Turns out 9 months is a long time!But then I suppose when you consider the complexities of creating new life, of developing a perfectly formed miniature human being with the potential to grow into a full size adult complete with an entirely unique DNA structure and an individual personality to boot.......it's really not that long after all.
In fact.....it all happens in a ridiculously short period of time for something so spectacular and magnificent. It takes two years to do your GCSE's for goodness sake..... but knock up a new human being.....'let me see.....I think I can have that ready for you in about.....hmmmm.... 9 months!!' What has been particularly surprising to me me about the whole enterprise is not only that it all happens so quickly but that there is so little to do. You'd think it would take more effort on our part to produce this new life. But apart from the obvious initiation procedures- we don't need to do anything.....it just happens. Sure we busy ourselves with obligations regarding food and vitamins and activities, visiting the doctor and doing the appropriate reading but these things are all superfluous......they make us feel better, we like to feel like we are doing our part.
At the very least I was hoping I would be required to eat more (I mean- you'd think with all that extra activity going on there'd be a few calories free to blow on chocolate and ice cream) but apparently nada - I don't get to eat for two-.......my body is so efficient it can create new life with the usual 2000 calories a day. Not only that, it somehow manages to save a few of those precious calories and deposit them on my hips in case I need them afterwards.
Nine months FEELS like a long time though......... like I've been pregnant forever! Simple pleasures like flopping face first on the bed seem like distant childhood memories. I've always gotten a little jealous of the athletes when I'm watching Wimbledon, but this year it was magnified tenfold as I struggled to even sit comfortably in a giant plushy armchair dreaming of running and leaping and diving on the grass......oh how I long to leap!!!! Not to mention the suspense of meeting my very own child- a baby created from me and Lindon- growing all this time inside me, wriggling around and kicking me in the ribs. Here with us- but not yet fully here with us!
It is now less than 2 weeks until my official due date and we are very excited if a little nervous. But mostly I just can't really comprehend it. Apparently in around about 2 weeks time the baby that I've been struggling to imagine is responsible for all the craziness that is happening on the inside of my body is going to join us on the outside. And our lives will never be the same!There is so much wonder and confusion and excitement and unknown in this world that we take for granted. Because it happens everyday we just accept it. Of course babies are created supernaturally inside you over the course of 9 months and are then born, a part of you and yet their own person. Of course you feel indescribable unconditional love for these children. Of course when you sow a seed a plant will grow. Of course the sun will come up and the seasons will change. I can tell you the facts behind all these facts. Having read my weekly updates throughout my pregnancy I have been kept informed of exactly what was happening when and why. But it doesn't explain the wonder of it all, the 'why?' behind it all. And I still can't truly comprehend what is happening to me.
You'd think in a world as wonderful and incomprehensible as ours we would find it easy to accept a wonderful and incomprehensible God. And yet we let the things we don't know cloud the things we do. We take a huge risk when we decide to have children. We cannot know how it will turn out. We cannot control or understand everything that will happen but we somehow know it will be worth the risk. It will be worth all the hard times and the questions and the risks and the faith, for the wonder and joy of it all. God is not about facts and laws and rigid results and theologies, He is wonder and faith and incomprehension. But as I continue on my journey through life I have always found Him to be worth the risk.
So.....two more weeks (ish)....... if the last two have been anything to go by I think they're going to be the longest two weeks ever....... followed (so I'm led to believe) by years of increasing acceleration as my child grows up quicker than I could possibly imagine!!
