I thought I might have a hard time sleeping last night, what with our all-important appointment this afternoon, but it turns out that an event this huge is, for us, too foreign to break into our reality. Since The Husband and I will shortly be first-time parents, we can plan and assemble and list, but in the end, we can’t contextualize this next part of our lives. We just have to live it.

So last night, I slept.

This after a weekend spent going out on one final dinner date, lazing around on the couch, eating way too many sugar cookies, finishing a DVD of How I Met Your Mother, cleaning up, listening to The Niece laugh. I gave the husband a Nursery Tutorial, showing him where all The Kid’s “stuff” is, which drawers hold socks and hats and which hold hooded towels; he, in turn, assembled the stroller and the Pack ‘n Play in the next room while I listened to his vented frustration over a company providing their instructions in twelve languages and still not expressing them adequately. Then I went upstairs to read in bed and listened as he, speaking my primary love language, hauled the vacuum out of the closet and got to work again.

And now, the waiting, sans food just in case they end up cutting on me later; the nervous pangs over the arrival of a new member of our household and the inability to quite believe that it’s finally happening; the bag-packing for a stay of unknown length; the uncertainty of it all. The culmination of months of growth and preparation and waiting, and it looks like this: quiet typing, dishwasher running, baby kicking, our joint coughing from poorly-timed colds. Waiting to receive even more than we already have. I think about how little of it, ultimately, has to do with me: the doctors’ assessments and decisions and handiwork and retrieval, my being in many ways just a vessel. How helpless it can make me feel. And then, when my mind and heart rebel against that helplessness, that not knowing, and I feel the irreverent words begin to form underneath my prayers for wisdom, for understanding–What could He possibly know about helplessness, about waiting?–then the gentle reply unfolds in my heart as the meaning of Advent, of Christmas, shines all around me and answers any question I could ever have: Everything.

Sorry I forgot to send invitations, but I threw a gigantic pity party this morning.

At about 6:40 am, I woke up, my throat on fire from sinus drainage and my belly pulsating with kicks and soreness. I felt a trickle and went to the bathroom. How much is too much? I thought, connoisseur of body fluids that I’ve become lately, my gaze at toilet water a habit I can’t break. But the only gushing came from my nose and eyes.

The doctor told us yesterday that The Kid is still breech and unlikely to turn now that I’m (hand inserted–his, pain felt–mine, face contorted–his, mine, and The Husband’s as he watched) 1.5 centimeters dilated. He spoke of possible complications–my water breaks and TK sits on his cord, and that happened the last time I was in the hospital so I know what it means: blood cut off, oxygen cut off, heart rate descending to the 50s…40s…and nurses rushing in. But I don’t have monitors and nurses at home–I am the nurse and the monitor and what if I miss it? What if the water breaks and I don’t know and TK can’t breathe and that is all on me?  I emerged from the bathroom a broken woman, tears and snot streaming down my face, TH at a loss for how to handle the puddle I’d become. So he just held me, a skill at which he has become a professional.

The doctor had said other things, though it was harder to pay attention to them after that first warning and the fear it stirred up. He said that if the contractions got worse, to call. If the water broke, to go straight to the hospital. We scheduled another visit for Monday. Then, on our way home, he rang. He had spoken to the perinatologist, who told him that if I’m dilated more on Monday, we have a new plan: hospital admission and C-section. At 36 weeks. A possible birthday for TK, a plan in pencil on the calendar. I felt better. Then I woke up this morning after a fitful night’s sleep and fell apart.

I cried as I descended the stairs, cried as I sat on the couch and TH came down to say goodbye before leaving for work, work that has been compounded now in light of our new schedule. I put him in the worst of positions as I tried to act like a big girl, tears pooling in my eyes, while he backed out of the driveway, wanting to be two places at once and unable to fix me. I returned to the couch and sobbed, then I gagged, then I sobbed, then I choked, then I sobbed some more. There was some prayer in there too, though not enough. The baby’s water didn’t break, but mine did as the floodgates opened on my tears and thoughts:

I can’t bend down to dust, can’t push the vacuum cleaner around, can’t change the sheets. I won’t come home from the hospital to the cleanest house on the block. I don’t have Kleenex because I can’t go to the damn store. I’m not hungry but I have to eat. What if something goes wrong and I don’t know it? What if he can’t breathe and it’s my fault? Why does this all have to be on me? Is this the kind of mother I’ll be, always afraid?

