expectant

For months now, I have been counting babies – pregnant friends, friends delivering, another colleague with one on the way, and even a sister! Finally, I decided that I just had take a tally of this baby boom happening around me, and when I did, even I was shocked at the number – seventeen. That’s right, seventeen little ones that I know who have either recently arrived or are on the way. Is there a Facebook group for that?

As the number escalated over the past few months I have pondered aloud to friends that surely there is some symbolism, some deeper meaning in this. One wisely pointed out that all it meant was that I was in my mid-30s. Another said that there is indeed a global baby boom happening right now. I’ve about deduced, though, that it may just be God’s way of telling me to be patient.

See, while seemingly half the women I know are hatching out bambinos, I have been scheming for months (ok, maybe longer), trying to find the escape hatch out of what I have deemed a miserable job/city/life/whatever. I have been interviewing, looking at houses in my destinations of choice, searching online for jobs, writing plans and building websites for my own dream business – in short, flailing about in daily indecision about what is my next perfect step. All the while thinking that certainly staying put was not an option. Wait? No way! I couldn’t take another day.

Long story short, I am still here. Any day now I am hoping for news that will point me in one way or the other. Surely, that door of opportunity will crack open and hopeful glimmer of light will soon trickle through…

But still I wonder, what if it doesn’t? I mean, I have apparently accepted that I’m just going to have to endure daily “misery” until i do something else or move somewhere else. So, if I don’t get Divine Direction soon, is this my assigned state of existence from here on that I need to just learn to accept?

When I actually stop to think about it, though, how much of our lives are spent waiting? Comparatively, there are likely a lot more dull/boring/routine days than enlightening ones; we spend a lot more time behind closed doors than skipping through open opportunistic ones. Life is largely made up of “in the meantime,” which is why I guess the Bible talks so much about daily prayer and a day’s work and new mercies every morning. God gets routine – after all, he invented orbiting planets, flowers that bloom every afternoon, and lapping waves against the shoreline.

And this is where I can take a lesson from the expectant moms in my life = after months of watching their bellies grow, of waiting (often uncomfortably) for the due date, what results is among the greatest of all joys. Sure, there are routine feedings, hundreds of diaper changes, but as that precious New One develops and blossoms, all of those months of waiting are largely forgotten. Every first giggle, first smile, first tooth are new treasured moments sprinkled among otherwise normal hours.

But new baby or no, can’t we all approach our daily lives a bit more that way – looking for magical moments amid the “dirty diaper changing” we all do? Knowing that months of being uncomfortable, months of waiting, will result in something wonderful? Can’t I, at least, learn from the many, many new lives growing around me that there are some growing opportunities for me right now as well?

What sound is more soothing to my soul than waves crashing against the shoreline, over and over and over again? What is more hopeful than rays of light spilling over the horizon, regardless of if that horizon is brand new, or the very same one I saw yesterday...

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson