents, or makes me feel stress, though all these things might be true. I do it to draw closer to the one who is quietly with me, waiting to speak to me in a moment of silence.

Be still.

Be still.

Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).

Now there’s one thing to do.

Jennifer Grant is a journalist, freelance writer, and mother of four who writes a column and feature stories for the Chicago Tribune. She has written for Her.meneutics about Lady Gaga. Find her online at JennifercGrant.com.

You're Never 'Ready' to Parent

Entering the inconvenience of parenthood is indeed stressful — and full of grace.

Ellen Painter Dollar

In The Washington Post last week, Gillian E. St. Lawrence wrote about her and her husband's decision to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) and have the resulting embryos frozen for later use, essentially donating their embryos to themselves. The Washington, D.C., natives chose this path not because they are infertile, but because, at 30 and 32 years old respectively, St. Lawrence and her husband do not feel ready to become parents.

Aware that fertility rates decline precipitously after a woman reaches age 35, they decided to undergo what St. Lawrence dubs “Preservation IVF” (as opposed to “Desperation IVF”). The couple felt it is vital that, before having kids, they “first be financially stable enough to support them and give them plenty of parenting time.”

We want so badly to control the outcome of our procreation — not a new impulse, but one that has become more powerful and ubiquitous thanks to ever-expanding information about human health and well-being, reproductive technologies, as well as an online culture that allows us to discuss the intricacies of our parenting decisions. From our focus on well-timed pregnancies, optimal pregnancy nutrition, and detailed birth plans to anxious reliance on sunscreen, organic food, and brain-stimulating, body-strengthening leisure activities, we are a culture of parents who think that if we plan everything properly, then everyone will turn out okay. Not just okay, but terrific — happy, healthy, capable, productive, and self-sufficient.

St. Lawrence’s decision may be extreme, but we are all caught up in a culture that expects parents to exercise meticulous planning and control over their children, and fosters a poisonous climate of judgment surrounding every decision parents make.

Trying to orchestrate family life is not only futile (despite all our technology, having children is still a process fundamentally out of our control), but also keeps us from fully embracing the gift of children. Christians should understand this better than anyone, given that we worship a God who became incarnate in the most unpredictable, unexpected way possible — not as a triumphant king but first as a helpless newborn. Jesus was not what anyone expected or planned for, and that’s how he changed the world.

If a friend were considering “Preservation IVF” and asked my opinion about it, here is what I would say:

Whether you have babies now or later, your well-planned life will be relegated to the corner of your closet, along with your size 4 jeans. You will be so tired of little people’s hands all over you and voices constantly in your ear that many nights, you will prefer the company of HGTV to your husband's.

Your kids will ignore their baby dolls, train sets, and educational puzzles to cut holes in cardboard boxes and decorate them using every art supply you own. And at the end of the day, they will suddenly be too tired to clean it up.

Just when your bank account is looking slightly healthy, you will need to pay for swim lessons, summer camp, orthodontia, and a replacement carpet for the one that got ruined by said spilled art supplies.

On the way to the summer camp you could barely afford, your child will announce he doesn’t really want to go after all. Your daughter will throw up all over dinner at the Disney restaurant where you had to make a reservation months ahead. Your toddler will break your nose when his head collides with yours in the pool one lovely summer day.

You will learn that the best-laid plans can fall apart in ways you could never anticipate, much less prepare for.

And . . .

You will call your mother the first time your baby smiles at you, and she will understand why you’re so happy you can barely string the words together.

You will realize that true love has nothing to do with roses and diamonds. True love is when your husband takes the baby for a car ride at 3 a.m. so that you can get some sleep.

You will stare at your babies for hours, rub your cheek against their downy heads, and breathe in the scent of milky breath mixed with wet diaper and new skin. When they become too old to tolerate staring, you will go into their rooms after they are asleep and pull back the covers to memorize their dirty-soled feet, their scraped knees, and the way their elbows and cheekbones reveal themselves as their baby fat melts away.

You will discover parts of yourself that would have remained hidden had you never became a mother. (For me, motherhood gave me my voice as a writer, and revealed that my disabled, fragile body is actually capable of miracles.)

You will understand that your children’s best qualities — her unending curiosity, the genuine laugh that arises from the loveliest corner of his spirit, her extravagant joy in the company of friends — have little to do with your “parenting style,” and everything to do with grace.

