Yea, They May Forget

Without Natural Affection

I normally would not write about stuff like this, but it really hit home for me. As a father and now a grandfather.

This week in Mandan, North Dakota, a father took a handgun apart in his own house.

Then he scattered the pieces.

One piece, one place. One piece, another. Through the rooms where his children slept.

He told investigators she had talked about killing herself and about killing the children, that she had recently bought that handgun, and that she threatened him with it that night.

That is his account, in the affidavit.

A man walking his own hallway, hunting for hiding places.

I do not know which room he started in.

Three children lived in that house. Five months old. One year. Three years.

Thursday evening, just before six, on South Frontier Trail, the five-month-old and the three-year-old died. The one-year-old was taken to a hospital.

The mother, Kailey Erhart, 22, was arrested at the scene. Nine charges, including two counts of murder. Bond set at three million dollars, cash.

She is charged. She is not convicted. I am holding that line the whole way through, and so are you.

Now count the adults in that house.

One.

That was the whole net.

No sister across the street. No deacon on the step. No woman two doors down who counted the babies.

Nobody was coming Tuesday. Nobody had a key.

One man. Three babies. A gun in pieces.

And he had to sleep sometime.

That is not one man failing.

That is a village of one.

Where was everybody?

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Before I go one line further

A lot of you reading this have given birth. Getting this next part wrong wounds the exact people I am writing to.

I am not diagnosing anybody in North Dakota. I do not know what was in that house. Neither do you.

But the internet will use these words wrong all week. So let me be plain.

Postpartum depression is common. Roughly one birth in seven. Heavy. Real. Treatable. If that is your diagnosis, this post is not about you. Nobody gets to use the news to make you afraid of yourself.

Postpartum psychosis is a different illness. Not sadness turned up loud. One or two births in a thousand. It brings delusions. It brings hallucinations. The mind stops reporting the room accurately. It is an emergency the way a stroke is an emergency. Hours matter.

They are not one thing at two volumes.

Then there is a third thing. Some of you have carried it alone.

A mother stands at the top of the stairs with her newborn. A thought arrives that she did not ask for and does not want. It is violent. It horrifies her. She grips the rail. She never tells her husband. She never tells the doctor. She is certain it proved she was a monster.

It did not.

Thoughts like that are common after a birth. They are almost never acted on.

Your horror is the evidence.

That recoil is natural affection working. Not failing.

A woman with no love for her child does not lie awake terrified of her own mind.

If you have carried that in silence for ten years, you had it backwards.

It proved you were a mother.

If you are frightened of your own mind tonight, tell one person before you sleep. Your husband. Your doctor. A woman from church. In the United States you can call or text 988. Tonight.

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Now, let me show you another room

A lot of you watch Call the Midwife. Series three, episode seven. A young mother named Pamela Saint.

Poplar. The East End of London. The 1950s. Row houses. Cold water. Working poor.

She comes apart after her baby is born. Puerperal psychosis, they called it then. Her fear fastens onto cleanliness. Then onto her own milk.

Same illness. Different street.

Now look at the street.

Nuns. Actual nuns, living in that parish, in that poverty.

A district midwife who delivered that baby and keeps coming back. Not once. Week after week, up the stairs, with a bag.

Neighbors on the other side of a wall thin enough to hear through.

Somebody knew her name. Somebody knew her before the baby. Somebody noticed when she went quiet.

She was surrounded. She was stopped.

Yes, it is a television program, built out of a midwife’s memoirs. The street is not invented. Women knew which house had a new baby in it, because they had been in it.

I would not agree with those sisters about much.

But they lived where the sick people lived.

That is the whole thing.

You have seen this work somewhere. So have I.

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Now hear this, or you have missed the post

Poplar did not excuse her.

Poplar got there first.

Those are not the same sentence, and I will not let them blur.

Nobody in that house said the poor woman cannot help it and then went home. They put their own bodies in the way. They stayed. They came back.

That is not mercy instead of judgment.

That is mercy that showed up in time.

Getting there first does not mean it would have been alright. It means it did not happen.

Now the other half.

The killing of a child is murder. Scripture has never once softened that for the century we happen to live in. “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.” Psalm 127:3

Heritage. Reward.

Nothing here makes this week one ounce lighter. There is no paragraph that balances a five month old.

A cause is not a permission slip.

Everybody wants to know what is wrong with her.

I want to know what happened to us.

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What happened to us

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5

Read the list again. That is a description of a time. Not of a woman.

Without natural affection. Paul used that word twice in the whole New Testament. There, and here.

“Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:” Romans 1:31

Same Greek word both times. Astorgos. Storge is the affection inside a family. The mother over a crib is the picture. The love nobody has to be taught.

Both times Paul is describing an age. In Romans, a society God gave over. In Timothy, the last days.

An age. Not a defendant.

So I never have to diagnose one woman in North Dakota. Paul already named the weather. I am standing out in it too.

For years I thought the enemy’s big win here was the music. Or the fight over the pulpit. Or the seminaries.

Those are decoys. You watch the decoy and the real thing walks past you.

He never had to attack the church’s doctrine.

He only had to move the church out of the neighborhood.

Read that twice.

Our doctrine is fine. Our statements of faith are airtight. And it is all twenty five minutes away.

A church you drive to cannot hear through the wall.

We know each other from 10:30 to noon. We do not know each other’s kitchens.

Nobody walks past the house. There is no wall to hear through. There is a fence and a garage door.

We still bring the meal. Two weeks of casseroles.

The casseroles run out on a schedule.

Nothing else does.

Then put a young mother alone in a house all day with children who cannot talk yet.

She is not lazy. She is not weak.

She is unattended.

That excuses nothing. It shows you where the wall used to be.

I have taught Sunday School. I can teach the doctrine of the church in forty minutes.

I cannot teach you to be four doors down.

We kept the doctrine and lost the distance.

Satan did not need a heresy.

He needed a car.

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.

We kept the form. The power was always the part that walked to somebody’s door.

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Yea, they may forget

“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” Isaiah 49:15

Stop in the middle of it.

God asks it the way you would ask it. Can a woman forget her nursing baby? Of course not.

Then He will not let the comparison stand clean.

Yea, they may forget.

He does not say she cannot. He says she may.

Scripture already knew. Before Poplar. Before Mandan. Before the worst night you ever had.

The strongest bond in creation can give way. That is in the book.

And then it says His will not.

You are not held up by how steady your own mind is.

You are held.

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The question He left standing

Jesus told about a widow who wore down a judge who feared not God. Then He said this.

“I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8

He asked it and left it standing.

He did not ask whether He would find doctrine. Doctrine will be here. Somebody will still be right about everything.

He asked whether He would find faith on the earth.

On the earth. That is a wide word. Your street is inside it.

So answer one thing before you close this.

Who lives within walking distance of you?

Name them. Out loud. Not the group chat. Not the small group forty minutes across town.

Walking distance.

And you know a woman who had a baby this year. You already thought of her name.

Do not text her. Go. Bring food she did not have to cook. Hold the baby forty minutes and give no advice at all. Come back Tuesday when nobody is watching.

That is what it used to mean to be a Christian who lives somewhere.

Because tonight, in some town, a man is doing arithmetic he cannot win.

Taking the pieces apart.

By himself.

In the dark.

Shall he find faith on the earth.

He is coming to look.

Adam