Reading the news that Michelle Duggar has suffered a second-trimester miscarriage, ending her 20th pregnancy, has left me wondering just how to react.
I guess my first impulses were somewhat less than charitable, and I settled on, "Hey, I've finally got something in common with her." Because I think that, in just about every other respect, it would be hard to find a woman less like me than Michelle Duggar. For one thing, she's got nineteen children! That's a fact I find both terrifying and, to be totally honest, somewhat repulsive. I don't have any, which is something that I have accepted and even learned to embrace, but which leaves me completely unable to imagine what kind of life she must lead.
She is also woman of deep, almost incomprehensible faith, believing that it is God who chooses how many children she will have, and she will do nothing to thwart His will. I do not share this view of the world, because if it's God who gives us children, then it also must be God who decides that some of them won't be born. I don't think I can accept such cruelty from a supposedly benevolent creator, and I wonder how Michelle and her husband will come to terms with that.
The story of the Duggars pushes buttons I didn't even know I had. I admit that I laughed the first time I heard the "clown car vagina" joke, and I've wondered just what in the world she could be thinking, subjecting her body to such stress, risking her life to do "God's will" by bringing another child into her family, risking leaving the children that are already here without a mother. In my view, that seems irresponsible.
But is it too much to hope for that, at this moment, everyone can put aside the jokes and the invective, and focus on what's really at the heart of this?
You see, there's this thing called choice and it can be a bit of a bugaboo. Because choice means that Michelle Duggar gets to make her own, even if it's one I don't understand, or even if it's one that makes me angry. The notion of choice demands that everyone gets to have it, or no one really has it.
I know that this much I do share with Michelle Duggar: We both had to hear a doctor say that there was no heartbeat. That the tiny beings inside of us, beings that were wanted and regarded as gifts, had ceased to live. That hurts, whether it's your first child or your twentieth.
I don't believe a feeling person would or should wish that on anyone.
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Comments
This says all that needs to be said. xo ~r
r
You said all I felt better thanI could even think it. Thank you so much.
toritto, thanks. It's not easy to get beyond one's gut reactions, and like I said, this family riles me in all kinds of ways. But choice is choice.
keri, thanks for being so honest. My own unedited thoughts weren't too far from that. I'm wondering if the Duggars see this as a message. I hope they don't.
nanatehay, it's true that many people who are like the Duggars don't want others to have a choice. They probably don't see those things as choices at all. I hope that they will come to understand that different choices are choices, and it's all just different sides of the same coin. I'm not real hopeful, but you never know.
Christine, how very sad. I am so sorry. It's true - if you want that child, losing it is devastating - first time, fourth time, twentieth time.
i'm sad for her.
Sharing an experience with someone whose views you do not share is a beautiful reminder of our commonality. Cancer and Alzheimer's did that for me. Mom and I had friends in her nursing home we would have crossed the street to avoid when mom was healthy.
Lezlie
Personally, I find the Duggars creepy and I pity the poor daughters who are tasked with caring for increasing brood of younger children. I hope those daughters are able (permitted?) to make choices for themselves as they mature. I fear their cloistered upbringing will limit their options. But I would never let those feelings prohibit me from feeling sympathy for the two parents as they mourn the end of a much-anticipated pregnancy.