Classic

Yesterday I started the merry-go-round of testing that will make up the last trimester of this pregnancy. Trips to the doctor's office two or three times a week, depending on the week. If you can believe such a thing.

WARNING: Unless you live a life of ease with no responsibilities whatsoever, do not get pregnant in your forties. Just don't do it people! Not only do they tell you scary things and require insane amounts of additional medical care, you will be exhausted. Trust me, I know. Pregnancy is way harder this time around.

Every Monday until this guy's birthday, I will go for a biophysical profile (BPP), which is a fancy term for an ultrasound where they measure certain things -- mainly (I think) fluid levels as well as the baby's muscle tone, growth, and practice breaths. On Thursdays, I will go for non-stress tests, hooked up to the monitor that you wear during labor that measures contractions as well as the heartbeat and who knows what else. Every other Friday I visit the doctor. It feels like a bit much. C'est la vie. My husband says I should be grateful for good medical care. I am certain he is right. I'm working on the gratitude thing, trying not to fret about the time that all of this takes.

The important news is that this little fellow passed his test yesterday with flying colors. But what made the whole thing just a classic representation of my life is that the ultrasound tech couldn't get any pictures of his face. Instead I walked out of there with a picture of his forearm and a very powerful-looking fist as well as a good shot of his butt and well...yes, his balls. If I'd had any doubts (which I really didn't) about his gender, I don't anymore. This one is all boy, in personality and more.

Tears

Historically speaking, I haven't been much for crying. Years can go by. I can be sad, upset, or depressed, but the tears don't really come. Sometimes, yes. But more often than not...not.

But this pregnancy has changed all of that. I started crying before I even knew I was pregnant. I couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong with me. And then...well...then I found out. So now I am undone by things, big and small. I cry and cry. One of my dear friends says that she is grateful to this little fellow for enabling me to cry. She suggested that perhaps when he grows up, he will be the kind of person that others will feel safe to cry with. A lovely thought. I hope he is that kind of person.

I really love Guster's music, and the other day my husband realized that the song "Two at a Time" is a song referring to Noah and the flood. He showed me the lyrics and played the song. Here are a few of the lyrics:

Once upon a time,
For the Lord the skies they parted;
So a few must die
To bring us back to where we started.

CHORUS:
Two at a time,
Two at a time,
Two at a time,
Two at a time,
Do what you're told.

Each and every kind were gathered up,
This tiny boat - the future of the world.
For those that drowned, it made no sense;
They should have known, because we told them so.

I listened to the song and read the words...and cried. I'm not even sure why. Except for the fact that it had been a terrible week. I was feeling vulnerable and tired, and those lyrics broke my heart somehow. I thought of those animals, innocent of the wickedness that plagued mankind, and how they had to die anyway. I thought of the way that God devised a great plan -- the future of the world in a tiny boat. A great plan, yes, but loss and death were an inescapable part of it.

Suffering, loss, and redemption, an endless cycle, and the tears just kept coming.

Sleep

I've always been someone who could sleep. I've also always been someone who can get up early and actually feel awake. Both are a blessing. But in the past month in particular, sleep hasn't been going so well. I often wake up at three in the morning and find I just can't sleep. I try so hard not to let my mind wander to things it shouldn't...namely, all the things I'm worried about...and I often manage to push those thoughts aside, but still it takes forever to drift back to sleep. I try to pray. And I do, but my mind wanders and my body sends me little annoying updates. My back hurts. I have to go to the bathroom. Again. I'm thirsty. Again. I have to roll over. Again. Too bad I'm trapped between my husband and the dog, and the blankets feel like tethers. The baby kicks. Again and again. And I wonder whether he's actually nocturnal and will be awake through the night after he's out here with us, breathing air. I wonder.

Eventually I either realize that I will not be going back to sleep, like tonight (or, I guess, this morning), so I turn off my alarm and get up. Or at some point I realize that sleep may come, so I turn off my alarm to avoid being awakened in an hour or two. Either way, it's no good. The day will be disrupted in some way or another. More things I simply cannot control. This seems to be the lesson that life offers me. I'm not sure whether it's the lesson I'm supposed to learn.

But what does all of this really mean anyway? This baby is an awfully good reason not to sleep. I know. And I can get up and get a glass of water. I can work. I can turn on the news, as I've done this morning, and see just how fortunate I am.

Haiti is a disaster. Pat Robertson says that in the 1700s the Haitians made a pact with the devil, and that's why their lives are such a disaster and they suffer so unspeakably. I have no idea whether any of that is true. But I know that Haiti is the most desperately poor country in the western hemisphere, and I'm pretty sure they need help and compassion instead of some finger-pointing at their ancestors. Ugh. Why can't Christians ever keep their mouths shut and just let their compassion and generosity do the talking? Like that quote attributed to St. Francis: "Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary."

