40w4d today. Still waiting, and thinking of Screwtape -- the sixth letter, which has comforted me more times than I can count. "It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only the things he is afraid of. Let him regard them as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him.... Resignation to present and actual suffering, even when that suffering consists of fear, is far easier."
I'm not so good at waiting, at uncertainty. The Our Father would be more my style if it said, "Give us in advance a year's stash of bread for the freezer." I had to pull myself up short last week and say, "Listen, do you need this baby to be head down at this exact moment? Is there anything you need at this exact moment that you have not been given? No? Then calm down already." I can appreciate that daily bread, fresh and hot, would be better than than a freezer-burned loaf from last winter. And yet I still want the reserve, the feeling of security.
There is no better season in which to practice waiting. I think about the virgins waiting in the dark for the Bridegroom. Late pregnancy is an object lesson in eschatology: I cannot know the hour or the day. I can only stock up on oil and trim my lamp. I think about the Blessed Mother, in whose womb was contained the One in Whom we all live and move and have our being. I am guessing that her prayers did not include the bargaining foot-stamping poutiness that has characterized mine of late.
This morning I said, "Okay, God, I cannot resign myself to two dozen different hypothetical birth complications, but I will unite this small suffering, this fear and uncertainty, to your work on the cross." And immediately I was suffused with a feeling of lightness and freedom. That's the call right now: to wait and trust.
I will never be in this same place again. The sun is glinting on branches encased in ice. It is unusually cold today, but we are snug in our yellow house. Our crooked Christmas tree is waiting, branches bare, for Wednesday afternoon. My boys are all home from school, writing plays and building with Legos and curling up with comic books in front of the heating vents. "You're my best friend," Pete says to Joe. My baby is stirring in my womb after a nap. For a little while here, I need not think about whether her diaper is dry or whether she has kicked her socks off.
There is joy here for the taking, if I will only see it. Today my burden is light, if I will let it be. I am thinking about words of wisdom from Milton: "Who best / Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best."
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