Lies as Old asThat Garden

Is this the toxic air of the world, this atmosphere we inhale, burning into our lungs, this No, God?  No, God, we won't take what You give.  No, God, Your plans are a gutted, bleeding mess and I didn't sign up for this and You really thought I'd go for this?  No, God, this is ugly and this is a mess and can't You get anything right and just haul all this pain out of here and I'll take it from here, thanks.  And God?  Thanks for nothing.  Isn't this the human inheritance, the legacy of the garden?

...I believe the Serpent's hissing lie, the repeating refrain of his campaign through the ages:  God isn't good.  It's the cornerstone of his movement.  That God withholds good from His children, that God does not genuinely, fully, love us.

From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.  Satan, he wanted more.  More power, more glory.  Ultimately, in his essence, Satan is an ingrate.  And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden.  Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity:  the sin of ingratitude.  Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. (One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp)

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"I don't have enough milk." 

"My milk is not good enough." 

"Since I'm not well nourished, my milk is bad for my baby." 

"I can't just feed my baby breastmilk.  My baby would die."

Recently we shared this article written by the New York Times that describes some of the false information we're up against as we try to educate women about breastfeeding.  There are many women in Haiti who will not breastfeed.  Breastfeeding is looked down upon as something only poor women (who have nothing better to do with their day but sit and feed a baby) do.  There are lies and myths about colostrum that cause women to not feed it to their newborns.  They either express it and dump it, or worse (and more common) they refuse to feed their babies much at all for several days after the baby is born.  Breastfeeding gets off to a rocky start and a lot of times babies die or end up in critical condition.

A few weeks ago we were teaching a class to our ladies at Heartline and breastfeeding came up (it often does).  It was a beautiful moment as we heard the ladies share their deepest fears about breastfeeding.  Their doubts.  One lady admitted how difficult it is to receive new information and change your mind.  We all nodded.  We know how hard it is too.

Hearing our ladies verbally doubt the way God created their bodies...His perfect design of life-giving breastmilk...free, perfect food for the babies was heartbreaking and infuriating.  Our anger directed towards the one who roams this earth bent on destruction, reeking of death.

That Serpent.

His wicked song and dance...it never changes.  He tells the same, awful, nightmarish life-stealing story:  "God is holding out on you.  He has not given you what you need.  Look elsewhere.  Take things into your own hands."

You've heard that lie, haven't you?  I hear Him whisper in my ear all too often.  I know that voice.  I am a daughter of Eve and Satan knows how to point out the tree, in any situation, inviting me to doubt the life God has hand-chosen for me.  "I want more.  I want something different.  This...all this...whatever you call this...it's not enough.  It will never be enough."

Hearing the ladies share their doubts...the lack of trust in the bodies God gave them...the gift of breastmilk...life and nourshment God has freely given to them and their babies I whispered to God...oh please.  Oh please redeem this.  Truth.  How we need you.  The person.  The light.

Is this how God feels when He sees us turn our face away from the things He has declared good, gracious, and right?  Why won't you choose life, my child?  Why do you insist on death?

Satan, and his crafty plan to steal, kill, and destroy was on full display in that room.  This was no longer a class or a lesson on breastfeeding.  It was a moment to stand face to face with evil, darkness, that vile Serpent and call him a liar.  You always were a liar.  You always will be one.

This lie that he plants in these women's souls...that venom it smells of "This is not good enough.  You can't trust what God created, what He has planned.  He is faithless.  Take matters into your own hands." It is what causes a Haitian woman to hold her brand new baby far from her breast, buy man-made, factory-formulated "milk", water it down, oftentimes with dirty water, robbing her baby of nutrient dense foods...risk killing the life that wiggled in her womb...when God was all the while pumping life...rich, abundant life...free of cost...liquid grace through that mother's breast. 

This lie is what causes women to breastfeed some of the time, but since the milk is "bad" and what God has given can't be fully trusted, they supplement with table food starting at just a few weeks.  They give their babies water to drink...water that isn't clean enough to drink.  That little life could be fully nourished at the breast, but the mother is afraid.  She doesn't trust this ancient gift.  She breastfeeds a little, feeds the baby food and water, the baby dies, and the devil declares his lies through the people around her who tell that grieving mother "It was your breastmilk that did it.  It was bad.  Breastfeeding killed your baby."


These lies aren't really about breastfeeding.  They aren't about money, or jean sizes, or the square footage in a home.  The lies are about the God who gave us our salary, Aunt so-and-so's hips, and the house He said to make a home.  Lies about God's goodness and faithfulness.  Lies that rob us of life and literally rob Haitian babies of their very lives.  In this story...the daughters of Eve...the white ones the brown ones...the ones with fancy educations and the ones with doors made of ragged bed sheets...we are one and the same.  We attract the vile breath of that serpent...he squirms into our thought life and plants seeds of "This is not enough."

So we fight and we fight.  We pray and we teach and we pray and we teach.

We beg our ladies to trust God.  "He loves you.  He has given  you good gifts.  He loves your baby.  Breast milk is a gift from God to your baby.  He is offering life to you and your child.  The enemy is a liar.  He is stealing from you.  For many of you this lie...this particular one has caused you to lose babies.  You've watched them die.  Trust Him.  Oh please.  Trust Him.  He knows better than we do.  He is faithful and can be trusted."


We beg God to free us all from the sin of that garden.  As I hear that wicked lie..as my heart runs after ingratitude, I'm asking the Lord to not only heal my foolish soul, but to remind me that this garden sin...it bonds me deep to the Haitian women we love and serve.  My ingratitude and distrust of God may never cause me to hold a dying baby.  In some ways that makes what these women face seem worse...although I know that's not true.  Living a life of ingratitude and doubt always brings death.  Haven't you felt it?

I will never be comfortable with the fact that God uses the suffering of the Haitian people to give me a visual of the condition of my own soul.  I sort of hate that.  I take those frustrations out on God.  Yes I see, Lord how turning my back on all the garden gifts you have given and yearning for the one thing you withheld can result in a lifeless baby in the lap of a sobbing mother.  I see my own sin in that...the truth there.  I can't figure out or change the way God works and why the stakes seem to be higher for some people, but I do know this commonality..this shared sin...when I hear it tugging at my soul...it compels me to pray for the women we love in Haiti...that they would trust the Lord.  That I would trust Him.  That you would too.

Forgive us God for doubting if you give good gifts.

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives.  We hunger for something more, something other. (One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp)