when I learn something about expectations

We are getting so close to Jackson's birth it seems like I should be able to picture it all. I close my eyes on the couch, thinking - okay, we will go to the hospital. I'll be in pain. There will be doctors, questions about medication, about how-far-apart-are-the-contractions... I can't picture any of this. I sit on my bed and I feel him sliding around, and I am overcome by how much I want to be able to picture it. How I want to see it happening and unfolding before me - how much I want to picture my son.But that's the thing. I can't.I have closed my eyes, input all the information from doctors, from thousands of images, from the many appointments we never expected to have. I try to imagine holding this little guy, watching the NICU people love on him, as I know they will if they need to. I ask God for an image - just a glimpse, Lord? - and my mind is empty.--There are days and hours when I sift through the laundry or look at our statue of St. Francis or a spare pair of shoes lying somewhere they don't belong (because I leave my shoes everywhere), and I am surprised at how God has broken open my ideas about being pregnant. How this was the summer of walking around the broken glass.I had ideas about baby name books, about weekly self-portraits at the bathroom mirror. I had ideas about what growing another person would feel like, about the smiles from strangers and the pride of the hard work that it is to carry another heart around, and not only another heart, but another everything - kidneys and lungs built up from the cells, from the smallness. I was so proud at the beginning, so sure it would be everything I expected or better. I built a lot up on that idea that it would be better - I would look better than I imagined, my child would be the paragon of timely growth and expected physical and mental appearances, I would have the most stamina, I would be one of those moms who never gets tired, never has a hard time doing anything, merely carries her baby along on the inside until it emerges, and everything afterwards is picture-worthy, caption-worthy, other-approval-worthy. I had ideas from the pictures, the blog posts, the stories, from Facebook, from my own head.--And then, there was the 18 week appointment, the announcement that it was a boy, the first time we really saw his fierce being, his beautiful, alive, kicking self. And there, coming along behind him was a diagnosis, a list of names and symptoms, a list of coordinating appointments, new doctors, a new hospital.And my expectations died.--With all death there is grief, there is an ache to return to what you were holding onto before it was pried out of your fingers. With all death, even the death of those things that weren't real (those expectations and ideas, those pictures in my head) that is needed, there is a longing, a wish, a sadness or a patience or both. Some moments I lie in bed thinking, what has happened to us? I feel him move so often, I wish I could tell you. He is shy around other people - he moves for me, for his dad, sometimes for a patient grandparent. But he saves most of it, I think, for him and me, for the quiet of the sleepless nights.He is the life that arrived when my expectations died.He is the better that was standing on the other side of the broken glass.--I do not know what Jacks will look like. I'm not in denial about the words, the list and doctors and symptoms, the thin picture they might try to paint.And I do still put my hand over this boy and I ask God to do something that I would not believe even if I was told. I tell God to remember His promises. I ask, and ask, and ask, for a miracle.Every day since we learned about these things that will follow Jack into the world, every day since, I have asked.Perhaps the real reason that I can't picture what it will be like to have this baby doesn't have anything to do with Jack's cleft, with the mystery surrounding the right side of his face. Maybe the real reason is that Jesus is protecting us from the expectations, rescuing us both from the weight of my attempts to know too much, to see too far ahead.Jesus is saving better for us.And from the other side of the expectations, Jesus walks towards us, arms open. From the other side of Mary's expectation of a body in a tomb, Jesus names her. From the other side of the crowd's expectations that Lazarus and Jairus's daughter can never rise from the dead, Jesus wakes them. From the other side of our expectations that we will drown in a storm we cannot control, Jesus silences the water, the wind.I can't picture what will happen in a few weeks.I am, for the first time in my life, sure that means it is something better than I could imagine.Love,hilary

this is what I'm waiting for.

