I am a runner. I often have to repeat this sentence to myself as a mantra multiple times before I believe it, even after a couple of half-marathons, over a decade of pounding the pavement, and thousands of miles covered. But I do run regularly; at least I did until the pee caused two lines to appear on the stick. The first run I attempted after getting the news was…awkward. I imagined the tiny baby shooting around like a pinball inside me as my feet hit concrete and I wondered if it could fall out (I may have majored in biology, but objective knowledge is lost on me at times like these). In between gagging episodes, I kept trying to run, succeeding at short spurts but tiring easily. Last week, with an overblown blood volume, expanding waistline, and changing center of gravity, I attempted one of those short spurts and knew, like a spectator at the finale of a Fourth of July fireworks show, that such a display would likely not be repeated this year.

Apparently that center of gravity thing is a big deal, though I was never aware of it before now, and it shifts upward as pregnancy progresses. Which means that in addition to feeling overweight and over-gassed, the pregnant lady is more likely to get dizzy and stumble around (heretofore a state caused by too many glasses of red). And this stumbling is compounded by the release of chemicals that loosen the joints to accommodate the expanding frame.

Some call it magical. I call it weird as hell.

As I’m adapting (uncooperatively) with this invasion of my body, and as life is changing around me–unemployment, color swatches, day care tours–I am clinging to the centers of gravity in my life that don’t change, the home bases that I can return to and collapse upon in relief. The solid rocks. And I can’t imagine what my existence would resemble if these only consisted of what the world provides, what I can see with my eyes, what I can control.

Were it not for grace, my home base would likely be anger. Consistent outrage at injustices as I perceive them: inconsiderate behavior, emotional manipulation, high taxes, bad drivers. (It takes much less than war and natural disasters to get me all self-righteously, fist-shakingly boiling.) And if my resources ended at the self-help section of Barnes & Noble, I would eventually collapse in the fetal position next to a copy of The Secret in a fit of despair. I am not enough. And neither is anyone else. And I’m thankful to have learned that lesson prior to pushing this baby out and placing all my expectations on him. Or his dad.

I need someone outside myself and my community of better-than-I-but-still-imperfect people to go to, to know as ultimate refuge and justice and purpose. I need someone for whom my job loss or parental ineptitude is no surprise, who already had those pieces of thread woven into a larger vision that I cannot see yet. Without that, there would never be meaning or hope to anything beyond what I or the world ascribe: good. bad. positive. negative.

There has to be more. There has to be home, and a center that doesn’t shift. I’m counting on it.