And then, the thought that flew above them all: I just want him to be okay.

That’s when I knew I was in trouble. That’s when I knew what was wrong. Because I may have my ancestresses to thank for a heredity of worrying, and I may be full of hormones, and I may know in my head that feelings are about as likely to consistently tell the truth as politicians are. But despite all the mistakes I’m prone to make, there is another action I’m prone to and I will never be free of it: love. In that moment of crying and praying and watching the truth distill to one thought, I knew that the bond between us that has been growing for months, often without my knowledge and despite my irritation, is unbreakable. The bond that began when I met TH and began to lose my freedom; the bond that will tie us as a family forever. Love kills independence. Love means my heart will never be its own again. Love has tethered the three of us inextricably together, and even as I sit on the couch by myself, I know I will never be alone again. And…this is terrifying.

Then I remember all the things I’ve done up until now, the degrees attained and distances traveled and I realize that I haven’t been alone for any of it. It’s just that none of those people who walked with me, who supported me, depended on me for life. I remember the One who has been there for all of it, who will never leave, and I can’t believe that once again I’ve left him out of Now. As if I would get to this point and He would stand idly by while it all fell apart. As if He doesn’t know anything about losing independence, about loving so much it hurts.

I think about the life inside of me, soon to emerge and upend ours, this little person I now achingly love. I remember how we chose his name and then I looked up its meaning, disappointed in what I found because I couldn’t immediately see significance in it: supplanter. One who takes the place of something else. Now I see it. I think of my heart, beating for its own purpose so much of my life, now beating on behalf of another. I take a deep breath. I pray. My eyes dry for now, but I wait for the water to break…and I let myself be held.

The meaning, according to dictionary.com: a coming into place, view, or being; arrival.

I can’t get over it, this gift that I am just now seeing–maybe because it’s sitting atop a pile of so many other gifts that only become visible when I’m wearing my eyes of gratitude: the fact that this baby boy is set to arrive during my favorite season of the year, the magical period after Thanksgiving, the section of the calendar that straddles fall and winter, the time of gingerbread lattes and Christmas music and twinkling lights and possible snow and magical mystery.

I always used to feel sorry for people who were born around Christmas, feeling that they got short-changed out of presents and summertime pool parties. I don’t feel that way anymore, as I sit in our red den and gaze at the tree lit up, at the mantle studded with colored bulbs and the J-O-Y with the J and O holding our stockings, the Y waiting for his.

I arrived home to it yesterday, and if you’re tired of my constant writing of how wonderful The Husband is, then suck it (that includes you, TH) because it’s not likely to stop, even when the drawers and cabinets are left open and I curse a little, because this is what I arrived home to: lights strung across our porch, a new Christmas welcome mat, and a tree standing proudly with the gold proposal decoration topping it.

I was fresh off my first non-doctor, public outing in two weeks: a trip to the movies with The Sis and Sis-in-Law to see Breaking Dawn Part I–complete with non-pain-mediated C-section scene and delivery of semi-vampire baby. Not the best choice for a due-to-deliver-any-day mom-to-be with control issues, but there’s the consolation that it’s unlikely my delivery could ever go that badly, am I right? (Also in the Bad Idea Jeans category for anyone pregnant, especially with a boy: a viewing of the We Need to Talk about Kevin trailer. I mean, HELLA YIKES.) So I hauled my massive, tight, occasionally-contracting belly out of The Sis’s car and up the steps of our bedecked home, straight into a winter wonderland. All that was left for me to do was light some candles, turn on the music, pop open the Trader Joe’s sparkling cider (we were out of red wine) and settle into the couch, mesmerized. Christmas is happening. This baby is happening. Sometimes when TH and I turn to each other wide-eyed, thinking that it’s all a little too much, I realize: it is. It’s all just too much. So much.