Dear Jackson,Your godmother asks what I'm looking forward to about you. She asked as she was holding your soon-to-be friend, her sweet daughter. I was staring, lost for words, worrying, making those lists in my head with big words like NICU and surgery and MRI and cranio-facial team - all those words that if I am honest, just mean the people and the tools that are in place to help you and me and Dad as we begin our life together. They're just words for the friends and things that Jesus is bringing with Him in this wonderful season of your arrival.But I was running short on words, a little scared, and right then, you kicked me. You have such a personality, little man. Mom, I'm here. I'm okay. Every day when I start to worry, and I stop and put my hand over you, you kick back. Mom, I'm here. I'm okay. We have read a lot of the stories of Jesus' healing power these last few months. You know about Jairus's daughter and about the son who Jesus raised from the dead. You know about the woman who reached out in the crowd, just to touch the hem of his robe, and she was healed. And all those crowds, after Jesus walked on water, who just touched him, and were healed.But one of my very favorite stories to tell you is the one about Zacchaeus. Remember him? He was so curious about Jesus - like most of us are - that he climbed up a tree to get a better look. The Bible says Zacchaeus was a tax collector and very rich. This tells us that Zacchaeus was probably not a very just man, who was unfair to others in the city, who did not treat them well. He doesn't really seem like someone that Jesus would hang out with.But Jesus sees him and comes to the tree where he is sitting. And guess what, Jack? Jesus says, "Zacchaeus, hurry and climb down, for I must stay at your house today." What do you think about that? He sees Zacchaeus, hiding up in the tree and he tells him to hurry, climb down, because I'm coming to your house. Jesus isn't just able to see where Zacchaeus is hiding, but Jesus wants to be with him. Jesus is going to stay at his house.Zacchaeus is so overwhelmed and excited that he scampers down the tree and is happy to welcome Jesus. And he says to Jesus that he will make right the things he had done wrong - he will pay back people he had treated unfairly. He will give half of everything he owns to the poor. And Jesus tells everyone there, "Today, salvation has come to this house... For the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost."There is so much I want to tell you about this story. But right now what matters, Jack, is that sometimes I have been a little like Zacchaeus hiding in the tree. I have been scared to come down from my worrying to welcome you because I have been so scared that I won't be able to be the mom that you need me to be. I have been scared that maybe I won't be good at this or ready, that I will do things wrong.But then I see Jesus standing at the foot of that tree holding you, and Jesus tells me to hurry, climb down, because you two are coming to stay at my house. You are coming to be with me. And when I hear that, and I see you and Jesus standing there, I climb down and realize that I am so happy. I am so excited for you, just like Zacchaeus was so excited about Jesus.Jack, my little man so fully alive:I can't wait to hold you. To sit with you and reading you the books our friends have been sending you - Ping and James Herriott's Treasury and The Going to Bed Book and The Mitten. To sing and dance around the kitchen for so many years that even when you're 22 and you come home after college and you think I'm ridiculous, you'll still join in.To put you in the wrap or the carrier or the stroller or the whatever-baby-gadget-we-get and showing you the world. I'll show you the leaves and their greenness, the water and the ducks that swim along the Brazos in spring. I'll show you the big sky on our drive down 7. I'll show you the cows, the wild orange and blue and purple flowers in April. I'll show you the lilacs in Boston outside Grammy and Granddad's house.To introduce you to your aunt and uncles and cousins - they'll show you the paddling pool and how to toss a football back and forth and probably how to get into mischief, too. I hope they teach you that.To hold you. I already said that. But I'm so excited for that. Just to hold you.Hurry, climb down, for I am coming to stay with you today. Jesus is bringing you with Him, Jack. He is bringing you to me and Dad. I can't believe that we get to hold you, laugh with you, rock you to sleep, teach you about leaves and ducks and cows and the good things Jesus made.I'm not hiding in the tree anymore. You and Jesus, you are waiting for me. You make me too happy, too overjoyed, too excited, not to scamper down.Love,mom

when this is the seventh month of gratitude

I promised a long while ago that I would keep up this accounting of gratitude for marriage, for the spin of our ordinary days, for the way you learn to move, two by two, day by day, in the quiet and the loud and the in between. I promised myself, maybe in some way I promised this blog, this space I keep carving in, bit by bit, marking where I am and where God is.We've been married almost eight months.When I say that it sounds long and short. It sounds like newlyweds and it feels like we've been married forever, we've always been here, always been rounding another bend of time. I forget to be faithful with the laundry. I get mad at myself which makes me avoid it even more, til there are two laundry baskets and a hamper full of things quietly asking for my attention, for my simple act of caring for the space we share and the work we take on, two by two. And it's so gentle, this forgetfulness, that it makes me so angry I'll pick a fight over something completely unrelated because I have this idea of what kind of person I should be in a marriage, what kind of house I should keep, what kinds of things I should do and say and feel and think...I get mad about the laundry. That's the truth in this seventh month, and the gratitude is as simple as that: he waits for me.He waits for me through the rage portion, the avoiding eye contact and getting eerily quiet portion. He waits for me to lose my temper and then go silently inside myself to find it again. He waits even when his hands are full of dishes. When we have only 10 minutes to get somewhere and we are already behind. He waits.And in waiting, he keeps his heart open to me. He waits for me to find the words, to find the thread, to walk my way back from the edge of cliff or from the confusion or the silence.Marriage is the fullest kind of mirror. It shows the ways that you're loved right in the midst of showing you all the things you really do and say and think. It reveals and it redeems. Marriage calls you out of your secret, silent heart and into that hallowed space where your belonging sings in your bones. In this, the seventh month, where I know I've gotten mad about laundry or sad about not going on a walk every day or worried about absolutely everything for no good reason... in this seventh month I can list for you all of those things, but what I know most deeply is just this:The love of my life will stay at the sink with the dishes undone or sit in the car when we're already late or hold me in our living room with all that unfolded laundry, and all the while, he is teaching me that love is patient.I'm grateful for this: that the love of my life waits for me, especially now that we're always around each other, always nearby, always close. He still waits. And that waiting is a great gift.Love,hilary

