Our good friends Steve and Coral had a child the very same day that our son Leo came into the world. Steve posted this on his Facebook page and I thought it was so well said that I asked him if I could share it here as well. Maeve is the name of one of his older children.
* * * * *
I was delighted, and surprised, honestly, that Maeve wanted to come to church with me this morning. We walked in and found our spot all the way at the end of the pew along the aisle and just about as soon as we sat down I heard over my shoulder,
“Morning Steve, would you like to bring up the gifts?”
I was, again, delighted and surprised. I’d never presented the gifts before. Maeve was quick to tell me that she had. I’d never even given the idea much thought beyond thinking that, as a matter of expediency, the people sitting closest to the bread and wine were asked to give it to the priest when the appropriate time came. Not much to it.
But I was suddenly overwhelmed.
* * * * *
I made a point to get to mass this morning because out of all the feelings that I’ve had over the past few days the one dominant and persistent feeling has been thankfulness.
We made it. 35 ½ weeks, complication after complication, hospital visit after hospital visit, the day finally came. Then Cesarean, then neonatal intensive care, then leaving the hospital without our daughter – but we made it. We made it and she’s perfect and lovely and we are crazy about her. I am so thankful – for my wife, my youngest daughter, my kids, my life – I thank God for it all.
* * * * *
I said “ Yes, of course.”
“How’s Coral?”
“Great! We had the baby!”
“Wonderful, congratulations!”
Then, standing, I look up at the stained-glass window above the tabernacle and the image of Christ on the cross and I think, “Bring up the gifts? What gift can I bring? What thing could I present that could possibly show my gratitude?” How could anything that I offer show the depth of humility I felt holding that sweet baby and knowing that I did nothing to bring her here safe and sound, I did nothing to deserve her, I can do nothing to keep her – She is 100% blessing and grace. She is the gratuitous love of God poured out on me, my wife and our family.
So, I’m standing there with tears puddling in the corners of my eyes (okay, streaming down my face) and now, finally, I’m thinking about the gifts. What are they? What does that mean, the gifts? Indeed, I have nothing to offer- no thing, no deed that could be credited to me as my own. The Bible puts it this way, “every good and perfect gift is from above.” So then what am I doing? And it strikes me in a new and poignant way that even the gifts I offer, the gifts that we offer together, come from above. We know that God looks with favor and love on the offering that Jesus made on our behalf. We know he did then and we know that he does now when we do this in remembrance of Him. But while the offering is ours – its only ours because it is a gift from above. St. Augustine said that “when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing else but his own gifts.”
* * * * *
I hand the wafers to Maeve, take the wine in my hands, and as we approach the altar I’m acutely aware that I have nothing to give but that which I have been given. And I have been given so much.
It is time for communion, and even this Evangelical knows that young children are discouraged from partaking, at least until they are old enough to understand the meaning behind the wafer, the meaning behind the wine. But of course if you know Sam and Abra, our youngest two children, you’ll understand how they squeeze into the aisle and practically run to the front.
Father David is kind, and he does not forsake those little children. He gives them each a wafer, and he blesses them. Maile and I catch up to them, and our family shuffles through the line, then walks around the side, all the way to the back of the church, before circling and coming up through the center aisle. Maile’s face is a deep shade of crimson.
But Sam, he seems energized by this new experience, and before I can reach for his hand he sprints down the center aisle towards our pew, stopping halfway to do a little dance, then starts off again, transforming his sprint into a skipping kind of jump.
Maile and I look at each other. Sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh.
To read more about grace in city life and our first time at St. James Episcopal Church, head on over to my guest post at Deeper Story.
A few days after we bought our house, a friend gave us a housewarming gift of alcohol, the specific nature of which I will not release here on the blog because I think possessing it might be illegal in the great state of Pennsylvania.
Later that week, in the midst of painting and cleaning and preparing to move, my allergies spiked, so before bed I took his gift out, poured myself a glass, and drank it down. I also Instagrammed the gift. It received 27 likes and a handful of comments, mostly from people who wanted to know where I got such a wonderful friend. I didn’t think about the picture again, at least not for a few weeks.
