Unfolding faith
In these “reflections”, I revisit past journal entries for new revelation, insight, inspiration and comfort. I’ve found that by considering the paths I’ve tread and dwelling on the things God has done in my life, my faith grows, and I’m able to take on my present—and my future—with hope.
At the risk of this whole post feeling like a journal entry, I feel like I need to “write into” my reality. Or write through it. As I said before, I felt prompted to start writing again because there was a lot of symmetry in life lessons between my Spring of 2013 and this Spring of 2020. And I don’t think the wrestle is specific to me, or even to the idea of child bearing. I hope there’s something for each of us, because it’s a story about God’s character and His ways that I’m pressing in here to share.
Today I sit here in the corner of my bedroom that is my office, on a birth ball, a timer set for 10 minutes so I can remember to keep moving, at the tail end of my most laborious pregnancy - and I obviously I haven’t even “labored” yet. Child bearing is a LONG work. Child rearing is a LONG work.* Perhaps those statements side-by-side are only valid through the old adage “the days are long but the years are short” somehow equalizing the scale with 18 years on the outside to the 9 months on the inside.
*Side note: I think Taylor and I will have a few words to add here about the “long work” of parenting, not because we’re looking back and are ready to share from expertise, but as a way of self-talk and encouragement to keep pressing on. Only one of our kids is halfway to 18 (but we need the Lord to do some fast work in the back 9!)
If you have walked closely with someone in their last several weeks of pregnancy, you are likely familiar with the roller coaster ride of waiting. (Another relevant adage: A watched pot doesn’t boil!) It’s hard to imagine a comparable reality in this life, but maybe it’s like buying lottery tickets daily for a decade and believing the odds are increasingly good that one day you’ll win $100. The timing is quite unpredictable, but the chances feel increasing with the passage of time.
I suppose it also could be likened to another kind of birth—one I observed with my kids a few years ago when we watched a caterpillar stuff himself to full size then cocoon into an emerald green sac. For many days the changes to the interior were imperceptible, but then the green would fade to transparency and you knew the end was close, but still unpredictable. And since you can’t stop the rest of life for 24 hours and standby for the transformation that takes only minutes, you check the cocoon hourly and hope to catch it.
And maybe it’s like waiting for the Lord to return—some months or years, the expectation is palpable as you look forward to the final restoration of heaven. But many moments are dull and devoid of physical signs that this kind of metamorphosis is truly underway: we are a new creation, but the full, exquisite and satisfying beauty of it hasn’t emerged.
Waiting for the gift of a pregnancy in May 2013 was also a slow, unremarkable work. Month after month you wait without evidence and hope for a day when it’s worth buying a $7 pregnancy test—and hope it’s the winning ticket. Without clear progression toward the goal, our emotions can run rampant. Does not life in a pandemic have a similar effect? Here are a few snippets from my journal on May 25th, 2013:
Journal entry 5.25.13
Emotional week….debriefing with Tay last night, he told me that my spirit needs to rise up and put my soul in its place. That who I am eternally needs to speak to who I am presently. That aspect of me needs to lead. That really resonated. I felt anxious yesterday because I felt out of control with my emotions. For a long time, my response to this was my will—an internal strength or coping mechanism that would rise up and lead. But this wasn’t healthy, because that part of me is still temporal -- responding to and motivated by fear. The part that needs to lead is the part - the self - that is settled. Settled about who I am and who the Lord, my treasure, is.
This is the part that leads during worship. I need more time in the throne room, so that my temporal self spends more time with my spirit--my spirit that rests in heaven with the Father and knows who I am, because I’m spending time with my Creator who tells me. This is the gospel that the Holy Spirit can minister to me, that the Christ WHO IS MY LIFE can lead me in, and that the body of Christ can support me in.
Also: I’ve been so concerned about wanting to give Kellen a sibling that I haven’t considered the legacy I could give him in how I respond to this trial...how I respond in faith and pass that on. Awesome challenge.
In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic where my emotions have been out of whack and my response to fear is more control-oriented than faith-oriented, as I wait for these wild days ahead to unfold and bear the wings of testimony of our great God, I need this kind of grounding and long-view perspective.