A Reminder: We Are All Precious In His Sight

Two years ago this week, I got pregnant with L. When I found out five weeks later, it was this huge surprise we weren’t prepared for. We’d gotten married in August, went on our honeymoon to Kenya in September, and were really just beginning to settle into a marriage routine. We were looking at a busy year of E applying to graduate school and, provided he was accepted, moving halfway across the country. We thought we knew what was coming. God had other plans.

I always thought pregnancy would be a beautiful, magical thing, filled with wonder. And it was, but not every moment. It was hard, too – physically draining and uncomfortable. For me, it also involved a lot of fear.

Nothing can truly prepare you for growing a human being inside your body, I don’t think. Oh, I had naively planned to be prepared. I intended to buy a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and read it from cover to cover before E and I even began to start a family (I never finished that book, by the way, because it seemed to me to be a manifesto on everything that can go wrong; I recommend The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy instead). It took me a few weeks to really get my mind wrapped around the idea that there was a baby in there.

It also took me some time to realize that deep in the back of my mind, I harbored fears and negative expectations based on my age and medical history, and I needed to overcome them. I spent a lot of time reminding myself that God is a good God who loves us. Not just the collective “us,” but me, E, and our daughter, specifically.

I was and am surrounded by women who have experienced the loss and heartache side of motherhood: miscarriages, stillbirths, babies with genetic and medical challenges. Others struggle with infertility and the heartache of childlessness. When I became pregnant, all of this impacted me deeply.

I found out I was expecting when I was about five weeks along, and I spent the next seven weeks waiting for a miscarriage. I braced myself every day for the loss of my baby. I had a lot of miscarriage dreams, and any time I went to the bathroom, I pulled down my pants with some level of expectation that I would see blood on them. I can rationalize it to some extent – at 38, I’ve had a lot of friends experience miscarriages, and I knew that one out of every three pregnancies ends in miscarriage early on. But the real issue was that deep inside, I initially struggled to believe that I could even become – or stay – pregnant. It sounds crazy, I know, and maybe it was all those out-of-control hormones raging freely in my body, but it was very real at the time.

Early on, E and I agreed not to have any genetic testing done during the pregnancy. We knew that we would never abort a baby, regardless of the challenges we might face raising a child with a birth defect or chromosomal disorder. Still, in the back of my mind I kept asking, “How would I ever be able to handle something like that?” It’s humbling to look back and see how paralyzing that was, because I’m generally a strong person who takes crises and challenges in stride. I couldn’t even express my fears to E.

During those early months, I prayed daily for my baby, but my prayers were fearful ones. God was gentle, though, and I felt his comforting presence. Each time I prayed, I heard him say, “She will be whole.” I knew instinctively that the definition of “whole” was God’s definition and not an earthly one, and that no matter what might happen, my daughter would be whole by heavenly standards.

On the way to work one morning in early spring, I was sitting at an intersection near my home that was surrounded by farmers’ fields on all four sides. The sky was that deep, serene blue that comes only just after sunrise, and the air was so clear it made even the leaves on the trees stand out in sharp relief. The sun was just breaking over the trees, turning the fields of fallen cornstalks to glittering gold.

Psalm 139 came into my mind in that moment, and as I whispered the words to the morning air, right then and there, I experienced a renewed certainty that God had a plan for my baby. He had knit her together, created her inmost being. He already knew her and loved her more deeply and completely than I could. It was one of the most comforting, peace-giving moments of my whole pregnancy.

Now, as I watch my girl growing and changing by the day, exploring her little world and figuring out who she is alongside so many other precious children – a cousin with Noonan Syndrome who radiates joy and laughter; a friend’s daughter whose growth in the womb was restricted, causing her to be taken early by C-section and therefore to start life already “behind,” but who is racing to catch up and thrilling her parents with her zest for life; another friend’s son who is overcoming torticollis  –  all of whom are “whole” and loved and perfect in God’s eyes, I am continually reminded of that morning at the intersection with the morning sun breaking over the golden fields. I am reminded again that God is a good God who loves each one of us, a God who has plans for us, because we are all of us infinitely precious in his sight.