* * * * *
When I grew up, my first encounter with alcohol was at Veterans’ Stadium in Philadelphia, where my father took me to watch the Phillies. I was obsessed with Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt and Von Hayes, and the stadium always took my breath away when I walked into it, not because it was beautiful, but simply because it felt bigger than anything I had ever been in before. It felt like it might consume me.
I quickly learned that the strange smell was beer and that the people acting like fools, fighting, and shouting bad words had consumed too much of it. Because I am a rule follower at heart, and because I still thought it smelled bad, I don’t think I ever drank a beer in high school. Maybe one. On my 21st birthday, I walked out the back door of our house on my way to join some friends. My father stopped me at the door and said something I’ll never forget.
“Happy Birthday. Be careful.”
Actually, it’s what he didn’t say that sticks out in my mind. He didn’t condemn me for my plans, of which I’m sure he was well aware. He didn’t try to guilt me into the behavior he desired. He didn’t remind me of the God I had grown up with, the God who would probably send someone to hell if they so much as drank a glass of wine.
This has been a lesson to me on parenting, this idea that what I don’t say can be as important as what I do say. I think my parents are both rather exceptional.
Of course, I did go out and get drunk, and one of my friends drove us around, and another one of my friends sang in the back seat the whole way home and then threw up in the lawn of my first friend’s house. When we walked into the kitchen he threw up some more. The mother of the friend whose house we were staying at had left aspirin and large glasses of water on the kitchen table for us, and in the morning she served us breakfast.
Then I went home.
I have only ever had too much to drink one or two other times in my life. Lady Liquor, for whatever reason, has never turned me on.
* * * * *
A few weeks after I Instagrammed the wonderful gift of alcohol my friend had given me after we closed on our house, my friend Seth wrote a blog post. Seth is one of the kindest human beings I know, and although we’ve never met in person, we’ve become pretty good Internet friends. I feel like I know his family, and he has always been very encouraging of my writing.
But the post he wrote a few weeks after my Instagram, it stopped me in my tracks. Here’s a part of what he wrote:
My social media feeds are a veritable booze blitz, a virtual bar without the tacky smooth jazz. All my favorite lovers are there – wine, beer, whiskey, and the occasional gin cocktail from the more discriminating drinker (I follow a few classy Instagrammers). Yes, I called the booze my lovers. What of it? I’ve said it before: I have an unhealthy relationship with the bottle.
In a truthful moment I might tell you that the Instagram photos set the butterflies in the stomach to fluttering. The sides of my tongue tighten and draw inward in a Pavlovian response to the thought of supple tannins. I can smell the rosemary drifting from the gimlet, the caramel rising from the bourbon. The fire of desire rises and my breathing quickens. This is the mild anxiety of desire…
You see, my friend Seth has, for a time in his life, floundered in the waters of addiction. As we all do. His substance of choice was alcohol. He goes on to say, rather graciously, that he doesn’t hold those who post the pictures responsible for the torment the images put him through. He writes that “Grace extends to those who do not understand the way the dominoes fall when they post a photo of a mega-rita.” I didn’t talk to him about this yet, and I know he would never ask me or any of his friends not to post pics of alcohol on his behalf.
But it seems a small price to pay to help out a friend, doesn’t it?
I appreciate it, his grace, because even though I knew his story, I never even considered what a mere photo of booze might do to someone who is trying not to go back. I do not want my freedom to become his re-entry into bondage.
So that’s why I don’t Instagram alcohol anymore. I don’t judge those who do – quite frankly, I enjoy seeing the beer my friends are home-brewing or the things they’re celebrating. I still have a drink from time to time. But every time I’ve gone to post a pic of alcohol recently, a stark question pops up in my mind.
