by Leah
I used to assume the phrase "crying over spilt milk" referred to dairy milk, but now I know it must have originated with a breastfeeding mom.
During my pumping and praying saga, also known as The Struggle to Make My Boobs Produce Enough Milk, I lived in fear that I would accidentally perform that most dreaded of breastfeeding mom moves: the Milk Spill. When you work hard to pump, store, label, and sterilize multiple times a day so that your baby can have breastmilk when The Boobie Lady (my husband's endearing nickname for me) is not around, spilling some of that precious stuff is tear-inducing. On the parenting forum for my alma mater, threads about spilled pumped milk include graphic play-by-plays of the traumatic event, complete with phrases like "When I transfer defrosted milk to bottles in the morning, I behave as if I am a scientist in a lab handling the Ebola virus."
I used to assume the phrase "crying over spilt milk" referred to dairy milk, but now I know it must have originated with a breastfeeding mom.
During my pumping and praying saga, also known as The Struggle to Make My Boobs Produce Enough Milk, I lived in fear that I would accidentally perform that most dreaded of breastfeeding mom moves: the Milk Spill. When you work hard to pump, store, label, and sterilize multiple times a day so that your baby can have breastmilk when The Boobie Lady (my husband's endearing nickname for me) is not around, spilling some of that precious stuff is tear-inducing. On the parenting forum for my alma mater, threads about spilled pumped milk include graphic play-by-plays of the traumatic event, complete with phrases like "When I transfer defrosted milk to bottles in the morning, I behave as if I am a scientist in a lab handling the Ebola virus."
Similarly with actual mouth-to-nipple breastfeeding, if I had just let down and Little Bit suddenly decided that popping off to smile her million watts at me was more fun than feeding, I got a bit frantic. It felt like my breasts only made so much milk, and if Little Bit didn't get all of it (and if we ended up going through my dwindling stash of frozen milk), we were all headed for Milkpocalypse. And when she would stay latched on long enough to consume all of what I had available hot off the chest at that moment, I'd begrudge her the bottle I was thawing out from the priceless stash and then silently curse when she got too fed up (or too full up) to finish it all. I loathed tossing the ounce or two left in a bottle that had been sitting out too long. When the guidelines said breastmilk was good for 3 to 5 hours after thawing, you better believe I was reaching for the 5 hour mark. (Of course Little Bit was no longer interested by that point. Sigh.)
But occasionally, while I'd be pumping at work or wincing as I poured old milk down the drain, almost despite myself I would hear the words of Nancy, a member of my congregation. Nancy is always reminding us that God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. She's usually talking about stewardship and that when you give more, you have more, but of course Divine providence ("providing for") extends to--or perhaps begins with--food and physical sustenance.
When you think about it, the Bible is full of verses like "abundantly far more than all we could ask or imagine," (Eph. 3:20) "so much you will not be able to store it," (Malachi 3:10), "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26), and "how much more will your Father in heaven give" (Matthew 7:11). Then there are the stories of water and food in the desert (Exodus 17:1-7; 16:1-36;), Elijah being fed by ravens in the wilderness (1 Kings 17), loaves and fishes multiplying to feed everyone (Mark 8:1-9; Matthew 15:32-39), and feasts with room for all and then some (Luke 14:15-24; Matthew 22:1-14).
These scriptures (and many others) remind us that God isn't generally interested in making us scrape along in fear for our basic needs. And even when the specter of famine strikes, the beautiful biology behind breastfeeding reminds us that there's enough: mothers who aren't able to get enough calories to nourish themselves will still make enough breastmilk for their babies.*
That doesn't necessarily make it easy, though, to put aside frenetic wonderings of "How will I ever make enough?" Our society thrives off of messages based in fear and anxiety; transitioning away from those messages requires trust, and developing trust requires practice. To instead take up the mantra that "somehow, there will be enough" requires practicing trust in the One who knows what it's like to mother a nursing child--practicing that trust until it becomes not just intellectually true, but real.
So even though I am generally a non-anxious person, when it came to feeding my child it took awhile to internalize the message of God's abundance--probably because as a parent, it's my central responsibility to provide for her and I was scared of falling short on something so important. But as with many things in my spiritual life, not long after I started practicing trust that there would be enough, there was, and I hit my milk-production stride.
Just like when I decided to quit stressing over whether ANYONE besides my husband, the music minister, and me would show up to our new church start;
just like when, in my vegan days, I decided to quit staking out potlucks and buffet lines to claim all the plant-based products before omnivorous poachers devoured the baked beans and hummus clearly meant for ME;
just like when I decided to write that check for a church or a charity even when the bank account was low or decided to hand the guy on the side of the road a $20 when my budget said $2...
