Thoughts from the Third Trimester

When I first found out I was pregnant, I was in the midst of rehearsals for a play in my neighborhood. It was a late-night-series-of-monologues type of play... and doing that while pregnant would be a whole other blog post! Anyway, my husband, Jeff, and I didn't want to tell anyone yet, but I figured I should tell my director (also a good friend of ours) since I was feeling so nauseated and so that, just in case I had to leave the stage to throw up, she and my stage manager would know why. Just trying to be professional, really.

Anyway, when I told her, she just looked at me. I don't think she knew exactly how to react. In her defense, I'm not sure I did either, but once it sank in that I wasn't joking and that Jeff and I had planned it and weren't depressed about it, she just hugged me and said, "Don't you feel so sacred right now?"

Sacred. Well, honestly, at the moment, I absolutely did not feel sacred - I felt nauseated! But as trimesters have passed by, I've learned things about my body that I never knew, and "sacred" is really the best word for it. I feel sacred to have the task of carrying life and bringing it into the world... sacred because God created my body to adjust itself and produce hormones that move my insides around to make room for our little one while keeping me safe... sacred because I'm a woman.

Unfortunately, I have never looked forward to this experience. When I saw "The Miracle of Life" video in honors biology when I was 14, I didn't think there was anything about that video that looked miraculous! It looked TERRIBLE. I even told myself I would never, ever have kids just because that looked so terrible... but then again, I also said I would never get married, live in a foreign country or work at a church. Ha.

I think more seriously, though, that I never looked forward to this experience because I've always thought of childbirth as a punishment because of the Genesis account of the fall of humankind. I realize that it's the increased PAIN of childbirth that is presented as the punishment, but I'm not sure I ever differentiated between the two. And then there's that verse in I Timothy 2 about women being "saved through childbearing..." which didn't really sit very well with me as a budding feminist in my youth. I remember thinking, What does that mean? That all women are just supposed to be baby factories? What about women who can't have children? What happens to them? I mean, I know that other cultures only value women who CAN have children, but that surely can't be God's design, right?

I was just amazed by all this obsession with women and childbearing, and I desperately wanted another "purpose." I decided that, rather than marry and bear children, I would be a powerful career woman who wore business suits and carried a briefcase. I would have a big office and tell people what to do. I would live in New York City and read the newspaper on the subway on the way to my big office. Now, granted, I didn't know what kind of work I wanted to do, but that was the life I wanted. I would be "important." I guess I thought that because I was just soooo smart that, not only could I do all those things, but that I should.

Then I met Jeff. Looking back on it now, I realize that through our relationship, particularly since we were in India learning how other cultures develop and maintain relationships, God taught me to stop dreaming and start truly existing. Existing in the present as who I AM, not who I think I should be. There are lots of ways to be "important," and I realized that as I started thinking about how I could make someone else's life better. My life is not about ME. It actually never has been... I just didn't know that before. I still maintain that it probably wouldn't be a tragedy if I never chose to be a mom, but it absolutely WOULD be a tragedy if Jeff never got the opportunity to be a dad. Investing in other people's lives, I've learned, is an incredible way to honor God and to thank Him for the gifts that He gives to us.

And NOW, it's not even about just me and Jeff. It's about our daughter who will be here in about a month. I mean, don't get me wrong - pregnancy hasn't been just day after day of glorious awakenings to truths from the Almighty. Pregnancy in its full physical sense is pretty cruddy. I don't sleep very well, my skin is stretched, my own daughter kicks me in the ribs all the time (I know she doesn't mean to, but still...). I even told a co-worker the other day that I never thought I would get to the point in my life when labor sounded like a good idea, but it SO does.

But even in the midst of all of that, I still feel sacred. I think I get what that 1 Timothy verse means. Carrying this child saves me from my selfishness... saves me from thinking that I have nothing to offer if I'm not "important" in the world's eyes... and it reminds me how amazing women are. Some of the strongest women I've ever known are mothers - my own mother, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, my friend Allison, and my Indian friends' moms. It's truly an honor to join this incredible section of the population of our world.

Just a few more weeks. Just a few more weeks.