by: Philip J. Martin
I declined her phone call the first time, but when she called back I immediately knew. I asked my students to excuse me as I stepped into the hallway and began to walk as quickly as I could down the hallway. Without slowing my pace I listened to my wife explain that we had lost our baby at twenty weeks. It was a routine ultrasound, and were it not for COVID restrictions I would have been at her side. This baby would have been our fifth living child, but became our second miscarried.
Later, in the hospital, upon preparing for delivery, we discussed names. Having been caught off guard, we were unprepared, but I had made up my mind. Earlier that morning a chance conversation with a colleague on the topic of baby names, though unknown to my wife at the time, had solidified my desire for a particular name if the baby were a boy. Though we were certain the baby was a girl (we had never found out via ultrasound; it was just a hunch), I looked into her eyes and declared, “If the baby is a boy, I want his name to be Ambrose.”
In The Privilege of Being a Woman, Dr. Alice von Hildebrand brilliantly quips, “On this is certain: When the time has come, nothing which is man-made will subsist. One day, all human accomplishments will be reduced to a pile of ashes. But every single child to whom a woman has given birth will live forever.” This beautiful image of the privilege of women is juxtaposed against the modern feminist notion that a successful woman is one who shatters glass ceilings beneath the heels of men, ascending to new heights in corporate and political spheres previously occupied by a population of males.
One day, all human accomplishments will be reduced to a pile of ashes. But every single child to whom a woman has given birth will live forever.
Alice von Hildebrand
This modern female ascension is often a good thing, a justified thing, and a needed thing, of course. But for those of us who have wives striving to primarily live out a vision of femininity and beauty in the vision of von Hildebrand and the example of the Mother of God, what are we to think of them? How are we to treat them? In a world that offers them everything previously reserved for men, what have we as men left to give them? In a culture that deems our masculinity toxic and “manhood” as chosen or conceptual, what do we bring to the relationship that is different or necessary? Even within the theological vision, how can a man compete with the life-giving and life-nurturing temple that is a woman in all aspects, body, soul, and spirit?
Nurses coming and going began to ask if we had named the child. “Ambrose for a boy,” we said. The nurses, for whom I am incredibly thankful, had clearly never come across the name and hid their surprise very well behind a wall of well-intentioned platitudes. Internally I began to question whether or not I had made a mistake in my conviction.
Thoughts of doubt mingled with my grief. Maybe we should waver on the name until my wife makes up her mind; it’s her body and her baby after all. I don’t want to hurt her feelings in the long run by choosing a name for this child that is beyond the scope of her expectations and that she’ll have to explain time and time again. Maybe we should give it more time and settle on something more normal later after we’ve had time to think and mourn?
This went on internally for hours and in and out of every discussion. Though she was unaware of my internal debate, she turned to me gave me the greatest compliment or bit of reassurance that I believe I have ever had, saying, “I love it when you make up your mind.” A quivering failure to commit was not what she needed nor wanted at such a vulnerable time. After many hours and just past midnight the baby was born, to which the doctor said it was a boy. “His name is Ambrose James,” we declared.
After Ambrose was born, we held him. My wife went first in what undoubtedly will prove to be one of the most emotionally charged moments of our lives as a married couple, and even I shed my share of tears. But who is God if not a Lover, a Re-Creator? Who but God can collect the ashes of sorrow and craft a beautiful work of art, can give and take away? What was being taken away was obvious, but all of which he was giving will require the wisdom of time.
However, I believe I have a hint of what one lifelong gift or lesson may be.
As my wife held him, a nurse snapped a few photographs, and there is one in particular that I will cherish forever, even if only in my mind’s eye. My wife — lovely, delicate, humble — staring with her bright green eyes at a child that will forever rest in God’s arms, and myself —resolute, compassionate, feeling — staring not at him but at her with eyes that promise to forever be a bedrock of strength.
And there you have it. Strength. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual strength. Oh the atrocities upon which men can unleash their strength, unrighteous anger and lust for power being two of many examples. If unleashed too often it can become banal and a hindrance to God’s plan for holy family life. The only thing worse is he who lets his strength die out, not primarily physically but in greater, everlasting facets, such as spiritually and mentally (though all three undoubtedly are intrinsically linked). Apathy in the youth is of concern today and requires I believe special attention and resources, but apathy in grown men is something that transcends pitiable to the point of pathetic. Think of the bumbling idiot father (like Homer Simpson) or the boyfriend of years who puts off committing to a woman (think Vince Vaughn’s character in The Breakup) that we see time and time again in our culture. Does art imitate life or life imitate art? It doesn’t matter much if women and children come away with unmanly men.
My wife was holding our child, and I was holding her. She cradles our children in her loving arms and in her heart, and I cradle the seven of them living and passed away upon my shoulders. Often I have failed, and no doubt I have more failing to do just about every single day, but the experience of our son’s miscarriage has provided me with a renewed sense of the destiny and lofty purpose of manhood.
This is the privilege of being a man, the privilege of strength. As a plot line runs through a good story, so too should man’s strength be through his life. Men must make others the main character of the story, and must let their strength be not a sub-plot, but the narrative drive. The privilege of women is something unapproachable by man, something divine, something unspeakably beautiful, but the souls nurtured by women can be ruined by a man who is weak or lends his strength to the whims of self-interest and evil.
Featured image: courtesy of pexels.com
Philip Martin is a graduate of both Auburn University and the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He writes from beautiful Daphne, AL, where he resides with his family.
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It was a little after seven in the morning when I learned that my grandfather had died. He was 98 years old. I was in the kitchen, fussing over a coffee pot and a fussy two-month-old son after a bad night’s sleep on the couch with a head cold…
This was his favorite part of the day. Every return home from work during the summer was like this. The kids would be outside playing; either kicking a ball, or throwing it at each other, or chasing each other around and around the house.
It is a time of great joy and communion that we are experiencing this morning, as we celebrate the eucharistic Sacrifice: a great gathering, in union with the Successor of Peter, consisting of faithful who have come from many different nations. It is an eloquent image of the Church, one and universal, founded by Christ…
What we’re reading this quarter.
Featured Art: Fra Angelico
The artist and Dominican friar posthumously called Fra Angelico was known for most of his life as Fra Giovanni, the name he chose when he joined the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole. Not long after his death in 1455, he was praised as “the Angelic Painter”.
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