I tested more limits today, going to Target for the first time in half a month, in the rain no less, and I escaped with a trunk full of food, a gingerbread latte only partially spilled on my maternity jeans, and a moment of irritation at someone’s car alarm persistently screaming until I realized it was mine. We’re over the hump, safety- and delivery-wise, and now I can relax and breathe a little (as much as possible with The Kid pressing into my diaphragm). I can also just sit still, watching the lights and viewing the Netflix-provided Christmas movies and reading the Nook-lent Hunger Games series and smelling the candles and marveling over a perfectly-timed (is it ever anything less?) and doubly-meaningful Advent season: a coming into place of years of hoping; a coming into view after years of cloudy vision; a coming into being after years (and months) of waiting; an arrival to rival so many others…all but One.

Thanksgiving takes on new meaning the year that you move into a home, become pregnant, and read a book on gratitude that changes your life.

Of everything I could list, though–and this year’s bounty is knees-to-the-floor humbling–I am thankful most of all for grace, the gift that holds them all. Grace narrates my story and makes every part of it matter. It gives dimension to each character–especially to me–fleshing them out beyond the caricatures toward which I tend. It adds words to the music and music to the words. It makes the material blessings a gift rather than a crutch. It places me in a red room with a pumpkin candle burning as Christmas songs play in the background and a baby stirs inside, a baby whose father did the dishes this morning.

Grace, rather than keeping me where I deserve to stay, crosses the distance to retrieve me and bring me into the new season. My favorite season: pine trees and gingerbread smells and familiar tunes and twinkling lights and a baby boy in a manger and, in all likelihood, one in our own crib…new life in every possible way.

Growing up, our most frequent family vacations were to the Gulf that God thoughtfully placed only three hours from our house. So our travel was via car, which meant bladder breaks along the way. Without fail we would let the rest stops designed for such breaks fly right by our window as we headed toward more predictably clean venues like McDonald’s and Cracker Barrel. Even as a little girl, I was particular about where I did my business.

Now that a rest break is being forced upon me, I find myself again wanting to dictate its terms. But much like you can’t run a marathon from a treadmill, it’s difficult to orchestrate life from the couch. The longer I sit here in stillness, though, the more chances I have to see that the holes in my strength and the gaps in my knowledge are opportunities for either resentment or rest. And that the difference between those responses is often what constitutes the sum of faith: am I going to be angry about what I’m not allowed to do/not being let in on (see: the first thirty years of my life), or am I going to trust that I am being taken care of even–especially–in those holes and gaps? Because I am about to enter a phase of life in which my sense of control will be repeatedly violated; the shit may literally hit the fan (I hear little boys are crazy with diapers). I can’t do this on my own and thankfully, I’m not meant to. Our hospital dress rehearsal and its aftermath have been helpful in reaffirming those facts as friends and family have shown up with food and cleaning supplies and I just…watch. Watch, and give thanks at the way love has of never leaving a gap unfilled for long.

Never allow that the haphazard is anything less than God’s appointed order, and be ready to discover the Divine designs anywhere.                –Oswald Chambers

You might be Type A if thirty-six hours in the hospital begins to resemble a vacation.

When the nurse first told me I was being admitted, the tears flowed as I imagined two nights spent in a bed not my own; a forced period away from all my “stuff,” my comfort zone. Then they put me in that bed and brought me food; then someone showed up to change my sheets and clean my bathroom. And I thought…this may not be so bad. I still didn’t want to be there, but the reality of not having to clean up my own messes was intoxicating. Sometimes it’s nice to let other people do the care-taking.

