[Author’s Note #1: This post is a long-overdue expansion and explanation of the story to which I alluded in the introduction of Kiss Mommy’s Belly. While that post is [in my humble opinion] a heart-warming and worthwhile read, it isn’t prerequisite knowledge here.]
[Author’s Note #2: This post provides the spiritual backstory for the tale of my third child — but, again, *this* piece isn’t prerequisite reading. You might consider skipping it if you have a distaste for the touchy-feely and/or religious — because, genuinely, it would be impossible to tell the story of my children without discussing my faith.]
[Author’s Note #3: Along those lines — this post contains several messages that I feel I received from God. I want to be very clear that these are merely my perceptions of what God spoke into my heart. I don’t intend to speak for God — just to convey what I think He spoke to me.]
This is the story of my four kids: Borealis, Australis, Occidentalis, and Orientalis.
Wait — I’ll be a bit more specific. This is the story that we told about our kids before we ever met the first one — and, indeed, before we were fully committed to having four. We believe that this story was not merely self-generated, but was revealed to us in bits and pieces, as God prepared our hearts for the children whom He would give us.
Let’s rewind about seven years. Taylor and I began seeking God’s plan for our family pretty early in our relationship. Admittedly, though, our early interest wasn’t particularly prayerful — mostly, we just discussed what sort of family structure we thought would work best for us.
Our individual backgrounds, of course, heavily influenced our perspectives. Taylor is the oldest of three and has always enjoyed the accompanying benefits — so, of course, he wanted three kids. I, on the other hand, am the younger of two… but my older sister was never able to be the companion that I wanted.
You see, I have a family history of autism, and my sister ended up with the worst diagnosis in several generations. The condition — well, spectrum of conditions — is female-linked in my dad’s lineage.
It is hard to overstate the impact that this storm cloud has had on me over the course of my life. As a child, I had an older sister who acted like a much-younger sister; as an adult, I grappled with knowing that all of my children would run an increased risk of autism… but especially my daughters.
Thus, I found myself in a bit of a conundrum: the more children I had, the greater the chance that [at least] one of them would be autistic; but, the fewer children I had, the greater the chance that one of them would end up like me — yearning for a strong sibling connection that failed to develop. [Note: You might remember that this unrequited desire was the focus of my final essay response in Blast from the Past: April 1, 2016.] Thus, I reasoned that Taylor’s desire for three kids was probably reasonable: not too many, not too few.
So, for about two years, we talked about our three kids. We tried out names, imagined personalities, and planned our future together — as a set of five, someday in the future. And, even though he didn’t have a definite name yet, our firstborn was always going to be a boy.
Several things about that mental picture changed during my senior year of college — the year of my Oscar-worthy reenactment of Jonah.
First off, the timeline. I realized in September that I was being called to have kids soon — like, very soon. But, it took until April for me to stop running from that calling and choose instead to embrace it. [Note: This journey is also described in the concluding author’s note of Blast from the Past: April 28, 2017.]
Over that same course of time, I also sensed that there was something else that both of us had been missing — or rather, someone else. I just could not shake the feeling that God had a fourth child for our family.
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to broach each of these topics with my husband. He prayerfully agreed to both, which was quite a relief. (After all, it’s best to be on the same page when it comes to babies.)
Thus, our family would now have four kids — starting immediately. We began trying for our first in the month following my college graduation, and to our surprise, that month was all it took! We were both delighted and terrified to be pregnant with our firstborn — so that was when we started to pray in earnest.
It’s a truism that every parent feels unprepared upon entering parenthood. However, having left college just weeks previously, I felt extra unprepared — like I was practically a teen pregnancy.
[Note: According to the NY Times, the average age of college-educated first-time mothers is about thirty-one in Jefferson County. In contrast, I was not yet twenty-three. So, my sensation of being a teen pregnancy wasn’t especially unfounded.]
While we didn’t get many terrible comments directly to our faces, those sentiments eventually trickled back to us through the grapevine. Admittedly, the gossipers had a point: Oh, so now Holly — the Kim Kardashian of our class — is going to settle down and be a good little stay-at-home mom? Fat chance.
[Note: This assessment of my past behavior and future prognosis is supported by plenty of content from my early stories — especially I Just Wanna Look Good For You and Makin’ Bacon.]
So, what hope did I have? Little, aside from prayer. (And parenting audiobooks. But mostly prayer.)
I prayed for the Fruit of the Spirit; I prayed to be equipped for this seemingly insurmountable challenge; I prayed for our marriage, which I hadn’t prioritized during the previous year; and I prayed for my gestating son — that he would be healthy, that he would be smart, and most of all, that he would fall in love with Jesus at the earliest possible age.
It wasn’t long before I realized that I ought to pray not just for this first child, but also for all of my children. However, it’s challenging to pray for children that you’ve never met, and even more so when most of those children don’t exist yet.
Who were these strangers I was lifting up in prayer? And just to be 100% sure… exactly how many were there?
As discussed, we had definitively agreed to have four kids. (In fact, we had already chosen a compass-based naming convention by the time I was seven weeks pregnant.) However, in the throes of this first pregnancy, the threat of autism suddenly loomed supernaturally large in my mind. This anxiety manifested clearly in a journal entry that I wrote to my gestating child, early in my second trimester:
You’ll know better than I do now how many children your father and I ended up having, but recently, I’ve started having second thoughts about a brood of four… I know this sounds totally crass. Perhaps one of your siblings has autism or another disability. Perhaps you do. Does that mean I love you any less? God, I pray not. But it would mean that my life is never my own again.
[Note: I was right about one thing, at least — that does sound crass.]
It’s a hard road to navigate: no one *wants* their child to have a severe disability, but it’s kinda not ok to complain if your child *does* have a severe disability.
Again, it’s not like I don’t have decades of personal experience wrestling with this conundrum. My mother was the ideal parent-of-a-child-with-special-needs, and I was… well, a less-than-ideal sibling.
But even though I’m a lackluster sibling, I’m still my sister’s only sibling. If both my parents precede me in death, then I’ll be her guardian until one of us dies. I am at peace with this obligation — but, even still, I’d prefer to avoid passing the same duty on to my children.
Thus, we were back to the drawing board — but this time, our thinking was fairly streamlined.
Five or more was too many — both from a genetic gambling perspective and, frankly, from an emotional perspective. In contrast, one kid was too few. I didn’t want to watch my son yearn for an interactive sibling the way that I had. And three kids… well, that dooms the middle child to “middle child syndrome” — which obviously doesn’t affect all middle children equally, and might not even exist. Regardless, three didn’t feel right to us anymore, for reasons that we couldn’t quite articulate.
Thus, our rehashing of this decision soon narrowed to two options: two kids, or four kids.
The first option inherently carried less genetic risk; however, by that point, I thought I knew something about the children we’d be losing if we stopped at only two.
[Author’s Note: Ok, so here’s where things get a little charismatic.]
I had already been sure that my firstborn was a boy — and, at twenty weeks, an ultrasound confirmed it. What I didn’t know was anything about my remaining children — besides our naming scheme. We were still working under the assumption that we would indeed have four children, and by then, we had chosen the order: Borealis, Australis, Occidentalis, and Orientalis.
And, surprisingly, that sequence turned out to be immutable. When I realized that the American convention for the cardinal directions — north, south, east, west — suggested that we transpose the third and fourth names, I was completely unable to do so. Labeling my children with the “wrong” names felt like a kick to my gut, which in turn felt quite silly. These children didn’t exist yet, so why did it matter which names they received?
I actually tried for a while to switch “Occidentalis” and “Orientalis” before finally giving up. It was as though I was recognizing and submitting to a reality outside of myself — as though I were discovering, rather than choosing, my children’s names.
That was when I finally realized something: it’s because these names weren’t adhering to mere ideas; they were adhering to real people. My mistake had been one of temporal finitude: these children didn’t exist yet, for me. But, they did exist to a God unbounded by time. So, once again, it was to that God that I turned in prayer.
Now, just beginning the latter half of my pregnancy, there was a very real need to confirm the number of children that God had in store for us. My baby shower was just around the corner, and we had promised that we’d do a name reveal at the party. If we going to bail on having four kids, we needed to do it fast.
So, we prayed — specifically, that God would reveal His plan for our family, and that we’d have the courage to follow that plan, whatever it may be. Or, as it were, whomever it may be.
And, amazingly, God answered those prayers.
