Nine months schnine months: some pregnancies last longer

My daughter Juniper was born in July of 2015. She was conceived some time in the fall of 2014. It takes roughly 40 weeks for a human being to fully form in the womb. During those weeks, life is maturing at an amazing rate, yet it is invisible to the human eye. Sure there are visible effects that prove such life is forming: a growing belly, back pain, tiredness, insomnia, vomiting, etc. But the life is invisible (without technology) until it is actually birthed.

Sometime around the fall of 2014, I began really focusing on writing this book, A Smoldering Wick. About 40 weeks later, I signed with a publisher. I am almost 80 weeks from conception. Visible effects of this life have been evident throughout the process: sleeplessness, head pain, having to audibly tell my brain to turn off, frustrations of not getting the time I need to focus, frustrations of things not going as quickly as I wanted: growing pains of editing, rewriting, consuming precious time, etc.

I knew I could not sign with a publisher until my daughter was born. I did not know it would take another pregnancy round before this got off the ground. But pregnancy is the knowledge of inner growth that brings hope otherwise deferred. Paul Miller says that when he went to write his book about the person of Jesus, God "didn't want the outer life to look bigger than the inner. He didn't want a split self." During the second 9 months of this book, God has been doing just that with me. He's been working hard on the inner self, the inner life, the inner growth. And to be honest, it's been no bed of roses, no preggo glow, no sweet surrender. It's been more like the last few weeks of pregnancy for almost 40 weeks ... the constant frustration that what is to come has not yet come. And that's all on me. The concept of glory has beat me in the head over and over again: Glory is not in my circumstances, but in my reactions to them. Every human being is dealt good and bad hands. Ecclesiastes says this: "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all." So when we don't win the race or the battle or give birth on our estimated due date (ooh the waiting!), it is our reactions to these sucky circumstances that either point to our tight relationship with our Good Father or the point to the fact that we are sorely out of practice trusting in his goodness.

During this book's double pregnancy, life has been a roller coaster. I've had some serious downs, including major financial struggles and some tragic circumstances in friends' lives that I just DO NOT understand. There have also been some serious ups including becoming an aunt (!) after silent years of two sets of siblings struggling to become pregnant. Turns out their pregnancies (at least this time around) are not physical but emotional (and longer than 9 months) and they are now in the process of adopting. 

So this morning I raise my coffee mug to those who have learned to be pregnant longer than they expected, and that what to expect when expecting changes over and over again as their inner {humbling and uncomfortable} growth produces full-formed, powerful life.

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