On an average Monday evening, my Instagram feed is composed of the following: three selfies of women in various department stores modeling dresses; five children with spaghetti-smear warpaint; six plates of slimy, grey, meatish substances tagged #foodporn; and, fifty-two adult beverages, most of which are red wine, some of which read “wine-thirty,” or “it’s 5:00 somewhere.” – See more at: http://sethhaines.com/addiction/the-recovery-room-an-awkward-instagram-grace/#sthash.pHie3sJf.dpuf
On an average Monday evening, my Instagram feed is composed of the following: three selfies of women in various department stores modeling dresses; five children with spaghetti-smear warpaint; six plates of slimy, grey, meatish substances tagged #foodporn; and, fifty-two adult beverages, most of which are red wine, some of which read “wine-thirty,” or “it’s 5:00 somewhere.”
My social media feeds are a veritable booze blitz, a virtual bar without the tacky smooth jazz. All my favorite lovers are there–wine, beer, whiskey, and the occasional gin cocktail from the more discriminating drinker (I follow a few classy instagrammers). Yes; I called the booze my lovers. What of it? I’ve said it before: I have an unhealthy relationship with the bottle.
In a truthful moment, I might tell you that the Instagram photos set the butterflies in the stomach to fluttering. The sides of my tongue tighten and draw inward in a pavlovian response to the thought of supple tannins. I can smell the rosemary drifting from the gimlet, the caramel rising from the bourbon. The fire of desire rises and my breathing quickens. This is the mild anxiety of desire.
Perhaps you are, at this particular juncture, accusing me of hyperbolic overstatement; allow me to assure you–it ain’t.
– See more at: http://sethhaines.com/addiction/the-recovery-room-an-awkward-instagram-grace/#sthash.pHie3sJf.dpuf
On an average Monday evening, my Instagram feed is composed of the following: three selfies of women in various department stores modeling dresses; five children with spaghetti-smear warpaint; six plates of slimy, grey, meatish substances tagged #foodporn; and, fifty-two adult beverages, most of which are red wine, some of which read “wine-thirty,” or “it’s 5:00 somewhere.”
My social media feeds are a veritable booze blitz, a virtual bar without the tacky smooth jazz. All my favorite lovers are there–wine, beer, whiskey, and the occasional gin cocktail from the more discriminating drinker (I follow a few classy instagrammers). Yes; I called the booze my lovers. What of it? I’ve said it before: I have an unhealthy relationship with the bottle.
In a truthful moment, I might tell you that the Instagram photos set the butterflies in the stomach to fluttering. The sides of my tongue tighten and draw inward in a pavlovian response to the thought of supple tannins. I can smell the rosemary drifting from the gimlet, the caramel rising from the bourbon. The fire of desire rises and my breathing quickens. This is the mild anxiety of desire.
Perhaps you are, at this particular juncture, accusing me of hyperbolic overstatement; allow me to assure you–it ain’t.
– See more at: http://sethhaines.com/addiction/the-recovery-room-an-awkward-instagram-grace/#sthash.pHie3sJf.dpuf
On an average Monday evening, my Instagram feed is composed of the following: three selfies of women in various department stores modeling dresses; five children with spaghetti-smear warpaint; six plates of slimy, grey, meatish substances tagged #foodporn; and, fifty-two adult beverages, most of which are red wine, some of which read “wine-thirty,” or “it’s 5:00 somewhere.”
My social media feeds are a veritable booze blitz, a virtual bar without the tacky smooth jazz. All my favorite lovers are there–wine, beer, whiskey, and the occasional gin cocktail from the more discriminating drinker (I follow a few classy instagrammers). Yes; I called the booze my lovers. What of it? I’ve said it before: I have an unhealthy relationship with the bottle.
In a truthful moment, I might tell you that the Instagram photos set the butterflies in the stomach to fluttering. The sides of my tongue tighten and draw inward in a pavlovian response to the thought of supple tannins. I can smell the rosemary drifting from the gimlet, the caramel rising from the bourbon. The fire of desire rises and my breathing quickens. This is the mild anxiety of desire.
Perhaps you are, at this particular juncture, accusing me of hyperbolic overstatement; allow me to assure you–it ain’t.