for when it isn't time yet

I've been thinking about those big dreams we have. Sometimes people call them "the God-sized dreams." Sometimes we call them wild. Sometimes we call them brave or reckless or even the dumbest thing we've ever thought. At some point, I'm guessing you've heard yours call out to you, and you've said all these things and more about it.But the moment that we have this dream, even while we resist it and we run away from it? We also start to expect it to arrive. Immediately.We want progress towards the goal, we want to start running, we want to see the fruits of this big dream we can hardly dare to dream, and all right away.When we move across the country or the world, when we start the new program or job, when we give up the things that were familiar and safe because we have this dream of becoming something really unexpected and delightful, we unload our bags and think, "Where are you, dream?"Where is the fullness? Where is the business I've successfully started, the website with 3,000 views a day, the advanced degree with a specialization in metabolomics? Where is the person I've come to become? I've asked this almost every day since I graduated and set off to chase a big dream of writing, a dream of higher education, a dream of wild love. I drive along the same roads piled with melting snow and look at the same sunrise spilling through the black fingers of the trees, and I want to know, Why haven't I gotten my big dream yet? Do you think the answer might be, it isn't quite time?We weren't ever promised that we would receive in full what we envision at first. We weren't ever told that the dream would be anything but a hard, unknown, journey through the deep dark woods and bright fires and sunrises and years.Rumi says, "When I am silent, there is thunder hidden within me."Just because the dream you dream hasn't come true yet, doesn't mean it doesn't live and roar inside you. Just because you must walk through the many years of not knowing how it will come true doesn't mean that you were wrong about it.It just means that now is the time for your silence. It just means that now is the time for the thunder to be hidden within you.Maybe you see people around you who are thundering their dream to the world. Maybe they have the pageviews, the degree, the family, the words, the settledness you crave and envy. Maybe you wonder if that is ever going to be you.You, too, have thunder hidden within you.You, too, have a big dream that is worth a thousand years of walking without knowing where.You, too, with your suitcases and uncertainty, with your waiting and your silence, are in pursuit of a bold, wild kind of dream. Now is the time for silence as you take shape. Now is the time for listening to your roommates and friends and parents.  Now is the time to make midnight grocery store runs or watching a full season of The West Wing. Now is the time to pray in your car and slam the brakes for a turtle crossing the road.And when your thunderous dream bursts forth, and you step into the midst of it, it will roar all the brighter.Love,hilary

some mornings you wake up wondering

beep. beep, beep, BEEEEEEEEEP. I jolt upright, panting. My fingers sleepwalk towards my cell phone, sliding it silent again. I look around. I've kicked my comforter into a heap at the foot of the bed, scattered pillows across the floor in my dreaming. I feel my arms, goosebumped and cold.I know the dog is downstairs, waiting for my father to feed him. I can hear my mother in the next room clinking hangers together as she decides what to wear for the morning. I know my brother is sprawled on the old couch under our one air conditioner, and the other brother (the red truck driving brother) is eating a bowl of cereal before his work day begins.Everything is in its place, all the people, all the animals, even the flowers that bend their petals towards the sun that hasn't quite finished rising. And then there is me: sitting in a pile of leaf-printed sheets, hair in a messy red-blond halo, wearing a T-shirt from my days in an elementary school play and an old pair of soccer shorts, and my heart is spinning.What if I have been wrong this whole time, Jesus? What if when I thought you said, "This is important," you didn't mean what I thought you meant? What if you meant for me to move to DC, to move to teaching, to move to France? What if you wanted me to go to grad school after all, and if I was there instead of here I wouldn't face this heart-and-gut-wrenching situation, this worry, this falling and failing? I dreamed I had gotten it wrong, I realize cup my chin in my hands and draw my knees up towards my chest. I dreamed he had wanted something else from me, something brighter and braver.I hear the water running for toothbrushes. I hear the coffee gurgle and drip, and somewhere in the ordinary morning below these three hundred year old floorboards, the world is moving.I swing my legs over the bed, trip over a stray book, and fall to my knees. This isn't funny, Jesus! I'm already late! I roll my eyes, but then I close them.

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;²     Lord, hear my voice.Let your ears be attentiveto my cry for mercy.

³ If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,Lord, who could stand?⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,and in his word I put my hope.⁶ I wait for the Lordmore than watchmen wait for the morning,more than watchmen wait for the morning.

⁷ Israel, put your hope in the Lord,for with the Lord is unfailing loveand with him is full redemption.⁸ He himself will redeem Israelfrom all their sins.

Today, I will wait. More than watchmen for the morning. The coffee will be almost gone if I don't hurry - and I race through the rest of the room, gathering shoes and glasses, putting an earring in while I try to brush my hair. Even here, though? More than watchmen for the morning. Love,hilary