We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.and
Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.These are things that my parents taught us since we were little. I know many other families teach similar things to their children. Sometimes kids listen and sometimes they don't. I did, my sister didn't.
Right now my sister is pregnant. She is not married and right now there is no chance of her marrying the father of her baby because he is married to someone else. It doesn't matter that he was separated from his wife when he helped my sister sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to go and live with him. After getting her pregnant he decided that he still loved his wife and wanted to get back together with her and basically told my sister to take a hike. What a charming guy, huh?
Right now I am all kinds of torn up inside. I am mad at my sister. I am mad that she has betrayed us. I am mad that she is using my parents. I am upset because she seems to think that this is all okay and she doesn't see anything wrong with living with a married man and getting pregnant by him. I love my sister, she is family after all. I want to help her though this because I know pregnancy can be really hard. I don't want my sister to think that I think this is in anyway okay, though. It would be a difficult situation at best, but you also add to the fact that my sister has a mental disorder and she cannot take her medication while she is pregnant.
If I lived far away this would be a mute issue. I would let her and my parents and whoever deal with it and I wouldn't have to hardly see or talk to my sister. That isn't the case, though. She lives with my parents, who live about 25 minutes from me. It's the holiday season and we are getting together fairly often, and right now she is staying with me. My parents are having some remodeling done on their house so my sister is staying at mine for a week or maybe longer. I get to see my sister every day. She eats meals with us. She reads with us when we have family scripture time and family prayers. My kids beg her to read them stories and after bed times she and I chat until it's time for me to go to sleep. I know this can all be a wonderful opportunity to bond with my sister, but it's also stressing me out. I don't like confrontations and I am not comfortable when she starts talking about the baby. I think that baby deserves something a lot better than being raised by my sister. She is also in contact with the father's family quite often. She will quite frequently refer to them as her family also. She calls his mother "Mom" and tried to tell my children that his niece was her niece. I did correct that one, but maybe not in the nicest way. It just galls me. I don't want things to be uncomfortable since she will be here for a while, but I don't want her teaching my children that it's okay to have a baby and not be married, in fact, not have anything to do with the baby's father. I am trying to teach my children the values I was raised with. At the same time, I want to teach my children to love people, even if you don't love their actions. We believe that we are all sons and daughters of God and therefore all brothers and sisters. I don't want to confront my sister but I don't think I can go on and just change the subject whenever she brings something up that is uncomfortable. I am just so unprepared to handle this.
I know my children will learn more from my actions than from things I say so I want to teach them right. I want to teach them to stand up for their beliefs, and teach them to respect that others may believe differently. I want to teach them to be good parents, and that means thinking about your children more than yourself. I want to teach them that being a parent is a wonderful thing, but it's not something to get into on a whim, it's also a very challenging job. I don't want to teach them to run from, hide from, or avoid all confrontation (which is what I like to do). It's not good to go out seeking an argument or fight, but some things need to be stood up for and that may mean standing up to someone. Maybe I'm just too nice.
5 comments:
I think you are doing the right thing not confronting her. When my brother lived with us and was drunk quite a few nights, I chose not to confront him because he is an adult. What I did was take the time to teach my children that what he did was bad, made him sick, and was really sad. We used it to form an open conversation about the topic so they could see the downsides to what he did.
Confronting him would have just caused a fight and confused my kids as to why I was getting mad at him. It also would have caused tension in the home which is one of the first things that make the Spirit leave the home.
Be nice to your sister. When you are alone with your children, talk about the situation, show them how your sister has to live with you because of her current situation and how sad that will be for that baby to not have a family but just a mother who lives all over the place. I'm sure they sense, if they don't know already, that your sister has that mental disorder and you can point out how different she acts because she cannot take her medication because she did not make a right choice.
We have to love our siblings, not their sins. Just remember that helping out your sister is not telling her you think all is well...she knows deep down she's wrong (unless her mental illness prevents her from that, in which case confronting her won't do much good anyway!)
I kind of have experience with this, but only kind of, so please take whatever I say with a grain of salt.
