I wasn't sure I liked babies

When my belly swelled with each of you, it was a burgeoning promise and a sacrifice all at once. Each time it fell slowly in 8 weeks to a soft deflated balloon, like the wrinkled skin of a swimsuit stretched one too many times, a place where you babes laid. And after Caleb, and cancer, it never deflated. It just stayed. Instead of a cave where a baby used to be, it just stayed like a pillow attached to me, even though I ate less and less and tried different diets and even had cancer for four years.

Sometimes I still pass my hand over my stomach and there is a memory there, between palm and belly, of the days you lived inside me. Five babies passed days there, swelling my frame and kicking me with "otherness" from the inside out. I thought it would freak me out. Instead, it blissed me out.

I try to deny it, especially when I am alone with your Papa, but you are always with me, the four of you I got to keep. I see things everywhere that remind me of you, and I wonder constantly what you doing or thinking or needing. I thought I would be able to shake you off like a sweater you left on a chair when you didn't need it, when I leave you with your grandmothers or a babysitter. But I carry you somewhere deep in your soul. This weekend, it was my 10th anniversary, and your Papa and I were like two kids on our honeymoon, but there were these hideous Christmas ribbon wind-catchers blowing in the hippie shop window.

Pulled away from home by my first week of professoring, and our anniversary trip, I asked your Papa if I could have you back sooner. He said yes. And so you came, slam-bam-thank-you-Ma'am, tumbling out of the Suburban, grandparents laughing with you. We all went to the shore of Lake Superior and it was wide-stretched-arm days, and rock-picking, agate-hunting, and cliff-climbing, clambering joy.

I used to wonder how I would get through life without you, back when I thought I wouldn't have kids, back when I thought men weren't made for me and I'd never marry. For I carried you in secret, deep in my belly like magic beans, and I saw you in the faces in my dolls even though I never told anyone my 5-year-old secrets. My grandma always looked into my brown eyes and said "still waters run deep". Mine ran deep with dreams of you. And now you are here, and still I dream of you. Delight in you.

You just never know.

I don't get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns
The stumbles and falls brought me here

And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know that I am
I am the luckiest
~from The Luckiest, Ben Folds Five~

Linked to Fried Okra's synchroblog

Back to life, back to reality

I feel like I'm floating on a cloud this morning. It is the first day of school for our little homeschool, a job interview looms luminescent this afternoon, and I am still riding high from a long date with my lover for our 9th anniversary. After a difficult 7th year and an 8th year that included some very hard work, we are back in the honeymoon of our love this 9th year.

It's easy to love a man this handsome.

I love this turn of phrase from the Message in I Corinthians 13: "Love takes pleasure in the flowering of truth". This is exactly what I have seen happening in our marriage over the past 3 years, and this year especially in my husband. As he takes the reins of our family in a new and gentler way, and leads us according to his own interactions with God and the Holy Spirit, it is a beautiful thing to watch. I take pleasure in it.

We're squinting through a fog, peering through mist. But it wont' be long before the weather clears and the sun shines brightly! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us. But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. (I Corinthians 13:12-13 The Message)