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A lifelong evangelical, I once believed that daily quiet time dialed the only number God answers. In urban ministry as a young adult, I came to see the active life of service as another spiritual practice. My current church, a postmodern "emergent" congregation, encourages ancient Christian spiritual disciplines such as contemplative prayer and lectio divina. My faith has been enriched through these diverse practices, but they have never replaced my quiet times with God.

Becoming a mother, however, ruined my ability to be disciplined about spirituality. As I write this, my twins are two months old, and my initial sense of life with children is that everything is going to be rearranged, including the way I seek intimacy with God.

Spiritual disciplines that have been important to me are no longer possible, at least not in these early months of my babies' lives. I could only walk a labyrinth if its paths were wide enough for my double stroller. Anything approaching silence or solitude puts me to much-needed sleep. Pilgrimage? Only if I could bring along a pack-n-play, diaper bag, and washing machine. Even church gatherings have been crossed off the family calendar, because our boys were born prematurely and must avoid crowds for a while.

Many of the spiritual disciplines were developed by monastics who valued regularity and solitude; words like order and rule describe them. Family life, while no less holy than monastic life, makes consistent order impossible. The wild rhythm of parenting persuades me that monastic life cannot provide the only model for spiritual discipline. In fact, some seasons of life may be better suited to spiritual undiscipline. In contrast to the stability of monasticism, motherhood offers a catch-as-catch-can spirituality. I'm doing just that, and I'm catching more than I thought possible.

Though breastfeeding will never be considered a standard spiritual practice, it's the most disciplined thing I've ever done. The boys have been taking their meals every three hours, around the clock, for nine weeks. That's about a thousand feedings so far. In these early weeks of my boys' lives, I don't meet with friends for prayer, read devotional books, or enjoy quiet times. Breastfeeding is my daily office, giving structure to my spiritual life.

This spirituality is not ascetic. Many say that spirituality is about denying the flesh, but nursing moms like me indulge it. Along with my babies, I like the softness of blankets and bodies. I sniff my boys' scents and stroke their backs while they nurse. I encourage them to stuff themselves and become plump. I, too, eat as much as I please, packing in calories to maintain my milk supply. In an attempt to deny himself and seek God, the desert father Simon the Stylite lived on a small platform high in the sky for decades, reputedly subsisting on water and grass. In contrast to this asceticism, my boys and I revel in the comforts of life: milk, warmth, sleep, and touch. Feeding babies is a reminder to indulge the senses, to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:8).

Though his spiritual practice was unusual and mine is mundane, both Simon the Stylite and I observe self-denial, a virtue that is just one side of a coin. Motherhood requires a daily denial of good things I once considered essential: adequate sleep, uninterrupted reading time, and leisurely meals, to name just a few. Desert fathers spoke of crushing sin through rigorous self-denial. But for women raised to be caretakers, self-denial can be all too easy and even harmful. Social and family expectations often result in women negating the self before they've even formed a self. Over time, such warped self-denial leads to jealousy, anger, and manipulation as women assert their squished selves in any which way.

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5