My sister in law was in a similar situation. She got pregnant with her fiance, who broke up with her, but they kept seeing each other on and off. She is now pregnant with his second child, even though they are not married and still breaking up/together. SIL is constantly moving back and forth between his (parent's) house and her parent's house. She's now 22. I think her parents are insane for letting her keep mooching off them (they provide free childcare whenever she wants to go out and party hardy too) but whatever. However, I do have a hard time being nice to this particular SIL. Mostly because the way she treats her firstborn borders on appalling, and I can't believe she let herself get pregnant again when she doesn't even like the first kid all that much. I also have a lot of jealousy toward her, because I can't have anymore kids, yet I am in a stable marriage and I like my only child and would love for him to have a sibling. Bah, humbug. (Does your sister want to let me adopt her baby? Heh.) SIL has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and has always been a little off, but yeah, it borders on ridiculous. I want to be a nicer person to her but I just think she's...icky.
Here is my other side of the story.
I am an illegitimate child. My mom got pregnant with someone she was very much in love with when they were 18. When his parents found out, they shipped him to Hawaii to work on a pineapple farm and (from my mom's point of view) brainwashed him to the point where he wanted nothing to do with her or me. My grandparents told the stake president that my mom was giving me up for adoption (untrue) so that my dad could go on a mission, which he did. My mom still harbors extreme bitterness and resentfulness towards them, which I can honestly understand.
I grew up knowing that I was a bastard and that my dad didn't want me. No matter what my mom did to try and make me feel wanted (she even named me Amanda because it means worthy of love) it didn't help because I knew my dad didn't want me. I knew almost nothing other than that, except that that side of teh family were all horrible people, until I was 18, which is when I was allowed to contact them if I wanted to.
I did. I wanted to know where I came from. My stepfather and I never got along and I always felt like the outsider in my family. So I wrote my grandparents a short letter asking for medical history and ancestry (like, where we came from) and nothing more than that, because my whole life I'd heard they wanted nothign to do with me and hated me and my mom.
They wrote me back, a 9 page letter about themselves and my father and at the end begged me to contact them again, or to send a picture of myself. I did get in contact with them. It's been 6 years and we visit them every month (my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins; my dad lives on the east coast and we only see him once a year.) I am so grateful that I have a relationship with them, but at the same time, I am still bitter and sad that I did not get a childhood with them. In addition, my dad is an amazing man, and I am very jealous of his kids, that they get to have him as their dad and I didn't. However, he was a total jackass up until about 8 years ago, so really, even if I had grown up with him, it wouldn't be what I imagine it to be in my head. Does that make sense?
(And as a side note, my mom is pissed that I ever contacted them in the first place and still wants nothing to do with them, to the point where I get a stony glare of death if I even mention visiting them. She's going to have to get over it soon, because my 3 year old loves them and talks about them often to anyone who will listen.)
So basically, I have no idea what to tell you here. As far as setting an example for your kids, maybe for the older ones you take them aside and explain "what she did is wrong, but we can still love and serve and care for her."
But I do think you should say *something* to your sister. When she brings up the baby the next time, say, "Look, sister, I love you a lot, but I have to tell you that I feel betrayed by what you have done, and it's going to take me a while to adjust to the fact that you're so happy that you were a moron and did stupid things and now you get to have a kid. P.S. Did you know babies are hard and they puke and poop a lot? Because they do. And also you will never sleep again." Okay so maybe don't say that last part. But I do think you should say something along the lines of "I love you, but I'm still adjusting to this news, and it would be helpful if you would let me adjust and not talk about Father/sFamily or The Baby right now."
Did you like that novel comment? Sorry. Couldn't help it. Thanks for letting me spew. And good luck. Let me know if you figure this out, because I still have to work with my SIL too. Bleh.
Also, most importantly, when the baby does come, MAKE THAT BABY FEEL LOVED LIKE CRAZY!!!
Thanks ladies.
Kestrel, thank you for sharing your story. I don't know what is going to happen, but in truth, I hope that my sister will find someone wonderful (like yourself) to raise her child. I don't believe her capable of raising a child, but that is a decision that she has to make for herself and her baby. In the meantime, I will let her know my boundaries (not to tell my children that this other family is also her family) and let her know that I do love her. If she does decide to keep the baby, you can bet that I will do everything I can to make that child feel loved and wanted, since I'm sure that my mom, or other family members will most likely do most of the raising of the baby. Whatever decisions my sister makes, this baby is innocent.
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