T minus 3 days.
Well, that is what my phone app says, and what my due date is. But who is to know? Only God.
I feel very ambivalent about this upcoming transition.
On one hand, I look forward to a person who is an addition of me plus my husband and our traits, our features, etc. But someone who is also wholly new, complex and unique. A person that I will know immediately, yet also get to discover over the next many years.
I'm looking forward to not feeling like a bowling ball is pushing on my bladder, hips, thighs, etc. Before I go much further, I do want clarify that pregnancy has been absolutely worth the discomfort and that I am NOT complaining about this wondrous experience and person we have wanted for so long. I'll just be a little relieved when the 7 pounder inside me is outside me.
On the other hand, I have really enjoyed being pregnant. I've liked - and even loved - certain aspects of it. There's a tenderness that is impossible to suppress when running your hand over the pushing and rolling of a little one inside your body. The wonder of how much is created so quickly, how internal organs and bones and eyes and heart are all developed so soon in the pregnancy process. I've really loved the entire time (well, excluding my impatience to get to the end and know the little one!)
Yet, the next season is scary. It's the unknown. And Adam and I have enjoyed more than 9 months of some of the sweetest times in our marriage. Lovely, peaceful and supportive. I LOVE our marriage right now. And I don't want to give this up.
Most everyone who has a baby or toddler tells us how hard having the baby was on their marriage. We've been warned. And I believe it. I mean, you have these hormones screaming through your body, you're both focused on someone else, instead of on each other, and then on top of it: Sleep deprivation. Am I ready for this? I fear I'm not.
Each morning I wake up immediately disappointed that contractions haven't begun. But lately, I've been snuggling (as close as reasonably possible with this beach ball belly in between us) next to Adam, knowing that for the next few months, when I wake up, it will be to the alarm clock of a hungry baby, not because I woke up and got to doze for 20 more minutes next to my husband. I think to myself that the countdown to joy and a sweet little addition is also the countdown to fewer quiet moments with my husband.
I cherish these last few days with only him, but also look forward to our little family of three.
Thursday, August 29
Monday, August 12
David
On July 23rd, Adam came down to help me bring groceries into the apartment.
"How was your day?" he asked.
"Great!" I said. "I got so much done, and the day just flew by. I know it's nice hear when days go well, and today went really well."
"Wonderful!" he said.
"How was yours?"
"Ok."
"Just ok?"
"Yep."
He or I changed the subject, and I trusted he would tell me eventually what made the day just ok. It came as we put the groceries away in the privacy of our home.
"I don't want you to become concerned, but David has been missing for 40 hours."
"Our David?"
David was an RA last year on Adam's staff and was slated to return to RA staff for his second year. He was a quiet guy, with a deep resonant voice. A popular soccer player and an excellent student, He had struggled to make his hall his own, but was succeeding bit by bit last year and really was excited to return to the hall.
Adam explained he had been hiking in the Swiss Alps, on a little vacation from working with MTW in Spain as an intern. I pushed away fear and anxiety and became a little irritated that he would have kept hiking while the other two people hiking with him turned back.
I thought of so many times in high school when prayer requests would come through our group of friends for some high schooler or another getting lost in the mountains. They always returned. I knew, having lived in Montana for most of my life, when it gets dark on a mountain, you hunker down, try to stay dry. When daylight comes, you find some kind of water and follow it back down to a town or where it crosses a hiking path. I presumed David would know to do so. I presumed he was ok.
News would come 30 minutes later, as we were driving down Lookout to get some dinner. My dear friend texted me "Do you know about David?"
I sent a cryptic text back, not sure if I was spreading gossip or getting information.
She responded, "They found him...He's in heaven."
I called her and asked 3 times if she was sure. "Yes," she said, "I'm close friends with his sister." She had just gotten off the phone with David's sister and brother-in-law.
Adam stayed up until 3 am that night calling RAs and close friends of David's, including two RAs that were in Africa and Peru. We were in a daze the next day.
His family had the funeral July 29th. Adam estimates that about 1,000 people were there. I couldn't go, and won't be able to go to some of the memorial times that Covenant College is planning. It's strange to mourn someone who I still feel is supposed to return to us this Thursday. Strange to mourn someone who left 3 months ago, and is supposed to be somewhere else. But who is supposed to come back. To know that he won't be back, but not believe it.
I'm sending the following poem to his mom and dad. It has been a comfort me since Addie found it in a devotional and wrote it in a bible for me years and years ago.
"How was your day?" he asked.
"Great!" I said. "I got so much done, and the day just flew by. I know it's nice hear when days go well, and today went really well."
"Wonderful!" he said.
"How was yours?"
"Ok."
"Just ok?"
"Yep."
He or I changed the subject, and I trusted he would tell me eventually what made the day just ok. It came as we put the groceries away in the privacy of our home.
"I don't want you to become concerned, but David has been missing for 40 hours."
"Our David?"
David was an RA last year on Adam's staff and was slated to return to RA staff for his second year. He was a quiet guy, with a deep resonant voice. A popular soccer player and an excellent student, He had struggled to make his hall his own, but was succeeding bit by bit last year and really was excited to return to the hall.
Adam explained he had been hiking in the Swiss Alps, on a little vacation from working with MTW in Spain as an intern. I pushed away fear and anxiety and became a little irritated that he would have kept hiking while the other two people hiking with him turned back.
I thought of so many times in high school when prayer requests would come through our group of friends for some high schooler or another getting lost in the mountains. They always returned. I knew, having lived in Montana for most of my life, when it gets dark on a mountain, you hunker down, try to stay dry. When daylight comes, you find some kind of water and follow it back down to a town or where it crosses a hiking path. I presumed David would know to do so. I presumed he was ok.
News would come 30 minutes later, as we were driving down Lookout to get some dinner. My dear friend texted me "Do you know about David?"
I sent a cryptic text back, not sure if I was spreading gossip or getting information.
She responded, "They found him...He's in heaven."
I called her and asked 3 times if she was sure. "Yes," she said, "I'm close friends with his sister." She had just gotten off the phone with David's sister and brother-in-law.
Adam stayed up until 3 am that night calling RAs and close friends of David's, including two RAs that were in Africa and Peru. We were in a daze the next day.
His family had the funeral July 29th. Adam estimates that about 1,000 people were there. I couldn't go, and won't be able to go to some of the memorial times that Covenant College is planning. It's strange to mourn someone who I still feel is supposed to return to us this Thursday. Strange to mourn someone who left 3 months ago, and is supposed to be somewhere else. But who is supposed to come back. To know that he won't be back, but not believe it.
I'm sending the following poem to his mom and dad. It has been a comfort me since Addie found it in a devotional and wrote it in a bible for me years and years ago.
Even for the dead I will not bind my soul to grief;
Death cannot long divide.
For is it not as though the rose that climbed my garden wall
Has blossomed on the other side?
Death does hide
But not divide;
You are but on Christ's other side!
You are with Christ, and Christ is with me;
In Christ united still are we.
Death cannot long divide.
For is it not as though the rose that climbed my garden wall
Has blossomed on the other side?
Death does hide
But not divide;
You are but on Christ's other side!
You are with Christ, and Christ is with me;
In Christ united still are we.
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