The told story is not the whole story. We tend to grasp onto moments as the whole. In a culture obsessed with tiny tweets and shiny surfaces, it's easier to outrage or comfort ourselves with sound bytes that echo the thoughts between our ears, daily dulling our curiosity. We take the smallest sliver for the encompassing everything. But look closer. Deeper. Longer. What you see or hear or read is never the whole story. We hear this exhortation to empathy often now, in our dealings with loved ones and strangers alike. To remember that so much hides below the surface, that you never know the depths of another's struggles. But every story holds this same mystery. Take one small line from Scripture. Did you ever notice that Mary and Elizabeth spent a whole trimester together? The Visitation was not a mere afternoon or a split second of joy. It lasted three long months. Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home. (Luke 1:56) A single … [Read more...] about the whole story
waiting in womb-time
Pregnant women inhabit time in a whole new way. I'm 20 weeks, we declare. As if we were the child within us. As if we were the time itself. Our relationship to these womb-weeks is totalizing. Time means everything: how much time the baby needs, how much time we have left. But womb time is also unique, unfolding inside chronological time, tucked into the calendars that define our lives. Any attempt to translate the calculation is imperfect: more than 9 months, less than 40 weeks. Every due date is a guess. This time is hidden, humbling, and holy. It shows us how to wait. What does womb time teach us about Advent, a sacred season of waiting? Womb time is dark. We cannot peel back skin to peer inside. Even high-tech glimpses via ultrasound are shadowy and grainy. We see as through a mirror, darkly, until we see face to face. Womb time is vulnerable. Early weeks are shrouded in anxiety, even secret. Later months bring their own tenderness: shifting symptoms, … [Read more...] about waiting in womb-time
another, again, anew
When we were dating, then engaged, then married, I used to catch a glimpse of him and think—God, please send us daughters. Because I had never met a man like him, so strong and gentle all at once, so humble and quietly confident, so genuinely kind and caring. I watched how he treated his mother, his sister, his friends, and me. And I knew—with all the women who suffer father wounds, who never learn that they deserve to be treated with respect by every single man they meet—that we were meant to have daughters. That he would be so good to them. That he would leave such a legacy of love to build them up for a world driven to diminish their worth. Then God gave us a boy. And another. And another. Then we were going to have two girls—two!—but they went home to God as quickly as they were here. And then we had another boy. Now we are having another son. I realized I was wrong about raising daughters. Not that it wouldn’t have been amazing, … [Read more...] about another, again, anew
the wonder of wrong
Remember that manuscript I told you about? The draft of a memoir, the story of our daughters. I wrote tens of thousands of words in the years after they died, words I never shared with a soul. Then I shoved them in a drawer and plowed into another book, two. Anything to hold off on the hardest story I had to tell. I pulled that manuscript out last year. On Instagram I told you how I dusted it off, skimmed through, heart sinking, and thought: ugh. No good. All wrong. I decided I had to let it go, trash it again, start over fresh. So I did. Started clean last spring with a brand new document, brand new folder, brand new ambition, brand new determination. Guess what? Wrong again. Turns out I couldn't read my own words with true eyes. One night in prayer, I told God I was ready to jump in and start this brand-new book—and clear as day, I heard one word. No. No? NO?! What do you mean NO? I was ready for this, I protested. I had a plan for starting anew, … [Read more...] about the wonder of wrong
