This might tell you everything you need to know: I took a pregnancy test because I was sure I wasn’t knocked up, but not 100% sure, and I didn’t want to needlessly skip my nightly glass of red for any length of time as I waited to find out if I was just late or with child. So TH and I hopped into the car and headed to CVS, where I scoured the pregnancy aisle as he hit the Kitsch aisle and hid a garden gnome under his arm. We were laughing. (Well, I was until I saw the gnome.) We were not expecting two pink lines.

We got two pink lines. The next day, I bought a digital test (there was still an open bottle of red on the counter, and I had to be sure I shouldn’t drink it.) Pregnant popped up in the window. I called TH, then I called the OB. Then I sat down.

Don’t get me wrong here–we were excited. Just a little shocked at how fertile our mid-thirties selves were, in particular my eggs, which I had imagined belonging in the Clearance section of the dairy department. My glass-half-empty tendencies had left me envisioning months of waiting, ribbons of red in the toilet, single pink lines and questions of whether it was meant to be. All the brokenness I’ve seen around me, and this time I remained unscathed. I began to feel my credibility as a confidant for the hurting dwindle. A rainbow-filled wedding, a husband I love, and a baby, months later? Was I becoming one of those people who, sickeningly, Has It All? I could hardly bear the thought–I’ve always hated those people. I prided myself on remaining defiantly outside their ranks. I was running out of things to complain about.

Then the nausea hit, and the exhaustion, and the hormonal surges that left me writing elaborate death threats in my head to everyone from the guy who cut me off in traffic to TH, who continued to drink his beer while I stood feet away, glaring. You assholes NEVER told me about this, I imagined saying to every pregnant person I had ever known except The Sis, who had told me point-blank that all that stuff about pregnancy being magical is a load of crap unless you like puking, getting fat, farting nonstop, waking up six times a night to pee, and falling asleep at the wheel. Still, I was shocked at the physical toll of whipping up a new life, and then the emotional: it was too early to tell anyone, and I felt very alone. And not at all like I had a cute little baby inside my belly–more like a parasite I had picked up in the jungles of Mexico. Add to that the ever-present fear that the whole endeavor could go south at any moment–I was especially worried about sneezing too hard–and I was, generally, a mess.

It didn’t feel real, but it was. Is. More so every day. And the growing reality has a way of distilling the rest of life into What Matters and What So Does Not. Turns out this is a lesson I sorely needed, and always will. Because what a gift it is for all the world’s, and people’s (mine included) crap to fall away into the ether as TH and I focus on the new family we’re becoming, as I consider yet again how grace has surprised me into the next stage of life, which looked different from what I imagined (shocker) and is full of details I attempt to assign to Good (all the ice cream I want) and Bad (no more hot baths) categories while that same grace weaves it all into beauty. Like when I hesitantly emailed my news to a friend who, despite the fact that she would be an incredible mother, is having the hardest time becoming one. “I’m so happy for you,” she wrote back. “You have no idea how much I needed that good news right now.” Once again, and far from it being the last time, I am humbled by the power love has to surpass the negative and show me the kind of person–now, parent–I want to be.