All of this — the disorder and exasperation, the revelations and gratitude — will come whether you have a baby at age 24 or 42, and whether you have a bank balance of $37 or a fully funded college account. You will never be ready for what your children require of you, or what they give.

Following Christ at a Porn Convention

Katelyn Beaty

Editors' Note: This post has been removed at the request of the author.

Church Volunteers: An Oxymoron

Why I've stopped using the word volunteer to describe those who serve.

Michelle Van Loon, guest blogger

If you’ve even spent time at a local branch of the Red Cross, tutored a child at a local elementary school, pounded nails at a Habitat For Humanity build, or picked up trash at a local nature preserve, you’ve probably done so as a volunteer. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 26.8 percent of the population volunteered in their communities at least once between September 2008 and September 2009. The percentage ticked upward from previous years. Even with the economic recession, the group Volunteering in America reports, 2009 saw the biggest increase in the number of volunteers since 2003. A majority of volunteers served as religious organizations.

But does the language of volunteerism apply to the church?

I recently sat through weeks of church staff meetings. The primary item on the agenda was crafting a congregational organizational chart. Our church has grown rapidly in recent years, and as a result, klutzy collisions between ministry heads unsure of who was in charge of this program or that task had shown a need to formalize lines of communication and responsibility.

The chart helped with some of these issues, but it provided a snapshot of another issue we were facing: There were all sorts of empty slots. As in many growing churches, we were always searching for more children’s ministry workers, janitors, and sound tech assistants. Those of us on staff dedicated ourselves to find ways to recruit and retain people to fill those slots on the org chart. We held volunteer fairs. We regularly encouraged volunteers to share their stories of spiritual growth as a result of serving the church. We committed ourselves to honoring hard-working volunteers with small gestures of staff appreciation throughout the year.

But our approach to filling those empty slots left me uncomfortable. It seemed to be something sour and a little cynical about our underlying assumptions. We had appropriated the paradigm of a nonprofit organization in order to find a way to function as a growing church. And when we viewed fellow congregants as volunteers, we subtly emphasized what they could do over against who they were as members of the body of Christ. I wondered if we were unintentionally building a culture where “our volunteers” were our blue-collar laborers, doing tasks assigned by us, the white-collar staff.

Paul describes the church as designed to function in radically different terms (Rom. 12:4-8; 1 Cor. 12) — and “volunteering” is not part of the equation. We are the body. The idea of a volunteer kidney or tibia in a functioning body is nonsensical.

True, some of those who volunteer in their congregations are sharing their spiritual gifts. Some give of their time because they want to be good team players; others have tapped into the reality that service is an act of worship. Unfortunately, many assist in their local church because they have been guilted by an overzealous staffer with an org chart to fill. And, frankly, being motivated primarily by guilt doesn't even fit the definition of volunteer.

We who follow Christ are identified as servants (Matt. 20:25-28), priests (1 Pet. 2:4-9), and friends (John 15:14-15). Each of these identifiers is wrapped around a core of voluntary, grateful response to God. And none carries the task-orientation embedded in way we typically use the word volunteer. Calling members of the body of Christ “volunteers” communicates a 100-calorie snack-pack version of the all-encompassing call to discipleship Jesus described.

Jesus himself communicated this call from the posture of the Model Volunteer, one who volunteered his life on our behalf:

"Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death —
even death on a cross!" (Phil. 2:6-8)

He volunteered so that each us could be free to serve him and each other in ways that would woo instead of echo the world. That freedom is meant to change everything — including the way we talk about those empty slots on our org charts.

'Eat, Pray, Love' Book Club

Join us August 12 for Her.meneutics' first book discussion.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey

I have been attending a book club in recent months, even though it makes me feel a bit like a soccer mom who will do anything (including reading books I don’t want to read) to socialize over ideas and good food.

Like some of you, I have a growing stack of books on my bedside table half-read or waiting to be read. I tend to thrive on books that have a book-club date or library deadline, because they must be read or it’s too late.

Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling spiritual memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, was on my list of books to read for a while, but the upcoming movie adaptation (out August 13) gave me a deadline for completion. (I follow my sister’s rule: Never see the movie before you read the book.) I recently learned that the other editors at Her.meneutics have had it on their to-read lists as well, so we hatched a brilliant idea: Have a book club of your own — on the blog.

Mark your calendars for August 12, when we'll start discussing the book and ask readers who have read it to join in. For the uninitiated, Eat Pray Love details Gilbert's travels after a difficult divorce. She spends four months in Italy, where she relaxes and devours delicious food (Eat), searches for spirituality in India for another four months (Pray), and ends in Indonesia, where she finds a new man (Love). The book has received glowing endorsements from Publishers Weekly, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, among others. It is 352 pages, but it moves quickly as she writes smoothly and clearly.

While Gilbert's book is by no means Christian, we think it will start important conversations about marriage and romance, the (perhaps limited) value of "spiritual seeking," and the pleasure of simple gifts like eating and traveling. "This is a wonderful book, brilliant and personal, rich in spiritual insight, filled with sorrow and a great sense of humor,” "Jesusy" Anne Lamott said in her endorsement. “Elizabeth Gilbert is everything you would love in a tour guide, of magical places she has traveled to both deep inside and across the oceans: she's wise, jaunty, human, ethereal, hilarious, heartbreaking, and God, does she pay great attention to the things that really matter."

So get a copy from the library, order it online, download it on your e-reader, do what you need to do to join us with a virtual slice of brie and glass of wine August 12.

The Top 10 of 2010 -- So Far

The widest-read Her.meneutics posts of the year.

Katelyn Beaty

Thank you to Her.meneutics' faithful readers and stumble-upon visitors for making 2010 an excellent year thus far. We editors have seen a noticeable uptick in the number of visitors to the blog, and readers' comments are overwhelmingly deep-thinking, courteous, generous, and actually engaging the topic at hand.

Speaking of topics, we'd love to hear what ideas, books, debates, and trends are shaping your worlds. Write to us at cteditor@christianitytoday.com and let us know what our bloggers should be covering and why.

(10) Saving the Life of a Shaken Baby, by Christine A. Scheller // February 5
Byron and Susan Mondoks' adoption of their granddaughter, abused by her birth father, unearths the meaning of love in action.

(9) Female Sex Addict: Not an Oxymoron, interview by Katelyn Beaty // April 26
Marnie Ferree's No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction challenges easy assumptions about who gets addicted and why.

(8) Caught between the Easter Bunny and the Empty Grave, by Amy Julia Becker // April 1
Reducing Easter to a purely spiritual celebration is almost as problematic as reducing it to a consumer smorgasbord.

(7) Christian Female Musicians, Missing in Action, by Laura Leonard // May 20
What accounts for the surprising dearth of women in today's CCM scene?

(6) Little Girls and Single Ladies, by Elrena Evans // June 3
The backlash to the video of 8-year-olds gyrating to Beyonce suggests there's still hope for our culture.

(5) Marriage: A Dying to the Self, by Lynn Roush, guest blogger // May 4
Paul Tripp's What Did You Expect? refreshingly goes beyond gender roles to arrive at the crux of marital problems: the kingdom of self.

(4) Lady Gaga: Champion of Abstinence? by Laura Leonard // April 19
The wave of celebrities touting a "celibate" lifestyle actually undermines the movement.

(3) Ooh La La over Lady Gaga, by Jennifer Grant, guest blogger // June 17
Why I showed my son a music video from one of pop culture’s hottest artists.

(2) Modesty: A Female-Only Virtue? by Katelyn Beaty // May 18
Scripture suggests that modesty means more than keeping the right parts covered.

(1) Where Was God in the Earthquake? by Fleming Rutledge, guest blogger
A theological response to the Haitian calamity.

Other notable posts:

Are Chick Flicks 'Emotional Porn'? by Laura Leonard (March 5)

Sexy Evangelism, by Amy Julia Becker (June 15)

Toying with Adultery? by Marlena Graves, guest blogger (May 10)

Health Care Bill Concerns, by Joni Eareckson Tada / Religion News Service (March 17)

A Bikinied Muslim Miss USA, by Mandy McMichael, guest blogger (May 26)

Stalked by a Priest

Donna Freitas's This Gorgeous Game, about a priest obsessed with a teenage girl, is a work of deep empathy and disturbing believability.

Katelyn Beaty

This Gorgeous Game (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), Donna Freitas’s new work of young adult fiction, is a first-person narrative of being stalked. Most stories that have emerged from the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal detail the horrors of pedophilia and assault. Freitas’s novel, about a bright teenager named Olivia Peters, demonstrates that being fawned over and called incessantly can be as terrifying as what are considered more “harmful” crimes. Especially if you are a junior in high school, and the person fawning over you is a Catholic priest.

Freitas, a religion scholar at Boston University, is best known for Sex and the Soul, her 2008 study of young adults’ attitudes on spirituality and sexuality. She identifies as a “stubborn Catholic,” writing for The Washington Post amid recent media coverage of the scandal, “I am still here despite my struggles to remain a Catholic and despite my scars, too. . . . My faith and place in this tradition is much bigger than one single priest and some terrible church officials. It transcends victimization and unspent anger.”

The scars, as readers might guess by now, are from Freitas’s own experience of being stalked by a priest for over two years. She makes clear that Olivia is not her stand-in, that the narrative does not mimic her own. But she says that “I never could have conveyed the first-person emotion of what happens to Olivia or known how to get into the mind of a priest who would do such a thing as stalk a young woman.”

As such, This Gorgeous Game is a work of deep empathy and disturbing believability. Readers spend their time inside the mind and heart of Peters, a cradle Catholic who has recently landed a prestigious writing prize from a local Catholic university. The prize includes enrollment in a summer writing program led by Mark Brendan, a priest and writer esteemed in church and intellectual circles. Olivia’s father has been out of the picture for some time, she tells us early on — “but my older sister, Greenie, and I have had plenty of dads over the years, it’s just that everyone calls them Fathers instead of Dads and they are married to the Catholic Church. . . . Now another one, another Father walks into my life. What luck.”

Luck, readers learn quickly, is not the right word here. We watch the red flags of boundary-breaking and obsession go up as Father Mark fosters a mentoring relationship with Olivia. Flag #1: For their first writing session, he asks Olivia to meet him in a bar, where he sips scotch liberally, telling her, “I probably shouldn’t say this [“then don’t!” we say], but the moment I first saw you, I wondered to myself: how did so much talent, such insight and imagination, come from a girl so young, and with such startling beauty? . . . I am astounded by you, to be quite honest.”

He begins calling frequently to schedule private writing sessions, showing up in coffee shops and on instant messenger when Olivia begins avoiding his constant demands. In one telling scene, Father Mark snaps and bristles when Olivia mentions a male student in the program. Yet in true fashion of a young woman caught in a power play like Father Mark’s, Olivia blames herself. “Guilt thunders through me at the possibility that I have somehow violated this man’s generosity, profaned his charitable impulses by introducing something as base and vulgar as a crush. . . . Everything, me, suddenly, I am all wrong.”

Readers know, of course, that Olivia is not wrong — that she has never been culpable for Father Mark’s behavior, that she is, purely, a victim. This Gorgeous Game helpfully demonstrates that, when inappropriate relationships between adults and children arise, the onus always falls on the adult, who inherently has more power and awareness, to stop what has started. At the same time, Freitas portrays Father Mark not as evil incarnate (though by the end, some readers may think he is) but as a confused, immature man who uses his smarts and eminence to get what he wants. When Father Mark hands Olivia a poem in his seminar that includes the lines, “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, / in secret, between the shadow and the soul,” we see him as pathetic and pitiable and totally in the wrong, but not cartoonishly villainous.

This poem, actually, was penned by the monk and mystic Thomas Merton in 1966, in the throes of a passionate (and later regretted) romance with his significantly younger nurse, “M.” Merton detailed that experience in Learning to Love, released posthumously in 1998, and Freitas uses excerpts from it to frame the novel. (Freitas wrote recently that she cannot forgive Merton for treating his vow of celibacy — and M. herself — so flippantly.)

Merton wrote, “I simply have no business being [in] love and playing around with a girl, however innocently. After all I am supposed to be a monk with a vow of chastity and though I have kept my vow — I wonder if I can keep it indefinitely and still play this gorgeous game!” Consider This Gorgeous Game the other, lesser-known side of the story: the side of a young woman for whom an older man’s game has become a private nightmare.

The 'D Word' at U.S. Christian Colleges

At my Christian university, we are working toward reconciliation across ethnic and racial lines. We have a ways to go.

Marlena Graves, guest blogger

When Carmille Akande, a dean at Cedarville University, and I stepped into the Duke Gardens for the opening reception of Duke Divinity School’s Summer Institute — a project of Duke’s Center for Reconciliation — we sensed we were on holy ground. Our gratitude, awe, and love for Christ and his body only intensified throughout the week in June. Being with such a diverse group was a foretaste of the coming kingdom. And as we worshiped, fellowshipped, and lamented alongside brothers and sisters from all over the world, we were better equipped for our own ministry of reconciliation at Cedarville, a Baptist-affiliated college in Ohio.