[Note: I don’t remember the exact chronological placement of these revelations, so I’ll just present them in birth order.]
Borealis was a boy — which we already knew. By the beginning of my third trimester, I was confident that he would have Taylor’s engineering proclivities. This child was my very life, for by my obedience I had surrendered the life that I had pursued before conceiving him.
Australis would be a girl. I didn’t get much about her personality: just an image of me holding an angelic toddler above my head, both of us laughing. I felt so incredibly confident that she, of all my children, was completely free of autism — even despite her sex. This child was my promise — a promise that I would have at least one daughter who could be to me as I am to my mother.
Occidentalis would be a boy — and, of all my children, he was the one that I thought I knew the most about.
This conviction started with a specific verse in Acts 26, a chapter in which the Apostle Paul recounts his life — especially his conversion to Christianity through an encounter with a post-Resurrection Jesus Christ. In Acts 26:14b, Paul repeats what Jesus originally told him in Acts 9:5b — “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”
That verse stopped me dead in my tracks. I read it a half dozen times, wondering how I had seemingly never noticed it before. Then, as I sat there, I sensed a near-audible whisper, right into my heart: This is about Occidentalis.
To put it mildly: this was not good news. I wished I had instead been reading Daniel 1:4 — “[A young man] in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand….” Instead, I got the cold comfort that my thirdborn would “insist on going against the grain” (as The Message renders that verse).
A lifetime of squabbles unspooled before me. My future relationship with Occidentalis seemed damned by the very quality I hate most about myself: an unrelenting need to be unique, no matter the cost. I was pretty sure that, like me, my son was slated to be an Enneagram Type 4, and I feared that such similar personalities would prove virtually incompatible.
Our relationship came to life in my mind’s eye: a child growing into a young man, fiercely determined to forge his own path; a mother desperate to love her son, but too domineering and impatient to effectively communicate that love.
The picture brought me to my knees in tearful prayer. I prayed that God would grow my patience; that my son and I would find a way to love each other; and that, despite being a rebel, Occidentalis would place his trust in Jesus.
After all, “rebellion” isn’t necessarily condemnable; it all depends on the direction of defiance. The Bible makes it pretty clear that rebellion *against* God is definitely a no-no, and I feared that Occidentalis would tend toward this category. However, the Bible is also full of people who rebelled against injustice, and were instead rebels *for* God. (This was, of course, my preferred option.)
Now, I certainly know better than to take every “strong feeling” as divine revelation. As the Apostle John instructs, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God….” (1 John 4:1). I recognized that I might merely be projecting my anxieties, rather than actually hearing from the Lord. So, I did my best to set aside my biases and wait to be sure of God’s direction.
It didn’t take long before I had that certainty. Soon, I was quite sure that my initial sensation had been correct. I can’t remember the specifics, but time after time, I felt that I had once again received word that, indeed, my son would insist on going against the grain. The recurrent message seemed to be this: Occidentalis will break your heart.
And, I believed it. I sensed a chasm between us, and I couldn’t perceive the other side of it. What was the chasm? If it was a relationship-breaking fight, what would be the end of it? I had to believe that reconciliation was possible between us — and yet, as hard as I prayed, I had no sense of how our story would end.
Functionally, this child had already broken my heart. Only time would reveal the rest of our story.
And Orientalis? Well, my final child was another story entirely. Occidentalis might have been an open book, but his successor was quite the opposite.
Initially, I wasn’t surprised by this lack of special knowledge. Orientalis was chronologically the furthest away, after all. Surely, as time went on, I’d find out more about this mysterious final child.
That is, until I received a shockingly strong perception. This is not a matter of merely waiting. You *won’t* know anything about this child — because I want you to trust Me. Do you believe that I give good gifts?
Finally, here it was: a test of both my faith and my motherhood. I didn’t know that Orientalis would be autistic — just that, if I were to have an autistic child, it would be this one. I had no sense of this child’s personality, characteristics, or even sex — in other words, Orientalis was truly and completely a stranger.
At my dismay, my mother [accurately] pointed out, “You know, that’s how most people feel about their yet-unconceived children.” I reminded her that I fully understood the source of my future perceptions: that they were gifts of a gracious God, not products of my own personal talent for fortune-telling. Even so, I was petrified to be in a situation without said gracious gifts.
