Best God

I am just finishing out my 16th week with baby :) She gave me a little bit of a scare this week. I had a really strange symptom happen, and before I knew it, I was all swirly in my head and asking Noah to go find a fetal doppler at Walgreens or Walmart or CVS or wheresoever at 10PM on a Tuesday. When I realized a doppler was not going to be happening that night, these words slipped out of my mouth, panicked, to Noah on the phone: “Well, then I guess we’re just going to have to pray or something.”

I just thought if I could hear her sweet heartbeat before I closed my eyes that night…well… I’d be able to close my eyes that night. So, very frustratedly, I decided to do what I could with what very little control I was coming around to realizing I had. I sat in my bed and prayed a prayer that went something like this: “really hope You’ve got this one”.

I thought about how I’m supposed to be this baby’s protector, and yet, I could do none of the protecting in that moment. A very terrible feeling. A very humbling place to find yourself.

I know this isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, that I’m here: panicked instead of peaceful about my lack of control. I was so convinced I was the best God, the best protector of my baby, in my bedroom that night. 

I heard baby’s heartbeat the next morning. And I did close my eyes that night. What grew in place of my control & my fear, was love. 

Loving this little human inside of me feels as scary as it does miraculous some days.

How can I steward this little human as a gift from above? Not to control or fix or perfect, but to love.

The opposite of love, after all, is not hate; it is control, and it belongs nowhere in the most true and beautiful of loves. So today, I start my quiet time with the Serenity Prayer, practiced most by people in folding chairs inside AA meetings, most needed by those of us who sit in pews.

“God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right
If I surrender to His Will;

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him

Forever and ever in the next.

Amen.”

I read this prayer & hope that the next time the panic of not being God sets in—because it is certain to—that “God grant me the serenity” might be what covers me, what carries me back here.

Humble enough to show up as God created me: human.

May I be reminded a million times a day that I am not God. Then, when the panic sets in, reminded of how much better God is at being God than I am. Then, when the panic feels heavy, may the sweet, all-encompassing relief of humility remind me of this:

The only weight I carry is that which I pick up when I try to do things I was never created to do in the first place.

This is good news.

Good news for me. Good news for my baby that she is held by loving & protecting greater than mine.

Yes, this wonderful, terrible news that we are not in control, is good news for all of us.