The Weight of Glory
I wrote this post about 6 months ago.
I have left it lying in my Draft folder because I wrote it in a moment of rawness, the sort of rawness that in high school or college would've had me grabbing my journal and scrawling words spilling from my mind, without thought of consequence or correctness. A blog is different than that journal, and so I ended up closing the computer and never pushing "publish" on this. And yet, for some reason, today I think I will post it. It's honestly me. It may not coincide with the experience of many others, but it is mine.
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There is a fact of my life that I have come to know well in the last five years.
It is a fact that I love and that some days I hate.
It is a fact that delights me with its great glory and one that scares me, one that fills me with one of the greatest gifts in the universe and yet strips me bare, laying me open, vulnerable to the elements of the unknown.
As a married woman, blessed with fertility and striving to live the fullness of Catholic faith and teaching, this fact is my ability to conceive and bear children. This is my great blessing and my deepest hardship, a reality wherein lies my power and my inadequacy.
The great calling, this mandate of "openness to life" -- a phrase used and over-used -- is the story, the mystery of my life, month in and month out, for as long as I shall hold within my body the ability to grow a child. This mystery is one which I do not understand. I do not understand the power, I do not understand the responsibility, I do not understand the cross. But I understand that I am living a Story, a Calling, that is beyond me and my needs or wishes. It is ultimately the story of the building of the Kingdom of God.
This story is about the hopes and dreams and love beyond what you thought you could imagine.
This story is about loving so much and dreading so much.
This story is about awesome, unbelievable responsibility and awful, frightful inability.
This story is about late-night tears, breathless prayers and trying, trying, trying to trust.
This story is about vulnerability to a plan which is not your own.
This story is about the threat and the promise of eternity always before your eyes.
This story is about the greatest moments of a human life being given to you . . . you.
And so, I know there is glory in this story of fertility. But there is also much trial in the eternal weight of all of that very glory.
Whether I am pregnant, whether I am in a postpartum phase, whether I am asking and trying for a new child to join our family, whether I am actively working, praying and participating with God on a plan for my family that involves postponement, this is my life. I am, at all times, not in control (even if I think that I am). I am not in control of my body. As a woman, I have, more than any man ever can, literally given over my very body to the carrying out of the plan of God.
Of God.
Not of me.
The plan of my life, as is shown to me every day of the month, is in the hands of Someone Else.
And every fertile month this story is played out. Every month goes by in terms of another child or not, another soul or not, the next step in the plan of God. The month of a fertile, married, Catholic mother literally is defined by the needs a child -- the one being carried within, nursed without, the one tried for. There can be the need to avoid one, and the needs of the ones that surround her.
And this very fact of my life is one that I find, many days, exhausting and testing. Exhausting of my prayers, my thoughts, my hopes. Testing of my trust, my patience, my stamina. Why, I sometimes ask, why must I be so entrusted with such weighty decisions, such eternal ramifications? Why are there so many months ?
But sometimes I catch my breath in a moment -- when I see a pregnant woman, when my children overwhelm me with their preciousness, when I think of what I will miss so much in later years -- and then I am so grateful for this gift of fertility. Grateful in the way that I could never express in words, but only with my heart.
What did I ever do to deserve this blessed Story to live?
Thank you, my Lord, for letting me be a woman.
I have left it lying in my Draft folder because I wrote it in a moment of rawness, the sort of rawness that in high school or college would've had me grabbing my journal and scrawling words spilling from my mind, without thought of consequence or correctness. A blog is different than that journal, and so I ended up closing the computer and never pushing "publish" on this. And yet, for some reason, today I think I will post it. It's honestly me. It may not coincide with the experience of many others, but it is mine.
*****************************************************************************
There is a fact of my life that I have come to know well in the last five years.
It is a fact that I love and that some days I hate.
It is a fact that delights me with its great glory and one that scares me, one that fills me with one of the greatest gifts in the universe and yet strips me bare, laying me open, vulnerable to the elements of the unknown.
As a married woman, blessed with fertility and striving to live the fullness of Catholic faith and teaching, this fact is my ability to conceive and bear children. This is my great blessing and my deepest hardship, a reality wherein lies my power and my inadequacy.
The great calling, this mandate of "openness to life" -- a phrase used and over-used -- is the story, the mystery of my life, month in and month out, for as long as I shall hold within my body the ability to grow a child. This mystery is one which I do not understand. I do not understand the power, I do not understand the responsibility, I do not understand the cross. But I understand that I am living a Story, a Calling, that is beyond me and my needs or wishes. It is ultimately the story of the building of the Kingdom of God.
This story is about the hopes and dreams and love beyond what you thought you could imagine.
This story is about loving so much and dreading so much.
This story is about awesome, unbelievable responsibility and awful, frightful inability.
This story is about late-night tears, breathless prayers and trying, trying, trying to trust.
This story is about vulnerability to a plan which is not your own.
This story is about the threat and the promise of eternity always before your eyes.
This story is about the greatest moments of a human life being given to you . . . you.
And so, I know there is glory in this story of fertility. But there is also much trial in the eternal weight of all of that very glory.
Whether I am pregnant, whether I am in a postpartum phase, whether I am asking and trying for a new child to join our family, whether I am actively working, praying and participating with God on a plan for my family that involves postponement, this is my life. I am, at all times, not in control (even if I think that I am). I am not in control of my body. As a woman, I have, more than any man ever can, literally given over my very body to the carrying out of the plan of God.
Of God.
Not of me.
The plan of my life, as is shown to me every day of the month, is in the hands of Someone Else.
And every fertile month this story is played out. Every month goes by in terms of another child or not, another soul or not, the next step in the plan of God. The month of a fertile, married, Catholic mother literally is defined by the needs a child -- the one being carried within, nursed without, the one tried for. There can be the need to avoid one, and the needs of the ones that surround her.
And this very fact of my life is one that I find, many days, exhausting and testing. Exhausting of my prayers, my thoughts, my hopes. Testing of my trust, my patience, my stamina. Why, I sometimes ask, why must I be so entrusted with such weighty decisions, such eternal ramifications? Why are there so many months ?
But sometimes I catch my breath in a moment -- when I see a pregnant woman, when my children overwhelm me with their preciousness, when I think of what I will miss so much in later years -- and then I am so grateful for this gift of fertility. Grateful in the way that I could never express in words, but only with my heart.
What did I ever do to deserve this blessed Story to live?
Thank you, my Lord, for letting me be a woman.
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