And there have been plenty of opportunities for that. My discharge papers included instructions that read like a list of omissions from responsibility: no bending over, no cleaning, no laundry, no heavy-duty cooking, no climbing stairs more than once a day, no unloading the dishwasher. But it’s funny how independence from daily activities can take on its own form of imprisonment when I realize how these tasks may just define me a little too much. I can’t drive to Target to get our food for the week; couldn’t stand around to cook it even if it were here, stocking our fridge. I can’t change sheets and scrub bathrooms and prepare for guests. I can’t get the mail, for crying out loud. But in the meantime, I’ve learned how to be cared for, how there is a difference between the “let me know if there’s anything I can do” form of solicitude that I’ve half-heartedly offered others over the years and the “we’re on our way with food” form that has been shown in recent days. I’m a member of a community now where the pastor knows our name and mentions it in our absence on Sunday morning; where the shower that I missed is now being brought to me; where The Sis and Bro-in-Law show up three times in as many days bearing food and car seat installation services. I’ll be missing the wedding of one of my best friends and receive only understanding when I share the news with her; The Mom is headed east in a couple of days with multiple casseroles. These are the gifts of grace that we are only open to receive when our own hands are empty, when our own weakness is unmasked.

As I sit with my feet propped up, ever-present thermos of water beside me, facing the window that looks out over our backyard, I see fall taking shape. Leaves drift down like snow and I realize that they can look like a mess to be cleaned up, or as something beautiful. I think about the moment I was wheeled out of the hospital and to The Husband, who waited with coffee and a copy of Us Weekly to take me home. I remember pulling up to that home, walking inside and appreciating it in a way I never had, seeing like new the improvements we made this time last year and the perfect place it is for us. I considered the truth that–even when I struggle to believe it, even when the mess cries out to me and I can’t answer, even when news is delivered that I don’t want to hear–the truth that I am always exactly where I am supposed to be. The laundry piles up, the sheets remain unchanged, the leaves fall, family and friends show up, the baby kicks safely inside, and I sit in the quiet, in my apparent weakness, as my efforts are forced to a standstill and the care I will soon give is, for now, being given to me.

Let’s see where we are now.

32 weeks. I’m waking up, on average, twice nightly to head through the darkness to the bathroom as my joints scream out in protest. I roll over to my side and push one of my three sleeping pillows out of the way, then climb back in bed and rearrange said pillows as my shoulders and wrists yell out, “Oh hell no!” and I, occasionally, get frustrated enough to (beware: shame spiral ahead) cross the threshold of noise-making that wakes up The Husband. The other night he whispered, “Are you okay?” and my reply, stripped down to honesty by tiredness and desperation, was, “Yes. I just wanted you to hear what I’m going through.” This morning, I told him that my hands feel like gigantic mittens that are numb to everything but pain. He endured this complaint as he has countless others, striding over and taking my hands in his own, kneading them toward temporary relief.

Then there are the adjustments to my ever-changing planner, my bowing out of Thursday morning volunteering because these days, bending over to pick up toys is an activity labeled “too strenuous.” There is the first Thanksgiving I had planned in our home of less than a year, the hosting I was prepared to accomplish that will have to happen another time. There is the unanswerable urge to scoop up The Niece. There is the canceling of getaways and absence of joint trips to the gym and walks around the neighborhood, activities that dominated our pre-pregnant life. There is the buildup and toleration of chaos beyond the amount with which I’m comfortable; the extension of time between housecleanings and the commensurate water spots on counters and fingerprints on steel–reminders that I am not meant to worship order and control but have a long way to go before I don’t.

So I look around, waiting for my eyes to be opened to the “but,” to the More. And here it comes now: there’s the loss that led to my hands being used not toward teeth, but toward writing; the hours of magic that led to the telling of a story whose fate is headed toward other hands, ostensibly, but in reality rests in the same ones it always has. Not theirs and not mine. There is the timing, perfect timing, of debilitation that comes only after that story has been finished. There is the early-morning and late-night sound of the dishwasher being unloaded by other hands that didn’t even have to be asked. There is the moment on the floor with The Niece when she approaches me, grinning, and rests her head on my shoulder. There is the watching of her as the Bro-in-Law holds his fingers out and she grabs onto them to be lifted from her changing pad–the same way TH holds his arms out to lift me from the couch each night. There are the little punches inside that come from hands that will hold mine. There is the trio of girls, including myself, who consider Sweet Valley Confidential and wine (sparkling cider for yours truly–it’s not Saturday yet) and American Horror Story guise enough to convene for an evening of discussion. There is TH in the next room, whose laughter at my overheard joke reminds me of all the other jokes of mine that he laughs at, of the joy embedded in our life together and of what we’re heading toward; a story drafted by hands that bear scars and build universes and hold unending grace and make us exactly what we’re meant to be.

