It didn’t happen, of course. It never does when we plan it, how we plan it. But after a lifetime of expecting my plan to happen, then some years of watching it crumble to reveal a better one, I’m becoming better at accepting the broken expectations.

Better. Not perfect.

We jinxed ourselves in so many ways. Monday morning, I put on the smell-good lotion that I only wear for special occasions, like date nights and holidays and weekends. Then we both packed bags, threw them in the car next to the installed car seat. The counters were as shiny as I could get them without bending over too much; the vacuum had been graciously run by him. We were prepared.

Then the exam, and the news that no more dilation had occurred, and we were sent home. But we didn’t go home.

I was speechless for awhile, all the way through the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru and for a lot of our trip to Target for groceries we now needed, and The Husband asked several times if I was okay. I thought about it in the car as our bags taunted us from the backseat, as the diaper wreath for my hospital door bounced around the trunk. My flesh will always cry out against being wrong; against I told you so and feeling like a chump. I considered another week of watching for water, of timing contractions, of sleeping on numb limbs, of holding back on the wine. Of not meeting The Kid.

I felt disappointed, but I did not feel cheated.

A few years ago, that’s how I would have felt: cheated. Insulted that things didn’t turn out the way I planned, personally attacked by the audacity of One who went another way than mine. But now, I looked at the man beside me, at the bulge in my middle, at the lights strung across our porch and hearth and tree. And just like the feeling of being cheated fell away those years ago, so did the disappointment. And later that night, while TH played basketball, I turned on the TV and watched and listened as Andrea Bocelli sang in the rain at Central Park. I watched as the camera panned the midtown skyline and I remembered my weekly runs set against that skyline, the scene and my life unfolding a little more each week, the perfect amount of time it took for that plan to unfold, for us both to be ready for each other, even though I would have hurried it along if given the chance. Bocelli, unseeing eyes closed, sings the words, and I know they’re mine too–that for all the fast-forwarding I would do through life, this is where life is: in each of the moments, and in the hand that holds them. The blind man sings, and I realize that there is only one thing that takes the words and transforms them from irony to truth. Amazing grace.

I once was lost, but now I’m found

Was blind but now I see.