Christy Bauman

Am I His Mother or His Lover?

Most nights, I pick up around the house after my kids are asleep. The usual Lego pieces, dirty socks, and crayons remind me of the life that is lived in these walls, but too often, I also come across two or three pairs of my husband’s shoes, clothes, and gym bags in some random rooms of the house. Upon picking them up, I sigh. I feel defeated and worried that he might never learn to pick up after himself. I internally blame my husband for his laziness or his own mother for never teaching him otherwise. I find my mind disappointed at his lack of discipline and my heart sad at how unseen I feel. I don’t feel tenderness or sweet reflection as I carry his shoes to our closet. 

Wives weren’t meant to nag, they were meant to be lovers. Lovers aren’t maids or enablers, lovers are pursued and respected. I was taught in the Protestant church that a woman was to be a helpmate. “Helpmate” is more commonly translated as a helper rather than it’s other translation, savior; either way, it has been communicated insufficiently from many pulpits. When we teach women to be silent, we fail to teach them how to be a savior or a helper in a relationship. Silent compliance leads to resentment, and compliance leaves the other to become enabled. The curse of the enabled person is that they don’t know the work it takes to pursue the fullness of life. Often I work with spiritually abusive men who are not evil, but foolish. They are cursed because they do not understand or know how to get out of the entitled place they have found themselves in.

False submission is a term I explain to many disgruntled women who feel like they are nagging their husbands to show up more. False submission is silencing one’s knowing self in the presence of the other. My husband needs to put away his shoes, yes, but why is that so important? The answer is simple: my tenderness grows a little colder to him each time I don’t require him to live out of his fullness. My failure is not keeping my heart tender enough for him to engage. I set him up for failure when I allow my heart to grow detached and dishonest. I fail him when I don’t believe in him and require his best self from him. 

Resent leads to contempt. My job is to guard my heart against contempt; that is my true role as a savior wife. I save our relationship from the snares of distance, hardening, and keeping my needs from him. I need him to pick up after himself. I need him to live out of his fullest self because it draws me to him.

You may be thinking, “You are telling me that I have been doing this whole “submissive wife” and “Christian marriage” thing wrong?” I am telling you that healthy relationships need honesty and risk to survive. When we silence what needs are required, we train our partners to be enabled. 

Honest relationships are made up of two people who both require and relieve each other. 

Mark Nepo (2014) writes a beautiful metaphor of pearl divers, in which he explains that for each diver to be safe to explore the ocean floor, they must trust their partner to hold the line and count the time on the boat above. He explains, “The gift and responsibility of a relationship is to take turns doing the dishes and putting up the storm windows, giving the other a chance to dive for God without worrying about dinner. While one explores the inner, the other must tend the outer.” 

For connection to thrive, we must take turns. One must be strong enough to enter and while the other is soft enough to be entered. When I submit to a covenant relationship, it is my job to voice and require all that is needed to remain soft.

The greatest gift the submitted partner gives to their other half is to voice and require what they need to remain known. 

www.christybauman.com

by Christy Bauman

God of Comfort, be near.

Selah my 4 year old called her brother “dumb” so she is now crying on the kitchen counter as I cook because she can’t watch the rest of the tv show they were watching.

We take words serious in our house. Words mean as much as, if not more than, a shove or a push. So when our kids use a word to tear down someone else’s personhood and spirit, we have consequences. Four-year-olds are no exception.

Her tears are hot and ongoing for the next hour and I keep walking over and holding her, comforting her through the pain of the consequence.

This is what mothers do, they comfort along the lessons of life.

After watching Rachel Held Evans’ funeral today, I feel my own need to be comforted. On this earth, the life, death, life cycle is not foreign to me, but when a mother, your age dies, you feel it. The heavy weight of death is more than my chest can bear after such a life has been stolen from us. I don’t weep for her resurrected body, I weep for her earthly one that doesn’t get to nurse her sweet baby before sleep tonight. I feel heavy for the empty pages she will never fill and I will never read. I grieve because she is a woman, daughter, sister, wife and mother and the idea of dying and leaving my family sounds excruciating.

Her funeral was painstakingly beautiful. The women who facilitated the service were exquisite in their knowledge of how to navigate a congregation around a tomb. Rachel’s essence and memory were so very honored. In the sermon, Mary Magdalene was a beloved archetype illustrated throughout the weeping, she was a Biblical character who knows her way around a tomb. Mary Magdalene hated death but was not going to let it stop her from living. After Jesus’ resurrected body ascends we are all left with the hope while holding the pain of living apart from Him. I feel the pain today of living apart from those who have I loved and I have had to bury. Today, my body aches and I need a Comforter to tell me that “this too will pass” and that we won’t live forever apart from our beloveds.

May my daughter in years to come, long after I am gone remember my arms around her as she wept through different seasons of life and my holding her weeping body and whispering,

“this too shall pass, we were made for glory, my love.

And glory is coming for us.”

by Christy Bauman

Does God Know What It is Like to Be Pregnant?

“Yours is the kind of body I want, when I am pregnant.”

She says this so matter-of-factly to me at a rehearsal dinner last weekend, I forget for a moment that I was still trying to remember her name.

I am flattered by the compliment but not sure why she has revealed this information to me. Her tall slender body promises her hope to come true and so much more.

I feel a little more at ease, that I am not the only woman who has feared what they will look like pregnant. I wonder to myself if I will be able to master the pregnancy glow, those few women of power and assurance, who wear their protruding belly like an icon of glory in it's most compelling moment.

There has been no initiative on my part to engage with this jutting abdomen of mine. My husband's accolades have fallen short of my insecure glances into the mirror.

“Lord, what did you want me to feel about my body in these 36 weeks?”

“In these 252 days of wrestling my belly against gravity, did You hope that awe might be my only thought?”

I would not change this baby growing within me, I want him there, bumping up against my internal organs, pushing them into my chest cavity to make room for his precious little body to form. And should my tegument mimic his stretching limbs across abdomen, I will mourn the unchosen tattoos against my toasted skin and hope to one day wear them proudly without thoughts of erasing them with modern aesthetic lasers.

My husband often banters with me by offering to “hold” the baby, as he puts his hands under my stomach. I am both envious and relived he does not carry this baby within his body as there would be both comfort and disdain to his experiencing this without me.

I would not choose not to feel this little one's restless growth reminding me of a Creator who is secretly crafting a little human that looks something like where Andrew and I come from, a surprise structure from our family lineage and perhaps a personality that might lead us to laugh with him long into the night.

And I know if I go where He invites me, I will learn much of the ways of a Master as He creates masterpieces...this is my exclusive invitation to be a part of who God is as the Creator.

Yet.

I am human, and even more specifically, woman.

Cursed with the desire to offer beauty in its purest form.

To which I wonder out loud again to the Father, “Really. Is pregnancy what You call beauty or curse?”

I fear His answer, I already knew.

“Both.”

“Welcome my daughter.”

by Christy Bauman

Blue Frost Gatorade, Memaw and a Hospital Tour.

"I'm going to step out and get some water."

These were the only words I could muster out loud to the group as I awkwardly interrupted the hospital tour of the birthing unit this morning.

I coached myself, much like when I give blood, to breathe deeply and put my head between my knees. It was all too much though, the interrogating lights in the delivery room, the hideous stirrups tucked under the bed, the cords and monitors hanging so invasively near as if they were pretending to be interesting books on a night stand.

Whether it is the pain of the event I truly don't know yet, but more so, I am aware in this moment of the longing inside of me to be taken care of, a place to hide and have someone safe come and rescue me.

The problem is I am not one who often allows myself to be found when I am afraid.

So, after exiting early from the evil tour, I sit in the car with tears running down my cheeks, as Andrew goes into the grocery store to attempt to buy me a little comfort.

I want Frost flavored blue Gatorade.

Simple. It reminds me of running into the ocean or of playing in the snow. If I close my eyes and I take a sip and hold it in my mouth, I often think, that was like skiing or surfing in my mouth. It's brilliance is not in the product but the feeling it incites in me. Somehow it sweetly brings me back to play and simplicity...to feeling carefree and happy.

We drive a bit in silence until he offers his thoughts.

"I was scared too....you looked like you were going to cry in there...the feeling like you have always parented yourself through these times, but this one is too much?"

This is what you get when you marry a therapist. Yet, his words were too poignant for my normal rebuttal and my tears quickly affirmed his insight.

But what if you have had many parents parent you? What if coming from a broken home meant that you were only allowed to be a kid in certain people's presence for only permitted amounts of time? I can't call up all the women or men who spoke into my life, cared for me in different seasons...do I ask them all to come to care for me now?

337.783.4150

That is the phone number that saved my life growing up. Even though it is not the number Andrew called to reach my grandparents, it was their number for so many years, one of the only consistent things I knew if ever I was in need.

Memaw.

I needed my Memaw. Her safe, sweet voice is etched in my mind and I can hear it before she ever picks up the phone. I know the smell of her house so vividly that even thousands of miles away I can recall its comforting attributes and they bring me warmth.

So, as Andrew dials the number and I hear such a familiar sound, my tears cascade down my face in relief because I know now I will be comforted.

by Christy Bauman