The other morning I was discussing my latest read, On Becoming Babywise, with The Husband. Naturally, this book appeals to every part of my nature, with its high expectations and tight scheduling and provided charts. TH and I have agreed that we will approach the sleeping battle with our arsenal full, and Babywise‘s Parent-Directed Feeding is our ammo. So each day I update him on my recently-read discoveries since he’s busy working and whatnot, focused on spreadsheets rather than nursing guides, and on this particular morning I concluded my summary with a portent: “And no one better try and interfere with this plan once we get it started. No peeking in or picking up or–”

TH glanced at me out of the corner of his eye with a knowing smile on his face.

“What?” I asked defensively.

He playfully reminded me of my own peeking-in on The Niece, the multiple times per nightly visit that I sneak upstairs “just to check” on her; the ONE TIME when she happened to wake up early from her nap and I couldn’t just leave her there!

We make our plans, right?

Then later in the day, I visited the OB and he looked over my ultrasound results, attempting to project an answer to my planning-riddled question regarding arrival time, mentioning the complications and their influences–including the fact that The Kid, after months in the “proper” position, is currently sitting upside-down. And that’s when my knowing smile appeared, because I know all about things appearing to be upside-down when they’re actually just as they should be; I know about breath drawn in at week 20, resulting in imposed restrictions and uncertain outcomes; I know about how unemployment can save a life; I know about numb fingers that remain on the keyboard through 120,000 words; I know about being lost but found, and blind but seeing. I know grace and I know redemption, and I know that they have nothing to do with the position we’re in.

I’m in the nesting phase. Thankfully, The Husband is too–we’ve spent the last few weekends visiting stores and amassing materials for The Kid’s room and the house in general. TH has, over the past few months, completed multiple projects: painted three rooms, constructed two bookcases, decked out our porch and lawn for Halloween, installed a wall-hung television, assembled a crib and dresser and changing table and chair, and hooked up a ceiling fan. Meanwhile, I have written thank-you notes and selected lamp shades. Oh…and endured an alien takeover of my body.

Our weekly excursions to Home Goods and Babies ‘R Us and the like have left us with an abundance of possessions meant to sustain our new family. And as our material goods reach their zenith, I read an email about the apartment complex where our church does outreach and I hear a four-year-old abuse the English language–about how eight of the units were destroyed by fire, affecting forever the lives of almost fifty people and rendering them without beds and clothes and food. Without almost anything, really. I type with my numb fingers and sit on my sciatica-plagued ass while pain radiates through my shoulders and look around at the embarrassment of riches with which I am blessed: a husband who provides in every way imaginable, a child who is already named and loved, a community of family and friends. Beds, clothes, food.

On Saturday night, after a banquet of Chili’s takeout, The Husband hauled up our extra queen bed and mattress from the basement and loaded it into the car for delivery the next day to people who currently have no place to sleep. I sat on the couch, playing immobile cheerleader as The Kid turned backflips. I thought about my life prior to this stage of domesticity; the constant-seeming removal of people and things, how unjust it all felt until their ultimate replacement came along and a better plan emerged. I thought about how, on media like Facebook, we say things like, “God is good” when something happens that we define as positive; I thought about the path that is directed by grace, that takes you a distance you never thought you’d travel so that you can look back at not only triumphs but at heartbreak and loss and still say it–that he’s good. No matter what. A grace that takes away and gives back and can be called love either way. Grace that stretches our limits and makes us uncomfortable but refuses to let us go. Grace that always delivers.