...some piece of trying to live out of abundance instead of scarcity freed up something inside me. The milk came (or the churchgoers, or the vegan food, or the funds), yes. But so did a sense of trust, of enough, of autarkes--New Testament Greek for "sufficiency."
I knew I had really moved from fear to trust, from scarcity to abundance, from fretting to autarkes, when, faced with the last 2 ounces in a bottle left over from daycare, soundly refused in the car, and soundly refused again after the 30 minute commute home, I was able to wash it down the disposal** without batting an eyelid (or considering rewarming it for one more past-its-prime attempt...because you know I've been desperate enough to entertain that thought at least once before).
It's a bit simplistic and precious, but you could boil it down to "Let go and let God."
Just don't let go of the bottle full of freshly pumped breastmilk.
*Pulled from somewhere in Gale & Karen Pryor's Nursing Your Baby; I am too tired/lazy to look up the page number right now.
**Yes, I know, extra breastmilk is great for cuts, colds, eye crud, probably even hair conditioner but I figure if it's too far gone for Little Bit to drink, then the antimicrobial superpowers it possesses have probably also started to degenerate.
But occasionally, while I'd be pumping at work or wincing as I poured old milk down the drain, almost despite myself I would hear the words of Nancy, a member of my congregation. Nancy is always reminding us that God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. She's usually talking about stewardship and that when you give more, you have more, but of course Divine providence ("providing for") extends to--or perhaps begins with--food and physical sustenance.
When you think about it, the Bible is full of verses like "abundantly far more than all we could ask or imagine," (Eph. 3:20) "so much you will not be able to store it," (Malachi 3:10), "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26), and "how much more will your Father in heaven give" (Matthew 7:11). Then there are the stories of water and food in the desert (Exodus 17:1-7; 16:1-36;), Elijah being fed by ravens in the wilderness (1 Kings 17), loaves and fishes multiplying to feed everyone (Mark 8:1-9; Matthew 15:32-39), and feasts with room for all and then some (Luke 14:15-24; Matthew 22:1-14).
These scriptures (and many others) remind us that God isn't generally interested in making us scrape along in fear for our basic needs. And even when the specter of famine strikes, the beautiful biology behind breastfeeding reminds us that there's enough: mothers who aren't able to get enough calories to nourish themselves will still make enough breastmilk for their babies.*
That doesn't necessarily make it easy, though, to put aside frenetic wonderings of "How will I ever make enough?" Our society thrives off of messages based in fear and anxiety; transitioning away from those messages requires trust, and developing trust requires practice. To instead take up the mantra that "somehow, there will be enough" requires practicing trust in the One who knows what it's like to mother a nursing child--practicing that trust until it becomes not just intellectually true, but real.
So even though I am generally a non-anxious person, when it came to feeding my child it took awhile to internalize the message of God's abundance--probably because as a parent, it's my central responsibility to provide for her and I was scared of falling short on something so important. But as with many things in my spiritual life, not long after I started practicing trust that there would be enough, there was, and I hit my milk-production stride.
Just like when I decided to quit stressing over whether ANYONE besides my husband, the music minister, and me would show up to our new church start;
just like when, in my vegan days, I decided to quit staking out potlucks and buffet lines to claim all the plant-based products before omnivorous poachers devoured the baked beans and hummus clearly meant for ME;
just like when I decided to write that check for a church or a charity even when the bank account was low or decided to hand the guy on the side of the road a $20 when my budget said $2...
...some piece of trying to live out of abundance instead of scarcity freed up something inside me. The milk came (or the churchgoers, or the vegan food, or the funds), yes. But so did a sense of trust, of enough, of autarkes--New Testament Greek for "sufficiency."
I knew I had really moved from fear to trust, from scarcity to abundance, from fretting to autarkes, when, faced with the last 2 ounces in a bottle left over from daycare, soundly refused in the car, and soundly refused again after the 30 minute commute home, I was able to wash it down the disposal** without batting an eyelid (or considering rewarming it for one more past-its-prime attempt...because you know I've been desperate enough to entertain that thought at least once before).
It's a bit simplistic and precious, but you could boil it down to "Let go and let God."
Just don't let go of the bottle full of freshly pumped breastmilk.
*Pulled from somewhere in Gale & Karen Pryor's Nursing Your Baby; I am too tired/lazy to look up the page number right now.
**Yes, I know, extra breastmilk is great for cuts, colds, eye crud, probably even hair conditioner but I figure if it's too far gone for Little Bit to drink, then the antimicrobial superpowers it possesses have probably also started to degenerate.