– See more at: http://sethhaines.com/addiction/the-recovery-room-an-awkward-instagram-grace/#sthash.pHie3sJf.dpuf
On an average Monday evening, my Instagram feed is composed of the following: three selfies of women in various department stores modeling dresses; five children with spaghetti-smear warpaint; six plates of slimy, grey, meatish substances tagged #foodporn; and, fifty-two adult beverages, most of which are red wine, some of which read “wine-thirty,” or “it’s 5:00 somewhere.”
My social media feeds are a veritable booze blitz, a virtual bar without the tacky smooth jazz. All my favorite lovers are there–wine, beer, whiskey, and the occasional gin cocktail from the more discriminating drinker (I follow a few classy instagrammers). Yes; I called the booze my lovers. What of it? I’ve said it before: I have an unhealthy relationship with the bottle.
In a truthful moment, I might tell you that the Instagram photos set the butterflies in the stomach to fluttering. The sides of my tongue tighten and draw inward in a pavlovian response to the thought of supple tannins. I can smell the rosemary drifting from the gimlet, the caramel rising from the bourbon. The fire of desire rises and my breathing quickens. This is the mild anxiety of desire.
Perhaps you are, at this particular juncture, accusing me of hyperbolic overstatement; allow me to assure you–it ain’t.
– See more at: http://sethhaines.com/addiction/the-recovery-room-an-awkward-instagram-grace/#sthash.pHie3sJf.dpuf
I didn’t have any writing work when Maile, our kids, and I returned from our 10,000-mile, cross-country trip in 2012 (You’ll remember that trip in all its glittering detail if you’ve read How to Use a Runaway Truck Ramp). Two or three projects that had been lining up fell apart at the last minute, and what we had hoped would be a quick one-month transition in my parents’ basement turned into an unexpected eight-month stay. (You’ll remember that basement; it’s the same one I wrote about in Building a Life Out of Words.)
(No more book plugs, I promise.)
So there we were with no idea when my next writing project might come in. Trying to figure out which credit card to put that week’s groceries on. Deciding which bills to pay and which to pass to the next month.
That was one of those times when all those little voices start up, voices of doubt and cynicism, the Voice of Responsibility and the Voice of Practicality and the Voice of Look At What All Of Your Friends Have. I started to feel just a teensy bit like a big fat loser of a husband who couldn’t even make enough money to take his wife out to eat every once in a while. (In the mean time, look at Facebook! Look at Twitter! Look at Pinterest! Everyone is so happy and everyone is rich and everyone is eating out!)
I caved under the pressure. I called some friends who called some friends and eventually a friend sent me an email about a warehouse job. It wasn’t much but it was something. Maile and I ran the numbers and realized that if I worked 45 – 50 hours a week (plus spent five hours on the road each week to and from work), and if I paid for health insurance for the family through the company’s plan, and after I paid for gas just to get to work, I’d make a whopping $1500 / month.
But I didn’t think I should take the job. Not just because of the money, either. I knew that if I took that job, I would be walking away from something very important to me, something I’d already sacrificed three years to attain: writing for a living. And once I had that job eating up all my time, I wouldn’t be able to take on writing projects even if they did come up. I knew how hard it had been to walk away from regular income before, and I didn’t know if I’d have the strength to do it again.
But it was real money, not play money in some far-off pretend future fantasy. $1500. I didn’t know what to do.
* * * * *
I’ve been getting these emails a lot lately. They go something like this:
Shawn, I was just like you. Trying every product under the sun for the last THREE years..
I failed and failed…
Then, I found this: Amazing video revealed
Within first 3 days, I had profited OVER $8,600.
Here’s proof: Click here to see proof
Because that’s pretty much what all of us kind of want, right? Click here and make money. Click here for the secret. Click here and all your problems will be gone.
But it never works out that way. There’s no job that does it. There’s no relationship that does it. There’s no book deal or signing-with-an-agent or college degree that does it. We spend so much time looking for the things that matter, but the only place we ever look is where we think the money is hidden.
You know where it’s all hidden? All of it? Behind perseverance and trust and the willingness to wait just one more day. And then one more day. And then one more day.
