I used to make sandwiches in my mind when I needed to change the subject.  If I was going down a path a fear, “Will Thom make it home tonight?  Maybe he died”, “Will Oliver live?”, “Is there a bad man out there about to rob us?”.  When my mind would begin to run, I’d start making a huge sandwich.  What kind of bread do I want?  Hmmm, cheese on that?  Let’s talk about every veggie possible.  Some people play baseball in their heads or start naming people in alphabetical order.  I made sandwiches.  And it really has worked.

I had to make sandwiches a lot in Oliver’s pregnancy.  My mind was wild and slamming all over the place.  My questions for God were angry and rampant at times.  The out of control feeling felt out of control.  Sandwiches would bring me back to reality, to a place where God actually was.  My mind is a system of Godless wormholes just waiting to suck me in, isolate me and slickly ask “Is God really here?”.  There was a need to break the cycle.  There was a need for sandwiches.

And here I am today.  Carrying a baby boy with the same cysts his brother had, the same fears, the same pain.  Yet, I’m not making sandwiches anymore.  I’m confessing.  The Lord has graciously grown a new reflex for me.  My mind drifts; I daydream the fear-filled and suddenly I’m confessing.  Confessing to the Lord that I have just gone to a place that He does not exist.  Confessing I think I could do a better job at being God.  Confessing I do not really believe He wants good for us.  Confessing there is another way than through the God of the universe.

As quickly as I am in that place of fear, in talking with my creator, I am back.  Back to weeping with Him instead isolated from Him.

I am 25 weeks preggo with Atticus and I feel like I’ve fully arrived at the pain.  It’s me with Attie doing that run/walk thing towards an ultrasound, a diagnosis, his birth.  And I want to be at all of those places.  But the thought of being on any of those days rips me open.  Every single time I think about it.  I’m crying more often.  I’m scared.  But I’m also stunned.  Stunned at the Lord’s mercy in this walk.  This walk, this place, is not a mistake.  There is no reworking, no need for reworking, of His perfect plan.  That is enough for me today.  What mercy for that to be enough.

So at about 9 weeks away from learning more about Atticus, and with crying that has turned to weeping and with pain that comes out in deep groans, I never want a moment’s deviation from looking to my Lord.  No messing around here, no sandwich making, please.  God is good today.  He will be good in 9 weeks.  He will be good because He never leaves His children.  He is patient in all my sandwich-making ways.  Praise Him for offering so much more.

 

Atticus, Pregnancy

January 13, 2011

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