About 6 weeks ago, we had the most wonderful news!
Positive pregnancy test, signaling that indeed life was present and growing in my belly.
As always, so many feelings... awe, wonder, immense gratitude, disbelief, a little fear, and a little disappointment at the timing for entirely material and physical reasons, but also so much the deep fulfillment of hope.
We weren't "trying" but we were always open. We knew OUR ideal plans, but also knew that when God wants a baby God will have a baby, and we rest in the peace of knowing who is really in charge of our lives.
We're growing a family! On two levels really. We have just opened a CrossFit gym, which is really a topic for another post, but it's been a labor of love pouring all our resources: time, talent, and treasure, into building something new. It's beautiful and we are so grateful!
And behind the scenes of all that, I've been growing a tiny human. Which is also a labor of love in a quiet way (quiet ONLY in the sense that social media has not been informed, but husband hears about daily)... with nausea and outright exhaustion and so much of the rest that goes along with the bliss of the first trimester.
But there's something else. There's something else apart from all those physical things that I've noticed. From the moment I sensed there was a life there, before it was possible to know for sure. There was something.
Maybe you know this thing???
The down right gripping fear, which fights within me to be given credence, that something may be wrong. That something will go wrong. And it is utterly and completely out of my control.
I knew from the first moments that I have a baby. I rebelled within myself against the idea that I should wait to share this until I was "past the risky 1st trimester" - as if it's not real unless baby makes it that far. And so we shared with friends and family. And I talked to baby and welcomed baby and did my best to bond with baby even though I have no guarantee we'll make it through to delivery.
Geez, Kath. Why so serious? Why so negative? I don't know. I don't mean to be. But I really did fear that we would have trouble conceiving. Only in the corner of my heart, but I expected it. Because so many I know suffer this waiting and hoping and not realizing. And my hormones ARE sort of weird.
So then there was a hope, and knowledge, a thought that there really was a baby there... not yet even implanted. And I prayed she would stay. I invited her to stay. And almost every day I do the same.
And something else. It's an entirely new sort of waiting and hoping and trusting beyond my fears and worrying. A new sort of daily sacrifice of surrender... that is heart wrenching. I think it's the stuff of mom making.
I think it's the beginning of my heart being stretched and grown to love in an entirely new capacity. It's the growing of a new vocation... the one I always dreamed of... wife and mom. pouring out my heart and life in love for my family. and in that, finding my path to holiness.
And so no matter whether this baby grows to live with us, or goes to live with God. She is real, she is loved. All will be well.
PS. I do not know that it's a girl. It's probably a boy. I just hate the He/She, Him/Her qualifiers :)
