Thursday

 Prenatal day.  

Big belly day.

Truth day.

 Saving babies day.

 Empowering women day.

"Breastfeeding is a safety net against the worst effects of poverty....Exclusive breastfeeding goes a long way toward canceling out the health differences between being born into poverty and being born into affluence.  Unless the mother is in extremely poor nutritional health, the breast milk of a mother in an African village is as good as the breast milk of a mother in a Manhattan apartment."

--James P. Grant, former executive director of UNICEF

(from The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding)

"My mom said I don't have enough milk.  I need to give the baby a bottle."

"The baby was crying and it threw up, so my aunt gave the baby bean sauce.  I didn't want her to.  But she did."

"I want to keep my baby with me, but my family says I need to rest...and they take the baby away."

"My family says I can't take care of this baby.  They say to get rid of him.  Give him away.  But I want to be his mother."

We talked today...a room full of women about how hard it is to stand up to the people we love in order to protect our babies and do what we know is right.

Have you been there before?  In that hard place?  When your heart is telling you one thing...God is reminding you of the truth you know...and yet you're afraid of hurting someone's feeling or causing strife or creating tension?

For all the mothers out there who have been in that nauseating spot...that frustrating fork in the road...

"Do I stand up for my child...for what I know...for what is truth...even though it might cause conflict?  Or do I suck it up and be nice and fail my child?"

"Am I being crazy?  Prideful?  Unwilling to listen to reason?  Or do I know what I know because God made me to know this little person better than any person could ever know them?"

That filthy, dirty dance we do with doubt.  The shame when it's over.  Have you felt it?

I told your stories today to a group of Haitian women.  I told mine.  The ones where I failed my children in the name of making nice.

And once again I was reminded that we are not all that different.

We all know what it is like to know one thing and have family and friends pressuring us to do something else.  We know what it's like for God to plant the truth in our soul and then be too afraid to stand up to doctors, or specialists, or anyone else with a fancy title who makes our truth look less-than or smaller in some way.

In that way, we're not so far away from these women.

I'm convinced mothers are standing at that same frustrating fork on every continent on this planet.

A room full of Haitian moms looked me in the face today and vowed to fight for truth.  To fight for their babies.  To risk relationships being strained.  To do what is right for their babies no matter what.

Their strong faces made the tears run hot down my face.  Because I knew...they would probably fail.  And so will I.  And so will you.  But we're in this together.  All women.  Each one.  We all share this pain.  This struggle.  This need for courage, grace, and forgiveness in these roles of mother, friend, and daughter.

I had to take a moment to let that truth soak in...thick and deep.

There was not a moment more beautiful.