The View from 99

About a week ago, my darling husband was lamenting the impact pregnancy has on fathers. He summed it up with "Fifteen months. That's positively scandalous!" I stared in disbelief. Surely he jests...

First, the school marm in me wanted to hand him a pencil and paper. "Using two unit multipliers, convert eleven pregnancies to days." But no. He wants to talk in months; fine, we'll talk in months.

"99."

Eleven pregnancies converts to ninety-nine months of my life being pregnant. That's eight years and three months. Your point?  His shocked silence told me I had hit home. "Well, when you put it that way..." And we both had a good laugh.

So, here I am, halfway through my ninety-ninth month of pregnancy. According to the calendar, I'm inside of two weeks of my due date. Of course, we all know that babies are not calendar watchers. So, technically, I could be at zero hour...or I could be looking at four more weeks.

My clothes are getting tight. There is no such thing as the little black maternity dress. I have a little black maternity dress--which looks more like a little black tent. And my large black maternity dress could sleep eight comfortably.

I'm sleeping on the couch now because, unlike my bed, it rises up to meet me. But that doesn't mean I'm comfortable. And getting off the couch in the morning is visually reminiscent of a hippo lumbering out of the water. I'm also longing for tummy time...as in getting to sleep again on my tummy. But as all mothers know, that will be a glory in which I can revel for about forty-eight hours, at which point, my mammalian milk makers will force me to my side. Again. Zheesh.

We still don't have a name, although we're getting closer. And don't think we haven't considered reusing some names. Big Luigi, Little Luigi. Why not? At this point, I get so muddled when talking to my kids anyway that the new rule is that they have to answer if I'm looking at them...even if I am referring to them as Batman.

After various injuries from slips-n-slides, grocery shopping, and base jumping (No. I'm just kidding about the grocery shopping.), which made me sedentary for two long months, I'm finally walking again. Of course, this is the final stretch, where I can't seem to make it to the end of the street without contracting. Tough tooties. I'm walking. And that's that.

I'm tipping the scale this time at ... like I would tell you ... but suffice it to say I'm seeing numbers in my 99th month that I've NEVER seen on a scale before. Svelte is something I was in college. Squishy is a better descriptive now.

Then, of course, there's that little thing called 'childbirth' hanging over my head.
Some of my friends think childbirth doesn't hurt.
I think they're on crack.
I have one friend--who shall remain anonymous--who claims she's had a hangnail hurt worse.
That must have been some freakin' hangnail.

In all seriousness, though...

In the time I've had this one pregnancy, five of my friends have suffered miscarriages. Three of them were in their forties, as am I. One was a due-date buddy and dear friend whose miscarriage was particularly painful. And the fact that I am the last man standing is not lost on me.

Additionally, as I look to the end of this adventure, I am aware that there are things I do not know. We didn't have a sonogram this time around. I don't know why; we just didn't get around to it. I don't know whether this child is a boy or a girl. I don't know where the placenta is. I don't know if this child is healthy or not.  And I'm strangely peaceful about all those little details.

Brett was preaching this past Sunday the opening sermon on Genesis. And he said the most amazing thing. When we read Genesis as an apologetic for our beginning, whether we consider it philosophy or science, we miss the point. Genesis was written to comfort a people immersed in pagan cultures that worshipped creation. Genesis was written to introduce an all-powerful, all-knowing. all-wise Creator who created by the word of His mouth. The creation account was never about creation; it was about the Creator.

On Sunday afternoon, I was talking to my grandma, a perky 91-year-old. She asked how I was doing, and I said, "Grandma, it was a weird week. I washed baby clothes, and I'm ordering college graduation announcements. Isn't that crazy?" And you know what she said?

"And God knew that before the foundation of the world. This has always been His plan for you--from the beginning." I could practically feel her reaching through the phone and patting me reassuringly on the arm. Month 99...and I had never seen that before. But Grandma saw it just as plain as day.

This has never been about me. Not one of these pregnancies, not one of these ninety-nine months. They've all been part of the Creator's plan from before the foundations of the earth. This has never been about the biology of pregnancy and weight gain and sleep and baby development and big clothes that are too small. This has never been about me, the creation; this has always been about the Creator and His story of time and space and redemption and glory.

Ninety-nine months.
Just a pinprick in the story of Eternity.
He is the Author of all of it.
And it's a really, really good Story.