I like to take stands on matters, even (especially?) when I’m under-qualified to do so. A lot of the conversations between The Husband and me start when I voice a vehement opinion on something–That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!–after which he gently explains the other side of the story, the side I never bothered reading, and I see how much more complicated that story is than I first thought. And just like that, he has helped me down from the ledge.

I took a stand early on about maternity clothes. As a conservative, I should be all about corporate greed, but I wanted to resist an industry built on manipulating women into buying clothes they can only wear for a few months. They won’t trick me! I planned to buy as few new clothes as possible, opting instead to wear my empire-waist dresses and leggings and voluminous shirts and see how long I could get by. (This is admittedly easier to do when you don’t have a job.) The one concession I did make was to allow for the purchase of maternity jeans, and as coolness edged into the air this past week, I walked into Target. I was high on the promise of fall and a stranger’s recognition of my bump, and I walked over to the maternity section. I found my jeans.

When I brought them home, I slid into them and they fit like a glove. I pulled the top layer of stretchy fabric over my belly and paraded back and forth in front of the mirror, imagining all the places where I could wear my new jeans, all the outfits that now opened up to me, the world of options at my disposal. I reasoned that they would come in handy even after The Kid comes out, when TH and I will go to the Mexican restaurant and I won’t have to unfasten the button on my jeans on the way home because I have my stretchy-belly pants. More chips, please.

My good mood lasted until that evening, when The Saga of My Former Employment had a new chapter added onto it–a chapter in which my name is trashed and my reputation threatened so that someone else’s may be spared–and I felt, suddenly, like I was under attack sitting there in my living room. The obvious perpetrator being persistent injustice dealt by someone else’s hand; the insidious sneak attack following, creeping into that place where only cold, hard honesty can uncover it–a spotlight on long-held insecurities.

I shrugged off TH’s attempts to comfort me and folded into myself instead, wrapping up in an isolating blanket of self-pity (my favorite kind of pity) and seething through angry tears. Then came the voices that unravel that blanket, that force me to unfold. First, TH speaking reason, reminding me of truth, talking me down from yet another ledge. Then, the truth itself.

What if you–and I’m just spitballing here–what if you, I don’t know, actually started BELIEVING what you say you believe? What is supposed to be bigger than all this crap that other people throw around? What if your faith, if grace, was your first resort instead of your last? What would that look like?

It would look like taking to my knees rather than climbing onto ledges. Like expecting much, rather than balling up and hiding. Like wearing pants that make room for all that’s to come, rather than trying to squeeze into what I can see.

I released my grip on myself and headed to the other side of the couch, under TH’s arm. And I felt it–the loosening of all the stakes I’ve placed that marked the limits of my faith. The borders where I allowed grace to end and fear to begin. I felt them scatter and disappear, and faith flowed freely, unbound. I felt a different kind of pity: pity for those who, like I did, choose to live in smallness. I stretched out, unhindered, as TH rested his hand on the bump in the center of me that won’t stop growing.