This uncertainty was enough to swing my vote: we’d just have the two kids, then. Goodbye, Babies 3 & 4.
Thus, I failed my test. When faced with the question, Do you believe that I give good gifts?, I had answered, No, I don’t believe that. When faced with the prospect of mothering an autistic child, I had said, No, I can’t do that.
It brings me to tears to admit this shameful shortcoming. But, I’m heartened by the forgiveness found in Christ: God didn’t abandon me over one [admittedly large] failure — and, as it turned out, He also wasn’t done with His side of the conversation.
Immediately after deciding to have only two kids, I was slammed with an onslaught of Occidentalis-related perceptions. It seemed as though he appeared in every dream, every Bible reading, every song, and every prayer.
I hadn’t felt guilty deciding to forego having Orientalis — because I didn’t know Baby 4, at all. It was like trying to miss a complete stranger: impossible.
But Occidentalis was different. By now, I knew this child, and I yearned for him as though he were lost — not merely awaiting birth. I realized that I couldn’t choose to *not* have my son. My soul could not bear walking away from a child I loved so much — even if he was destined to break my heart.
So, we were once again back to the drawing board — but this time, I was trying to justify having only three out of four kids.
I knew in my soul that I was seeking a palatable way to distrust God but call it something other than “sin”. This was further evidenced by my kids’ compass-themed names, which refused to budge even with the omission of East. I pictured explaining the situation to curious strangers: Oh, nothing happened to the last one. I just got scared and refused to trust God.
However, if there’s anything that the story of Jonah teaches, it’s that disobedience doesn’t dissolve an obligation to pursue God’s will: it just makes that obligation harder and, sometimes, much more humiliating. That is, refusing to go witness to Ninevah didn’t pardon Jonah from that obligation: it just meant that he had to go witness to Ninevah by way of shipwreck and fish innards.
Likewise, refusing to face a test of faith with Orientalis didn’t excuse me from facing that test of faith; instead, I had a horrible premonition that if I chose to forego trusting God with Orientalis’s health and life, I would instead face the same trial with Australis.
The image of my laughing toddler grew suddenly murky, and I recognized the message. I will be honored in all the earth. If you will refuse to glorify Me in obedience, then you will instead glorify Me in disobedience.
It was the perfect leverage point. If I was set to face the same trial no matter what, I wouldn’t risk a “sure thing” in Australis.
And so, finally, I gave in.
Ok. I will choose to trust You — that You give good gifts… even if I can’t yet see it from Your perspective.
My surrender wasn’t exactly “obedience”, but at least it was “submission” — which, by any standard, is at least better than “disobedience”. Thus, Taylor and I recommitted to having four kids — three of whom were relative knowns, and the last of whom was a complete wildcard.
Even finding out Orientalis’s sex felt totally off-limits. [Note: We had no such conviction for our other kids.] This child was to be a test of our trust in God’s goodness, and apparently that extended to knowing in utero whether that child was a boy or a girl. (Although, admittedly, having a boy doesn’t eliminate the chance of a disability — it just reduces the odds that it would be our female-linked familial disability.)
[Author’s Note: Cooler Genes Will Prevail is exceptionally relevant here.]
Submitting to this plan — which, by this point, we really felt was God’s plan — didn’t eliminate my anxieties, but it did channel them. On this path, I knew that everything coming at me was directly from God’s hand, not merely fallout from my distrust.
Less like Jonah; more like Job — but, hopefully, much less suffering than either.
On a blustery Sunday in early December, we attended our baby shower — co-ed, because otherwise it would have been 70% smaller. The room was very left-brain, and most of the attendees could have sung Taylor Swift’s 22 — in earnest.
Needless to say, this gaggle of young male engineers wasn’t the most socially-adept group. Several of them would only refer to pregnancy as “your condition”… like it was a skin rash or something. Thus, we avoided the topic of babies as much as possible.
In a way, it was kind of like a photo-negative baby shower. Except for my massive belly (uncomfortable) and opening presents (even more uncomfortable), my guests could basically forget that I was expecting a baby at all — until it was time to reveal our child’s unorthodox name.
Taking a deep breath and gripping Taylor’s hand, I confidently announced the beginning of God’s plan for our family: “Our son’s name is Borealis.”