Time Is Short

This morning it hit me that this baby is coming. Soon. For so long it's been out there in time, a date far in the future. Now, not so much. This little dude is coming. It doesn't matter what's happening in our lives, or how ill prepared I may feel, or that we'll just have to wedge him and his crib in somewhere. He's not interested in or bothered by the obstacles or our own state of confusion. In thirteen weeks or less, he will make his grand entrance and we will feed him and rub his little back and sniff the top of his little baby head and fall in love.

Men of Gondor...

We were watching Return of the King yesterday. The extended version. I took a half-hour nap during the movie and still saw most of the important action. There is so much in those stories to chew on and contemplate and inspire, but this is what particularly struck me yesterday. Hopefully you'll forgive me if I get any of the details slightly wrong. I love Tolkien more than many people do (Really...Tolkien is Son2's middle name) , but my mind is not exactly a steel trap for all the place names and such. My husband's is. I don't understand how he remembers it all, but then again, his psychic space isn't quite as hijacked by schedules and appointments and medication dosages and social security numbers. So he can better remember the details of the Lord of the Rings and other stuff that I have no room for.

Anyway. In this scene of Return of the King, the battle for Minis Tirith has begun and the good guys are completely outnumbered, waiting for reinforcements. It looks like all the forces of hell are arrayed against our friends. Gandalf is standing with the men of Gondor, trying to steady their nerves because the steward of Gondor can't be bothered to do so. (He is busy planning his suicide and his son's death because he has lost all hope.) But the battle is on and something is battering the gates of the citadel, and clearly that something is about to break through. There is nothing the men of Gondor can do to stop it. So Gandalf says, "Men of Gondor, no matter what comes through that gate, stand your ground."

On the second day of the new year, that line rang true. There are good years and bad ones. I feel more hopeful at the beginning of this year than I have in the past few. Some things have shifted for me recently; I really didn't expect to enter this year with this little ballast of hopefulness. Yet I have, and I am grateful. But I know others who are now standing their ground, and my heart goes out to them.

I know these battles always come at us unforeseen. Things grow dark in our lives, and then darker still. Sometimes the very best you can do is stand your ground. You go on, somewhere well past hope, somewhere well past what feels like hanging on, but by grace you don't turn back or run away or do what Job's wife advised: curse God and die. Sometimes you can stand your ground so long that if it feels like you're not standing anymore and you wonder if you ever had any ground to begin with. But you did, and you do. Hope often arrives at the darkest moments, but not before you think you've already experienced the darkest moments. In the movie, a flower blooms on the barren white tree of Minis Tirith while the battle rages on. No one knows it's there, but that doesn't mean hope hasn't bloomed.

Of Acid and Caves

The other night I was killing time, waiting until I could leave to pick my son up from Christmas Carol practice. All I wanted to do was go to bed. I'd worked on a project for 12 hours that day, which is more hours than I usually devote to money-paying work in one day, and I was going to have to do the same thing the following two days to get the job done. But there were 30 minutes until I could leave for pick-up duty, so I was sitting on the couch watching an episode of Planet Earth with my oldest. It was the episode about caves, which I'd never seen because I'm terrified of bats and caves seem kind of repulsive to me.

They were talking about a cave in New Mexico, the Lechiguilla Cave, which is full of the most astounding crystals. I'd never seen anything like it. The interesting thing they said (if I heard them right in my sleepy stupor) is that the cave was carved out by sulphuric acid....and that's what makes the crystals so stunning and unusual.

It got me thinking. Sometimes, or most of the time, I am truly amazed by God. The beauty that he hides away in the dark places. The incredible creatures that lurk in the ocean depths. The crystals hidden in that cave, unseen for centuries. He does such beautiful things in the places that seem dark and frightening -- the places most people wouldn't want to or think to visit.

The Lechiguilla got me thinking about the darkest places in our hearts and lives, and the fact that sometimes the things that happen to us or the things we do to others are like acid eating away at us. The acid running like a river through us may be unseen by others, but we know it's there. We feel it wearing us away; for some of us, it flows year after year. We see no reason for the haunting pain; we want no part of it. Or perhaps we want to see some quantifiable and redemptive reason for it long before one can ever be seen.

But seeing those crystals made me feel at peace (at least temporarily) with the idea that we may never see quantifiable reasons for our pain... but that God can use its acid to carve astounding beauty within us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and if he wants to make use of the acid in our lives to make a temple of jagged and lovely crystals so that he can dwell in beauty -- a beauty that only he can truly see -- then who are we to argue?

A Book Recommendation

I just finished a great book -- Song Yet Sung by James McBride. Since I was whining about books a few months ago, I thought it would be nice if I actually passed a recommendation along. I won't tell you anything about it -- mainly because I should be working, not blogging -- but I will tell you that about thirty or forty pages into it, I nearly gave up on it. It seemed a little...weird. Some strange characters speaking in a strange code (in the story, the code is used by slaves to communicate vital information). But it was worth hanging in there. Check it out if you're looking for something great to read. The fact that the story is set on Maryland's Eastern Shore made it all the more interesting.

Next up for me: The Heretic's Daughter, a story told from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl whose mother is tried as a witch in the Salem witch trials. If it's great, I'll let you know.