Baby

Tomorrow I will be 20 weeks pregnant! It's surprising to me that we are halfway to a real-life in-the-outside-world baby and have yet to write about it here, but perhaps it is because there is a part of me that is incredulous. Is it real? Is everything really going to happen as it's supposed to? Even after hearing the heartbeat twice and even as I watch my belly grow, I have doubts. I had a miscarriage last summer, so I know in a real way that nothing here is guaranteed, and I worried before that a future pregnancy might be full of fear and anxiety for me, but I think my doubt is comes more from a place of wonder. How is it possible that I have a human growing inside of me? What a crazy mystery. It is a gift that makes me smile and shake my head at the same time. I am incredulous and I am so, so happy!

I am reminded of a poem/prayer from Ted Loder's Guerrillas of Grace that has appeared in my hands twice since October 29th, my 31st birthday and the morning on which I waited impatiently for Eric to emerge from the bathroom so I could show him those two little pink lines. Just a week after that day, at a retreat for church leaders at Camp Magruder, I picked up a slip of paper with the prayer on it during a quiet time of reflection and sat with it for a while, breathing it in. And then on the second of January, while visiting Eric's parents' church in Washington, the prayer was printed in the bulletin. Certainly, this new life is something I am shaping and which is shaping me. "And the wonder of it lays its finger on my lips."

I Tremble on the Edge of a Maybe, by Ted Loder
O God of beginnings
as your Spirit moved

over the face of the deep

on the first day of creation,

move with me now

in my time of beginnings
when the air is rain-washed,
the bloom is on the bush,
and the world seems

fresh

and full of

possibilities,

and I feel ready and full.

I tremble on the edge of a maybe,
a first time,
a new thing,
a tentative start,

and the wonder of it lays its finger on my lips.

In silence, Lord,
I share now my eagerness

and my uneasiness

about this something different
I would be or do;

and I listen for your leading

to help me separate the light

from the darkness

in the change I seek to shape
and which is shaping me.