Hello friend.
My sweet friend, Amy, just commented on a previous blog post of mine and finished with the encouragement... "Enjoy these days." That makes me smile.
"These Days"...
These days, I spend most of my moments in wonderment. I am in wonder of the life growing inside of me, wonderment at the fact that God would take me, a broken vessel, and turn me into a sacred temple. Voila! This concept, this bit of theology, that our bodies are temples of the living God has never seemed quite so real to me as it does now... as it has for the past 10 weeks, the amount of time I've spent knowing that there is a life growing inside of me.
I have been in Kansas City with the Alexander children since Thursday and we have had some interesting talks about the fact that there is a baby in my tummy. Yesterday morning, I was explaning to the children how, right now, my body is helping God make the baby inside of me. Whitby (age 6), completely on the edge of her seat, asked me the most amazing question.
"Can you feel it? Can you feel God's hands?"
Wow.
To be honest, I know very little about what is going on inside. I read my "What to Expect When You're Expecting" iPhone app every Wednesday (my turn day) to find out what is happening with the baby this week. I've spent serious amounts of time poring over the charts in my midwife's office looking at what grows when and how the baby looks when eyelids are forming, etc. but, ultimately, I am clueless about how this child is actually being formed, like, biologically.
But Whitby gets it. God's hands are inside of my body and they are lovingly and, with intricate and careful detail, knitting our baby together in this secret place. It is a complete and utter mystery. It is an incredible and awe-inspiring miracle. And the fact that God allows me to co-labor with him, the fact that my body knows to do the things it does, the fact that Trevor and I had the privelege of being involved in this process of creation, the fact that we are now partners with God in building this life, I'm... well, I'm... speechless (and we know how often that happens).
"These days" are spent thinking about every thing that I eat, slowly, as the days go by, ruling out certain items in my closet, feeling the sensations of a growing uterus, talking to the baby (Liz, can the baby hear me yet?), running to the bathroom, counting the weeks (14 weeks and 3 days gestational age, which is a new term in my vocab), drinking tons of water, paying attention to the baby aisle at every store I'm in, experiencing the bathroom at every store I'm in, trying not to toss my cookies every time I take my pre-natal vitamins, trying to think up new ways of avoiding calling the baby "it" (until that glorious day sometime in the second week of December when we'll find out if the baby is a "he" or a "she"), trying not to crave Diet Dr. Pepper, bouncing names off Trevor, thinking, praying and talking about labor... and, mostly, dreaming about who this child will be and all of the ways that Trevor and I are going to continue our story with this sweet baby in our life.
It is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you, dear reader, Baby Chapman!
At 9 weeks.
_______ can't wait to meet you.