We learned of Census projections that ethnic minorities will compose the majority in the U.S. by 2040. That, coupled with the fact that the center of Christianity has tilted toward the Global South, predominantly white Christian colleges and universities like Cedarville have to make changes necessary for institutional survival. But more important, the changes are necessary to faithfully represent Christ and his kingdom in our world.

Cedarville has already taken steps toward this faithful representation. In 2006, university trustees approved a statement on diversity, which includes the following:

Cedarville University actively seeks to attract and serve a diverse group of Christian employees and students who exercise their spiritual calling to be agents of reconciliation; pursuing unity, peace, and community in an atmosphere that recognizes our union in Christ and celebrates the contributions of all who seek to follow Christ.

In fall 2008, we hired Carmille as the Dean of Multi-Cultural and Special Programs. We hold diversity training and have a diversity committee. We are trying to diversify our faculty and staff. Such steps mirror those taking place at most other Christian colleges in the U.S. Thankfully many people on campus “get it.” But, like most U.S. Christian colleges and universities, we have a lot to learn — and some institutional sin to overcome.

When we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day each January, hold diversity training, or even mention diversity, I inevitably hear, “Why is diversity being shoved down our throats? I’m tired of it. I love everybody. I am color-blind.” After the 2008 presidential election, minority students who supported President Obama told stories of how their salvation was called into question by some on campus. Many felt they couldn’t openly celebrate the election of America’s first black president without meeting condemnation.

As I talk to colleagues at other Christian colleges, I hear similar stories. And as I’ve listened to stories from minority Cedarville students, and one from faculty and staff at other Christian schools, I’ve learned that minority students often report they’ve been treated worse at Christian institutions than at secular ones. I wonder if, as Christian higher educational institutions, we are seeking cosmetic diversity instead of true reconciliation. A majority of the time, we seem clueless about the inequality, humiliation, and indignity that minority students suffer on Christian campuses.

What do we do? In an institute seminar led by Peter T. Cha, associate professor of pastoral theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and David Black, president of Eastern University, we learned that one step forward is pinpointing the underlying assumptions of our organizational culture. For example, Cedarville has a doctrinal statement and a community covenant, artifacts that outline what we believe and how we strive to behave. These artifacts shape our practice, but they do not tell the whole story. The unwritten and unspoken rules — the underlying assumptions on our Christian campus (and in any church or Christian organization) — are the crux of our identity. They become our implicit theology.

A few examples of the underlying assumptions I’ve observed: The Republican Party is the Christian Party. Fox News is the preferred news outlet. Raising one’s hands and praying expressively in chapel is too charismatic. Of course, none of these are stated in our doctrinal statement or community covenant. And of course it’s fine for anyone to vote Republican, watch only Fox News, and have lowered hands and less noisy prayer. But if these underlying assumptions are used to say who’s in and who’s out, then we alienate many minority students, faculty, staff, and visitors who don’t share the same assumptions. Many black Christians vote Democrat; many minorities and whites in the U.S. and worldwide worship expressively. What do we communicate to them when they spend time on our campus?

If evangelical colleges are to become institutions that look and behave increasingly like Christ’s body, a helpful first step is to simply name those artifacts, shared values, and assumptions that may be hindering biblical reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:11-21). It’s not an easy task and not something a few people can do alone. As for myself, as a resident director, I must model a gracious spirit. I want to demonstrate that one can disagree staunchly with a brother or sister while respectfully listening and not slandering him or her. And as a biracial Puerto-Rican, I am keenly aware of the need to integrate minorities into my staff and dorm, to give them a voice, and to encourage their contributions on campus. I seek to model reconciliation through conversation, writing, seminars, and my lifestyle.

What are the underlying assumptions at your institutions and networks? Do these tend to help or hinder reconciliation across ethnic lines?

Marlena Graves (M.Div., Northeastern Seminary) is a resident director at Cedarville. She blogs at His Path Through the Wilderness, and has written for Her.meneutics about safeguarding against adultery, friendship between men and women, the sin of self-promotion, and same-sex attraction.

Skinny Jeans, Nose Jobs, and Jesus

In Unsqueezed, Margot Starbuck explores what shopping and eating to the glory of God looks like.

Alicia Cohn
Christian women aren’t supposed to have body image issues. Have you ever thought that? Perhaps quietly, to yourself, while looking in the mirror before walking out the door to church. In her new book, Unsqueezed: Springing Free From Skinny Jeans, Nose Jobs, Highlights, and Stillettos, Margot Starbuck notes that Christian women face a “double whammy” when it comes to appearances.

