Waiting…

The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

Thank you doesn’t seem like a big enough response to the love I received after my last post. But it’s all I can say so – Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the comments, the e-mails, the texts, the love, the prayers. Thank you for letting us know that we are not alone. Thank you for helping me feel so loved this week. I am so thankful.

I’m thankful that my health is good. That I’m able to walk and move around rather than have to be on bed rest. I’m thankful that our baby continues to grow and kick within me. I love feeling those not-so-little movements. In-utero baby hiccups are the weirdest but coolest things ever and baby seems to get them at least once a day lately. I’m thankful that the doctor I met with yesterday seems hopeful for our baby. I’m thankful for the time she took to explain medical things to me, to answer my questions. I’m thankful for her honesty and her optimism. I’m thankful that our baby will have top notch medical care as soon as it’s needed. We don’t quite know what that will look like but it’s there and I know how fortunate we are to live in a country where we have access to terrific neonatal care.

I stayed with my brother at the start of this week and Baby got some serious loving from its big cousins. Saying good night involved two hugs – one for me, one for the baby. My nephew – who is the sweetest 7-year-old you could ever hope to meet – made me this:

That’s a clay porridge pot with milk jug and sugar bowl. And three bowls – two for Peter and I and one little one for the Baby. This baby’s going to get a lot of squishy hugs and kisses when it arrives.

I’ve been struggling with the disappointment of not getting to have our baby in our own town. While I know that this is really minor in the larger scheme of things, it’s still something I’m struggling to let go of. I was looking forward to being in my own home for the first part of labour. To walking the trails near our house. To time spent waiting in the places we live and love. And instead I’m in this big, busy city. And I love this city but it felt dirty and chaotic and just not part of the plan.

Yesterday evening I walked through my parents’ neighbourhood to meet a friend for coffee. It was not quite dusk. Bikes whizzed past me in the street and the last stragglers headed home from the local elementary school. All along the sidewalks and in people’s yards, I noticed that the crocuses have made their appearance.

Purple and white, they’re showing up everywhere. The earliest signs of spring.

And I thought, One day, I’ll tell this kid about this week. I’ll tell him or her how we walked the streets of Vancouver together and the crocuses bloomed and the sky turned pink. How I waited and I was afraid but excited. How I kept my fingers crossed to not go into labour until Peter could join me. I’ll try and describe the bins of fruit outside the market, the buds appearing on the trees up and down the street. Even the woman who stole from the tip jar at the coffee shop and was escorted out while yelling, “One dollar! One dollar!” I think it’ll be a good story.

For God is a God who bears. The Son of God bore our flesh, He bore the cross, He bore our sins, thus making atonement for us. In the same way His followers are also called upon to bear. And that is precisely what it means to be a Christian.

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from The Cost of Discipleship