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