* * * * *
After much prayer and deliberation and counsel, Maile and I decided I should pass up on the job that would make me $1500 per month. We both believed that something would come up. That was a Sunday afternoon, when we made that decision.
On Monday we received two checks. One, from a relative, for $500. Another, a cashier’s check in the mail from an anonymous donor, for $1,000. We unexpectedly made, in one day, what I would have made working for a month at the warehouse.
* * * * *
I actually have no idea what the point is to this story, because I also know plenty of people who made the leap into self-employment or living out their dream and had to crawl humbly back when their plans didn’t pan out. Unlike the network marketing salesmen, I can’t promise you a certain level of income after a certain number of months or years. I don’t know why I’m so fortunate. But I do know one thing.
I went six months after that decision without making any real money, and I didn’t once regret my choice not to take that job. Because I knew I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Writing my blog. Working on my own projects. Trusting. And in the midst of all that, my friend Matthew Paul Turner invited me to go to Sri Lanka as a World Vision blogger. I never would have been able to do that if I had just taken that warehouse position. And then in December I finally landed my next project, a dream job in which I got to travel to Istanbul and write the powerful story of an amazing man.
So maybe that’s the only real point to this story.
“Andi, this just doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t have any depth. It’s boring.”
I think that’s what she said, the editor who had accepted my query about an article on international adoption, when she flat-out rejected a piece I had put months of my life into.
Months.
Her rejection of my words, my work, me. . . yep, there it was, she was rejecting me. And her rejection – justified, reasonable, true because the piece really was vapid – was just a tiny ripple that came before the big one.
My husband and I had been married for almost 3 years, and I was ready. Ready for that baby, that bundle of Guatemalan joy – the son we would name Diego.
We talked, we found an agency, we chose our country, we chose a name.
I even bought the hardware for a crib set that my father would build. Mom and I picked out fabric for the layette she’d make for his room.
Then, my husband left.
I wish I had been able to see in my own desperate article the way I was bracing against what I must have known – somewhere – was coming. But I didn’t see it . . . in the article or in my marriage.
And when rejection came – a ripple and then a tidal wave – my feet were washed out from under me, and I lay crying in a puddle on the floor.
***
5 years later, I am in Breckenridge, Colorado with one of my dearest friends. My mother has died a few months earlier, and my friend has invited me to take some respite with them for a while.
We are walking to an outlet mall, and she asks how I am after the divorce. I tell her that I’m finally beginning to feel like myself. She says – with her years of work as a counselor tied tight to her heart – “5 years. It takes most people 5 years to get over a loss like you experienced.”
Later that weekend, I sit in a lovely restaurant in that gorgeous resort town and cry over the fact that I may never have children.
***
2014. I am in a farmhouse with a cuddly dog asleep on the sofa and three cats snuggled against the hot water heater. Outside, two puppies, four goat kids, two kittens, 14 chickens, and two guineas are roaming this place of my dreams – the one my first husband did not take very seriously – in the dream or me.
My husband now – a dream himself – is on his way to work 50 miles away, a commute he takes on without complaint because it builds the life we share in this place completely.
We do not have children . . . not yet, but we both want them. Deeply. And they will come, we pray, when the time is right.
Because that is the story of rejection. It is often a story of timing, and of accepting the “not yet” even when it comes with the tidal-wave force, even when it leaves us puddled on the ground.
I know – now, 9 years later – that the “YES” of now can pick me up and carry me on with promise and more life than I ever imagined when Mom and I picked out that nursery fabric. Then, it felt forced, pushed, like that adoption article.
Now, the journey feels steady, unresisted, because now – with this man, the love of my life – is the time.
And Dad still has that crib hardware.
Andi is hosting a Writers’ Retreat at her farm in southern Virginia from July 18-20. If you love to write, you should consider attending. I will also be doing a reading there on July 19th, the Saturday night of the retreat, so if you can’t make it for the entire weekend but would like to come to the reading I believe that is also a possibility.
For more information on the retreat or the reading, click HERE. For Andi’s blog, click HERE.
