The Husband and I dutifully set our DVR a few weeks ago to record Up All Night, as it chronicles the life and misadventures of a couple with a newborn–in other words, us in a few months. The show’s advent couldn’t be a better example of perfect timing: if the material scares/scars us, it’s too late for us to back out of having kids; on the other hand, we have some time to be educated by what we watch before our own bundle of joy and vomit arrives. This week featured the baby’s birth, along with the mom’s insistence on her eighteen-page birthing plan because it was the only thing allowing her to hold it together. Girl, I hear you.

Up until now, I approached all of life with that fervor. Now, though, I am conspicuously absent one birth plan. I’ve been taught a few things about my plan; namely, that it’s cute and all, but not likely to happen. My script entitled How The Universe Should Operate would be taken by a lesser god and treated the way most OBs/Labor and Delivery Nurses probably treat eighteen-page birthing plans: as toilet paper. But my God shook His head lovingly, pried the script from my hands, and orchestrated a different outcome. And that outcome has shown me that He knows what He’s doing, so I can just drop the pen and relax.

Yesterday morning, I sat in my car on a bridge waiting for a light to let me onto GA 400 and mused, “Hmm. What if this bridge falls apart right now?” These are the scenarios that cross my mind now that I have so much to lose (although let’s be honest, they crossed my mind even when I was single; I’ve always entertained an overblown view of how much I contribute to the universe). Plane flights and car rides are scarier these days as my heart becomes more inextricably tied to the well-being of my growing family. Yesterday I realized that all of life is a bridge, I’ve just convinced myself along the way that I was on solid ground, holding things together on my own. Nope. I’ve been held, the bridge kept from collapse by hands other than my own, by plans written with another’s pen.

A few hours after my bridge moment, TH and I went for a routine ultrasound. The ultrasound tech pointed out The Kid, folded up like a suitcase with his feet next to his smiling face. Then she checked out some other stuff and stopped talking so much. A few minutes later, I was hooked up a monitor that looked like a lie detector with a little needle tracking contractions. As we approach week 30, things are thinning out and getting dicey, and we need to keep TK in there cooking as long as possible. The nurse came over to read the results, saying, “Yep. You’ve got some uterine activity going on,” she said, as I wondered what the hell that meant: so my uterus isn’t living a sedentary lifestyle? That’s good, right?

Apparently not.

Instructions were given; one-week follow-up appointments made. TH tapped away on his Blackberry, rearranging meetings, and my concerns veered more toward whether this extended appointment meant we wouldn’t have time for our ritual post-ultrasound trip to Dunkin’ Donuts. Tell that to ten-years-ago me, who would have been crying and demanding her headband and eighteen pages. “But I have a birth plan!” I would have screamed, waving it in the nurse’s face. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you people?” Now, though? I’ve switched allegiances. In the battle between Holding Things Together Myself and Letting Go and Being Held–and we all belong to one team–I’m actively choosing the latter. I’ve scrapped plans for prayers. The biggest rescue of my life looked, at the time, like a massive amount of falling apart; I know now not to judge a situation by what shows up on the monitor. Faith is what loosens my grip (literally, right now: pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel has left my fingertips numb and rendered me incapable of gripping anything) and frees me to cross bridges and watch needles without fear. Someone else has got this. Someone else always has. I can now pack (eighteen pages) lighter.