It’s been 39 weeks and 6 days since the Lord began knitting this little one inside of me. The two of us bound together by a cord, housed by my own body, have been racing through these past 10 months – each of us growing, each of us developing, neither of us truly aware of the chapter that lies ahead. While I have prayed for this girl, and seen her in my daydreams and deepest desires when trying to envision my future family, the past 39 weeks and 6 days have been a blur of nausea, nesting, and chasing after her older sister. Unlike the first time I was pregnant, there have been very few moments to sit and bask in the miraculous new hum of life growing larger beneath my chest. Regardless of me, time – and this pregnancy – marches on.  

The strains of growing a person (and their life-sustaining organ) have made this season a hard one to remain patient in. Between the common ailments of carrying a child and caring for a toddler simultaneously, the discomfort has certainly been more pronounced and I am eager (read: desperate) to get some mobility back. And yet, as we wait for baby girl to make her arrival, it seems that patience is what the Lord is asking of me. Every signal my body is giving me tells me that we’re close, but there is no way to know when. It could be hours, it could be weeks. Every day I wake up pregnant is a new test of patience, trust, and mental fortitude. Most days all of those attributes feel weak but anyone who’s ever built strength in a muscle knows that the muscle must be broken down first before it is repaired into something stronger than it was before. Perhaps, that is the phenomenon I am experiencing while I wait. 

Maybe all this angst, all my irritability and frustration, are signs that these weak muscles are being broken down, repaired and made stronger? Perhaps in time, these emotional muscles might be better able to tolerate waiting, and discomfort, and sitting in seasons I’d rather move past quickly? It would be a mercy, and a blessing in the long run if that was what all this pain, frustration, and uneasiness has been about. However, on days like today, after 39 weeks and 6 days of anticipating, preparing, and the endless expansion, it feels a little like torture.

I have to keep reminding myself not to skip this moment. I have to keep reminding myself not to live in my imagined future of having delivered this baby, and being ‘so much better off’ for it. I have to keep pulling myself back into this impossible moment where my body aches and my routine is in shambles, because this is the only place to be, no matter how intolerable it feels right now. The longer I can stay present, the longer I can sit in the discomfort of waiting while my body stretches to its absolute limits, the richer this moment becomes and the more I realize that perhaps this season isn’t just about the waiting. Maybe there’s more here? 

If I open my eyes and wade in the waters of this very moment, I can pause long enough to see that the child who was only recently an infant – the child I prayed for, longed for, labored 36 hours for – has grown into a walking, talking, curious little being with pieces of her budding personality peeking through our everyday interactions. I can see the family I always hoped for, playing just beyond the front patio with all the neighborhood kids on a golden summer afternoon. I can feel the cool breeze on my face and smell the salt wafting off the ocean tide as Israel and I walk the blocks to our favorite restaurant, our one year-olds hands holding tightly to ours. I can commit to memory the weight of my sleeping girl in my arms while it’s still only her that I have to put to bed. I can see me, and how much I’ve grown since becoming a mother, and a mother again. Presence, I am realizing, is peace – it is also power.

I cannot imagine the next few years will be a walk in the park. Training up children in the way they should go isn’t exactly what those who have gone before me have called “easy.” The strength I’m building today will serve me in the years to come, and so I practice presence when I so desperately want to be on the other side of this chapter because immersing myself in the fullness of reality is a discipline that builds resilience. 

To be fully present and awake to the moment I am in requires that I leave all the scary “what-if” scenarios in their imagined futures. It requires me to focus on what’s right in front of me instead of romanticizing, or catastrophizing the season ahead of me, it requires my attention in the here and now instead of spending my energy wishing myself away from the place I’m in. Presence asks me to slow down, to stop and acknowledge all that’s in front of me – the bad, and the less-than-ideal, yes, but the good, too: my daughter pulling things off a table and putting them back on again, the air conditioning keeping me cool, the rocking chair we purchased over a year ago still holding me up, the baby I wasn’t sure we’d make, sleeping soundly inside my womb. 

Practicing presence honors the Lord in ways few other things can. While He’s given us the ability to reflect on our past and plan for the future, it’s all in relation to our present realities, because this: right here and now is all we have. It’s the only place we can experience God, because it’s the only place we can be. So, we honor it, by being with it, by not wishing this gift away, by not trying to exchange it for something else, but for accepting it and being grateful for it in its entirety.

So, as the day turns to night, and night turns to morning, and the 39th week turns into the 40th, I will be here, waddling into my due date, ligaments tightening under the strain, back aching, heart full of anticipation and all the goodness this moment has to offer. I will be here, fighting the anxious thoughts with gratitude for what’s in front of me, hoping and praying that this is the way of patience, that this is me doing what the Lord has asked of me while I wait.

xo,

Jess