You can also check out some of the prior #OvercomeRejection posts here:
Baby Leo being held by Maile’s father. Photo by the wonderful Kimberly Sanderson of Sanderson Images.
Maile kneels in the large tub, sitting back on her ankles, her knees spread apart. The water is still. She leans forward against the side of the tub, facing the corner of the room. She doesn’t make a sound, at least not until the next contraction comes. Then her voice starts in a quiet hum, growing louder and only slightly higher as the contraction peaks.
“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHH…”
She takes a deep breath and exhales, and the world has come back. For a moment there was nothing but the contraction, nothing but finding a path to the other side of that growing pain. But she is through. For now.
I kneel beside the tub and wait, my knees on a foam mat, my head in my hands. Waiting is like prayer. Kneeling there in the dim light, a summer thunderstorm gathering outside, my wife in the tub humming through each contraction, I have this revelation: it’s no wonder older traditions worshiped the female form, this vessel of beauty and power that brought forth life, seemingly on its own.
It’s no wonder older traditions worshiped the goddess. But perhaps those ancient goddesses needed priests in order to hide their humanity. Because we are, all of us, human.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Maile says quietly, urgently, and I help this goddess from the (holy?) water and into the adjoining bathroom. At some point her determination turns to uncertainty.
“I remember this,” she says. “I remember this point where you suddenly think, ‘I have decided I don’t actually want to do this anymore.'” She looks up at me with her big blue eyes. “I’m at that point.”
“You can do it,” I say, because what else is a husband supposed to say at that point?
She nods and bites her lip in pain, then the breathing.
“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”
* * * * *
Earlier that same day, about ten hours earlier, Maile woke me up. She stood at the foot of the bed, a visiting angel.
Do not be afraid.
“I’m having contractions,” she said, smiling. “They’re about ten minutes apart.”
I was suddenly awake.
“And I think we have to change the baby’s name,” she blurted out, cringing. “It just doesn’t feel right. I don’t think I can do it.”
What’s a husband supposed to say at that point? She’s having my baby, she’s having contractions, and she wants to change the name. Of course. You can do whatever you want. You can buy whatever you want. You can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
So we had to come up with another name. And he was on the way.
* * * * *
“You’re doing great,” the midwife says to Maile after four and a half hours.
“But I’m not,” Maile whimpers. “I want to push but I don’t think it’s time yet.”
“Would you like me to check you?” the midwife asks.
Maile nods, and the midwife pushes her fingers up inside, up into the source of life, the center of the pain. How often that is the case, that the center of our pain will also become the source of life. Maile grimaces, then groans, then cries out.
“Okay,” the midwife says, adjusting her reach, feeling around. “You still have two small pieces of your uterus covering baby’s head. If you push, that might start to get inflamed and then you won’t dilate fully. Can you breathe through the contractions for just a little while, give that uterus a chance to fully dilate?”
Maile nods, then closes her eyes.
“Here comes another one,” she whispers.
“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”
* * * * *
There is life in all of us, things that need to be birthed. Dreams. Desires. There is something that has been forming over time, something crucial to us, and it wants to come into being. It cannot stay hidden forever.
But let me tell you – I’ve seen babies being born, and I’ve tried to live out a dream, and none of them come into being without labor. There are contractions, and there is what seems an impossibility, and there is blood. Just when the birth is closest, the fear is greatest. Just when you think it will never happen, the midwife says those words.
“Okay, you can go ahead and push.”
* * * * *
But we hadn’t reached that point yet.
“Ask her to check me again,” Maile whispered, now on all fours, now on her side, now clinging to the headboard of the bed. Now back on her side again.
The midwife checked.
“The uterus is still in the way. If you want me to, and only if you want me to, I can reach in during your next contraction and try to slip it out of the way.”
Maile nods. Anything. She grits her teeth.
“Here’s another one.”
The midwife reaches in while Maile contracts. Maile makes a sound that’s somewhere between a shriek and a shout. The contraction seems to last forever, and the midwife works her hand around. The contraction ends. Maile gasps for breath, while the midwife examines her.
