Today, I'm in a pretty good mood. Yes, I know you're shocked. But really, it is a lovely day and I so enjoy my little tiddlywink and her brothers that I cannot help but be, well, happy. It is amazing the effect these little creatures can have upon one's moods. If Julia is upset or grumpy, for example, she has the ability to so drain me that I feel like an empty shell being slowly crushed under the shoe of a nasty little boy named Freddy. Helpless, hopeless, and flat. Generally at that point the only thing to do is to wait desperately for my husband to get home and carefully glue me back together. On the other hand, when she's in a good mood, and let me tell you, you've never seen the sun shine nearly as bright as she can, she inflates me with such joy that I find myself admiring the view from the top of a pillowy white carpet of clouds. There is simply nothing so intoxicating as Julia on a good day. I often find myself wondering how such happiness can exist and how I don't just explode from it. Those are the moments that everything that is difficult about motherhood is totally worth it. Who thinks about the hard work it took to get to the top of that mountain when you are standing looking at the beautiful view? If anything, the effort just makes the reward all that much sweeter.
That certainly is enough drippy imagery for one post, so let me now get to the topic of the day. Besides the impending doom of the upcoming first day of school, the other topic probably demanding the majority of my thought life is pregnancy. As I am now seven months pregnant, a certain degree of obsession over this topic is completely understandable. However, since this is my fourth child, I am filled less with the dreads and confusion that the prospect of upcoming labor would normally inspire. Rather, I find myself becoming increasingly introspective about pregnancy itself, and what it means to be a pregnant woman.
It's really quite amazing when you realize that your body is actually being used by God as a living incubator. That there is an actual human, a personality, a soul, an entire future of longings and joys and despair and romance and everything else that makes a life, being woven together inside of ME. It's all right here, in this bulge under my shirt. It's so easy to just see a large belly, not much more interesting than an arm or leg, except of course that my arms and legs aren't growing uncontrollably, leaving me looking like a snake who has successfully swallowed a hippo. But to really understand that there is a PERSON in there, and that I am being used as the mechanism through which it is coming into existence, is completely mind-boggling. Maybe my interactions with my two boys is what's really bringing it home to me. They are 8 and 9 now, and they are such, such, Little Men. I mean, they have these thoughts and observations that no one put in their heads for them, and they do and feel and fear and wish and enjoy and so much more. They aren't just my kids anymore. They are people, who happen to be living with me. Sure, they're not even close to being ready to be on their own yet, but I can see that glimmer of who they will be when that day comes. It's simply amazing to think that these incredible people actually began INSIDE OF ME. Someday they will have wives and kids and mortgages and jobs and it all began INSIDE OF ME. From one of me has come three, soon to be four, other entire lives. Everything they do to effect this world, everything that comes from them, I had a part in that. It's like my own piddly existence is somehow multiplied by four, and I am so much more than just "I". I am also Them, for better and for worse. That is why, no matter what happens, no matter what they do and where they go, I will always be a part of them and they will always be a part of me. Whenever they need me, I will always do what I can for them. I will never turn away from them. I may just as well try to turn away from my own body. Because they began, literally, as part of me. Inside me, growing out of my core, taking bits of me as they formed.
So right now, although I may just look to you like a rather frazzled and disheveled pregnant woman waddling uncomfortably as she chases her toddler around the yard, I am, in fact, God's incubator, an integral part of His plan for the creation of human-kind. Whoah.
