Unclasping Our Hands

They can feel the baby’s head.  It’s nice and low, they say.  There’s no going back now.  They tell me my body is getting ready.  Things are opening up, thinning out, progressing nicely.  I remind them not to predict when they’ll see me at the hospital.  I remind them that I walked around for a good three weeks with Charlie all ready to go, but he decided to circle the runway, take his sweet time, look both ways before crossing the street.  When he did decide to show up, he was confident and sure, barely gave me time to take off my coat before he appeared slimy and secure with these big hands that made the nurses gasp—Wow!

The midwife says they can induce me after 39 weeks if things are progressing and I’m feeling uncomfortable.  “No,” I say quickly, “I don’t want that.”  And I don’t.

Many of my friends know when their babies will arrive.  As a matter of necessity or convenience, they have scheduled inductions or C-sections.  That’s fine and as it should be…for them and their individual situations.  But as restless and uneasy as I feel, and as uncomfortable as I will get, I’d rather not know.

Last week I had some sudden dull back pain.  I sat, aching on the couch, remembering this feeling with Charlie, this false alarm that things were starting.  Yesterday he was so active, I felt that for sure his head might pop out while I was dishing up the spaghetti.  And last night, I had a runner’s cramp in my lower abdomen while I lay awake wondering, “Is this it?  Are you coming?”

I am feeling bored in my body--sick of being a lump on the couch, unable to run in the yard with my boys, unable to hoist myself out of the pool, unable to make it to noon without needing a nap.

But at the same time, I’m excited by the page-turner that life is here in August 2014.  I’m thrilled that at any moment my body could start doing funny, strange things—spilling water, cramping up, creating urgency, creating life.  I don’t want to skip ahead.  I like the foreshadowing, the chance for prediction, the opportunity to be right or wrong.  Someone else is in charge of this narrative.  I have to think about what’s for dinner tonight, but I like living in the possibility that I might not be there to make it.

And it doesn’t escape me that while I’m talking about life, I could just as easily be talking about death.  It doesn’t escape me that friends and acquaintances who are living with terminal cancer or illness could be feeling the same things with less enthusiasm—sick of being a lump on the couch, unable to run in the yard with their kids, unable to make it to noon without needing a nap, someone else in charge of their narrative, planning a life they might not be there to see.

And this is where faith lives.  An atheist friend said recently, “I just don’t understand when people say they need to pray about it.  I don’t get it.”

It’s a big question.  I wasn’t sure how to answer.  But I think the answer is here.  Although we clasp our hands tightly in prayer, it is actually an opening up, palms to the sky, a release. 

Writing the story, planning the days, creating the life can be fun, exhilarating.  We feel good about the productivity of it all, the routine, the certainty we feel we can create if we lay out the plan just right.  We like to have a spot for the scissors; we like to know where things are kept.  We like to view the hourly forecast, so we know just when to mow the lawn or when to plan a day at home.  We get shaken when the baby wakes up with a fever because the playdate is on the calendar, the babysitter is all lined up for our night out.  It’s written out in front of us—the plan, the expectation, the certainty of what is to come.

But prayer is an unclasping of the hands, a closing of the calendar, and an opening of the heart and mind.  It’s the fear of the unknown transformed into the thrill of the ride, the trust that despite the discomfort, the suffering, the restlessness, there is something marvelous waiting on the other side, something beyond our own imagination, something written in ink that could never come from our pen alone.

Because even when there’s a 90% chance of rain, there’s still a 10% chance for something else.  And as long as there’s that 10%, there’s always an opportunity to fall to our knees, open our hands and pray that Someone Else knows exactly what He’s doing on the next page.