“There’s just one more small part of your uterus on baby’s head,” she says. Her voice is so calm, like still water. “After that, you’ll be good to push. Just breathe through this next contraction. One more. You can do it.”
Maile’s eyes are closed and it looks like she’s fallen asleep. Completely still. Then her eyes press tight and she bites her lip. It’s coming. She cries out again as the midwife works, more urgently this time. The contraction fades and Maile closes her eyes. The midwife smiles.
“You’re all clear. You can push. Go ahead and give us a push.”
Maile’s tank is empty, but there is a goddess in her still, and she bears down. I stand beside the bed and hold her leg up so that she can push on her side. This is it. This is the moment. She pushes and I can see the baby’s crown coming into the light. Then the baby’s hair, lots of it, and the head is nearly clear. The midwife reaches down and without a word gently pulls out the cord and unwraps it from around the baby’s neck. We have five children, and that is always the strangest moment of all, the time before the last push, when baby’s head is there, eyes open, waiting.
“Give us another good push,” she says, and I wonder where that calm voice is coming from – another world, perhaps. Another universe. Maile responds, and out slips a bundle of bones and displaced joints and skin and then it’s coming together into the form of a child. The cord is purple and red and the consistency of rubber. They are attached, the mother and the baby. They always will be.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
He lay there for a moment, the boy without a name, and he didn’t even cry. He just stared up at me, his dark eyes wide open. It was as if he was saying, Go ahead, have a good look. I’m here. It was surreal, that moment, when he should have been crying but he wasn’t, when he looked at me as if he knew me, as if he was a new part of me being born into existence for the first time.
I wondered what I saw when I was first born, what my eyes took in, what my skin felt, so fresh to the world.
The goddess lay on the bed, bleeding, smiling as if nothing had happened. The naked baby boy was on her naked body, already rooting around for food, and all was right with the world.
* * * * *
We asked everyone to leave the room and we talked about the name in hushed tones. All of our children have been named after characters in books, but this boy would be named after two authors.
Leo. As in Tolstoy.
Henri. As in Nouwen.
No pressure, buddy.
I’ve always seen Henri Nouwen as a fellow pilgrim. More than almost any other person, his words have shaped my view of a God who loves. I always remember his words about birthdays:
(Birthdays) remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.
* * * * *
The boy lay there and Maile was smiling and I was overwhelmed. I had my phone out and was texting family and friends and then I was on Facebook and oh the ache I felt when I remembered my dear friend Alise and how she recently lost a baby at birth, her little Elliott. I opened up the picture she had sent me of her little boy just after he was born. He was so beautiful, even though he was already gone. I showed the picture to Maile as she sat there holding Leo.
Maile asked me a question with tears in her eyes, a question that I don’t have an answer for.
“Why do some mommies get to go home with their babies while others do not?”
Me and Leo. Photo by Kimberly Sanderson of Sanderson Images.
There is life, and there is death, and the two are so entangled here, so interwoven and twisted together that sometimes you can’t see the end for the beginning. I sent Alise a message, telling her that Leo and Elliott will always be connected in my mind. She wrote me a kind, honest message in return.
I thought also of another friend, whose rejection post I am going to share later this week about getting married, wanting to have children, but not yet being able to conceive. Her words are beautiful and deep and wise. She was among the first to congratulate me on the arrival of Leo, and she is always among the first to “like” photos we share of him.
This is life. What can we do but laugh with one another? What can we do but weep each other’s tears? Sometimes both at once?
The day after Leo was born, Elliott’s mother Alise wrote this beautiful letter to Leo, and she quoted Frederick Buechner:
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
* * * * *
I woke up this morning with this boy on my chest. This little lion. His arms reach down each side of me, as if he is trying to hug the world. His breath is so gentle it is barely visible, the way a falling leaf stirs the air around it. I try to count the hairs on his head. I note the tiny formations that make up his lips, his earlobes, and they are a swirl of cells that will grow and change for as long as he is alive.
