God Sauce

I am incredibly pro-choice when it comes to God. When it comes to most things, actually. I have a high tolerance for a wide range of choices people make for their lives and their families, and I never voice my opinion when people make choices that are different than those I would make.

Well, almost never. There was that one time….

I was visiting my newly-pregnant friend’s house for coffee. Our daughters were happily playing until the moment her daughter came up for a cuddle, put her hand on her mom’s belly and asked:

“Mommy, how did the baby get in there?“

She smiled down at her sweet girl and said:
“God put it there.”

Cue the hot cup of coffee spit-take. Sometimes words fly out of my mouth before I can reign them back in. It’s almost like watching a movie where you have no control over what the characters say. This was one of those times.

“No, no! God has does not put babies in your belly. Babies are made when eggs in a woman’s body are fertilized by sperm. You can choose to fertilize your eggs, or stop them from being fertilized. Mommy and daddy chose to make a new baby.”

The four-year-old accepted this, exclaiming “Yay!” and going back to playing.
When I finally raised my eyes to look at my friend, her face was just as horrified as I imagined it might be. After all, this was the same woman from whom I received one of my favorite phone calls ever a few months prior. Here it is, in movie-script form:

     FLASHBACK
     PENIS MOM’S KITCHEN - DAY
     
     Phone rings. Our heroine, Penis Mom, beautiful in
     her late 30’s, cheerfully picks up. Before she can 
     say hello, a frantic voice blasts out.
          
                    FLABERGASTED MOM #1
          Uterine lining? Really? Uterine lining? 
          My four-year-old just told me women 
          have PERIODS when they shed their 
          uterine lining because they are not 
          pregnant. YOUR daughter explained it 
          all after seeing a tampon commercial. 
          Uterine lining?!?!? Really?
          
                    PENIS MOM
          Well, tampon commercials are confusing, 
          and saying 'blood' can be scary - we 
          usually try to keep blood inside our 
          bodies...
          
                    FLABERGASTED MOM #1
          She is FOUR YEARS OLD!
          
                    PENIS MOM
          Right, that is why I said period 
          instead of menstruation.

So. I was not surprised when this same woman was irate with me yet again for giving her daughter too much information (by the way, this is not a concept I grasp easily).

     PRESENT DAY
     NEWLY-PREGNANT FRIEND’S HOUSE - DAY

Penis Mom preemptively tries to quell the brewing 
     firestorm.

                    PENIS MOM

I am sorry, but I just can't let that 
          girl think for a moment that she has 
          no power over whether or not she gets 
          pregnant.



FLABERGASTED MOM #1
          Well, don't you think God has something 
          to do with it?!


                    PENIS MOM

No, I really don't - but it doesn't 
          matter what I think.

And it really doesn’t. If you want to have a culture in your family where God is an important member, that is great. If you want to carry out the mythology that little elves and a fat old man watch over you at certain times of year, have at it. I don’t care if you tell your kids that there is an ogre in the attic who shaves your head in the middle of the night when you don’t eat your veggies [Editor’s Note: What??!!]. But for the love of god, give them the facts as well. Veggies have vitamins and minerals and fiber that make your body work well – the ogre living up there just likes to remind us of that.

I don’t know, you can figure it out – you are clever.

Spread whatever God sauce you want on it, but let the main course be information. Please.

We need more people who know more in this world. We need more people who understand the mechanics of how things work before making decisions. We need people who know that there is not a special mechanism in the body that shuts down so victims of rape don’t get pregnant. We need people who know that a gun in your home actually increases the risk that someone you care about will get shot. You know, facts. They really are useful.

Also, maybe we could work to include lots of different facts, lots of different perspectives, and lots of different ways of thinking of things.

I was reminded this morning of my “God puts babies in your belly” story (which I really wish I could at least rename to the “God puts babies in your uterus” story). I read a blog post by a mom who was proudly saying she explained mating to her kids by using some bullshit, bull-mating story. Although she did provide some technical answers to reproduction, she went on to tell her kids that God helps you choose the right mate and that is why we wait to get married before making babies.

I am not really sure about everything she said, I kind of tuned out after the “God finds you a mate” thing because I was thinking “Huh? We need to urgently tell all those folks on Harmony.com they just need to let go and let God.”

If you want to give your kids the “Wait-until-you-are married-to-a-person-of-the-opposite-sex-and-procreate” paradigm, then go for it. But lots of folks follow different paths, alone or with different kinds of partners, by traditional sex, or less traditional insemination, or adoption.

Families happen. It is not ours to choose how others should make it happen.

If we want to raise kids who don’t have judgment about other ways of doing things, shouldn’t we let them know those other ways exist?

If we want to raise kids who make informed choices, shouldn’t we help inform them?

I am no God expert – but I think even God would see the logic in this.