First we feel bad when our muffin tops overflow the world’s skinny mold — and then, as people of faith, we feel guilty because we tried so hard to cram ourselves into that death-dealing mold in the first place.

Unsqueezed is Starbuck’s wrestling with that double whammy. She offers a humorous yet surprisingly sharp examination of the ways that women, specifically Christian women, fixate on physical beauty.

“When I started writing the book, I wanted to say that appearances don’t matter at all,” Starbuck told me in an interview for Her.meneutics. “My editor looked at me with my crazy tie-dye and painted boots and nose ring, and she said, ‘Well, it seems like you put a certain degree of energy into your appearance.’ ”

So instead, Starbuck explores what moderation looks like and overcoming what she calls the “binding preoccupation with self.” The preoccupation begins with a fear: “the silent question of the human heart . . . am I acceptable?” a question that's only aggravated by modern advertising. The theme of acceptance will also be familiar to readers of Starbuck’s first book, The Girl in the Orange Dress: Searching for a Father Who Does Not Fail, which explored her difficulty believing that God accepted her. Accepting that God is “for us” frees us up to be “for” others, Starbuck says. Unsqueezed and her next book — which she tells me she’s already working on — examine the idea of acceptance in depth.

Unsqueezed is also a portrait of responsible consumerism. “The invitation to love God and love other people with our heart, soul, mind, and strength — I believe that extends to what’s in our wallet, what’s in our closet, what’s in our refrigerators,” Starbuck explains. The book offers ideas for how to replace our self-focused activities with ones that are other-focused. “We want to be not just deleting things from our lives, but also adding practices that help us live into the truth.”

The problem areas that individual women struggle with will vary, she says, but two major indicators are how time and money are spent. So while Starbuck admits to spending too many hours “going from thrift store to thrift store looking for just the right pair of jeans to tie dye,” my personal red flag is spending too much time browsing (but not buying) at Amazon.com, and daily sessions with a treadmill. "The fact is, I have to be responsible as a steward of the resources I’ve been given, says Starbuck. "And when I pour them into whatever is happening at TJ Maxx or Marshall’s, that feels like irresponsible stewardship."

Starbuck writes that many temptations — whether to overeat or to keep rigid control of diet — have the same root fear: the “hissing voice” that suggests we can take our needs into our own hands instead of trusting in God’s provision. “Once we recognize that voice, we’ll begin to hear it in relation to, oh, Ben and Jerry’s, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” Starbuck told me. “On one level, it’s a little goofy to say, ‘Can I trust God and not buy this thing?’ But honestly, I think that’s the deep, spiritual, emotional, theological issue: Are we willing to release our grasp? For some of us, it could be even broader than food and clothes. It could be about where we live, what jobs we are looking at.”

In other words, Unsqueezed is about much more than skinny jeans, nose jobs, highlights, and stilettos. After reading it, I started to wonder for the first time — Starbuck sort of snuck up on me with this — if my discomfort with the amount of time I spend with my brain plugged into my computer, or in a car traveling back and forth from the gym, or the money I carefully save for nothing in particular, is a symptom of a bigger problem — and one I can even tackle. We are called to live differently for Christ; is it possible that we can do that in everything we do with our day?

The idea is almost overwhelming, and Starbuck agrees. “Just do the next thing,” she writes. She also provides an appendix of links and resources for those who want to learn more or find their “next step” toward embodied theology. These include BetterWorldShopper.com and the True Campaign. Starbuck is a key voice for the latter, which has partnered with Food for the Hungry in a movement called true:shift, which “invites women to reallocate resources they are spending on cosmetic improvements and transfer those resources to those who are hungry, those in need,” she said.

Starbuck told me her own journey toward embodied discipleship started with her hair (swearing off hair color after she found that becoming a "summer blondie" bred dissatisfaction in her daughter). What will your next thing be? I’m not yet sure of mine, but Unsqueezed made me want to find it.

The Glamorous Life of the Pregnant Teenager

News Flash: Dads Are Nurturing

Parenting Imperfecta

Grieving a Miscarriage

Why I Can't Boycott Mel Gibson

How Many Kids Should We Have?

Multitasking: Bad for the Soul

You're Never 'Ready' to Parent

Following Christ at a Porn Convention

Church Volunteers: An Oxymoron