blessing for a mother-to-be.

A friend shared this beautiful blessing by John O'Donohue with me during my pregnancy and it became a prayer that I read almost daily as I lived into the truth of it.  I'm always so thankful when poems can provide a container for what I am experiencing, and for the words carefully crafted and sewn together by others that are somehow able to express something beyond words.

I share this with others, hoping it will be as much of a treasure for you as it has been for me:

"Nothing could have prepared
your heart to open like this.

From beyond the skies and the stars
This echo arrived inside of you and started to pulse with life
Each beat a tiny act of growth,
Traversing all our ancient shapes,
On its way home to itself.

 Once it began, you were no longer your own.
A new, more courageous you, offering itself
In a new way to a presence you can sense
But you have not seen or known.

It has made you feel alone
In a way you never knew before;
Everyone else sees only from the outside
What you feel and feed
with every fiber of your being.

Never have you traveled farther inward
Where words and thoughts become half-­light
unable to reach the fund of brightness
Strengthening inside the night of your womb.

Like some primeval moon,
Your soul brightens
The tides of essence
That flow to your child.

You know your life has changed forever,
For in all the days and years to come,
Distance will never be able to cut you off
From the one you now carry
For nine months under your heart.

May you be blessed with quiet confidence
That destiny will guide you and mind you.

May the emerging spirit of your child
Imbibe encouragement and joy
From the continuous music of your heart,
So that it can grow with ease,
Expectant of wonder and welcome
when its form is fully filled

And it makes it journey out
To see you and settle at last
Relieved and glad in your arms.

more than surviving.

There are about a thousand books, blogs and articles about having a newborn. Nearly all of them make the experience sound utterly terrible. They inform you about how much the baby will cry endlessly and poop and be in constant need. They tell you how you as a parent will likely feel angry, stressed, tired and depressed. They tell you about all the awful things your body has had to endure because of pregnancy and birth and how you are not likely to ever make a full recovery. They warn you that this time in your life may bring about distance or resentment between you and your spouse. Most of them offer well meaning tips and advice about how to get through this difficult time and survive being a parent to a young child.

But here is the thing: I want to do more than survive. I want to be fully present. I want to experience the fullness of this time in my life in all of its beauty and difficulty. I want to hold it, to treasure it, to drink it in. I want to translate the language of his gurgles, his cries, his laughter into poetry. I want to learn from these rich moments and carry the wisdom I gain into my future. I want motherhood to rub me raw, and then add new layers, and transform me into a new, better, deeper, more creative version of myself.

in the belly of the fish.

For Jonah.

We named you for a story about a man who tried to run from the One who we call God. I want you to know that you are allowed to doubt, to question, to struggle. That you are allowed to run. That this One who I call God will surely find you. You might call it Love or Wonder or Beauty or Mystery. God goes by many names, many of which I do not know yet. I'm sure you will discover your own names for the One. I don't mind if your names are different than the ones I use. But what I want you to know is that Divinity is persistent. Again and again bubbling up in unexpected places, saving us in the Depths, saving the bits and pieces we didn't know needed saving. The Divine is always taking up new forms, like a poem that keeps being rewritten and becoming better and better.

I want you to know that when you find yourself feeling like you are drowning, when you feel swallowed up by what is huge and frightening (as we all do from time to time), that there will always be a light in the darkness. And sometimes the darkness is just the the thing we needed so we could discover the light. And oddly, sometimes the darkness is richer than the light and has more to teach us.

There are rarely easy answers. Sometimes we are swallowed or saved or called for no reason at all, or no reason we can understand. Sometimes we don't understand the whys or hows until much much later, and sometimes never at all. Sometimes we need to get angry, to shout, to rebel, like the one in the story. But he is called a Prophet anyway. He was a part of bringing hope to the undeserving, even though he was quite undeserving himself. And his story keeps living on, making meaning for others as we tell it and retell it. I want you to live your own story. To know that your story is meaningful and has the power to transform others. So go aheaad and be stubborn like the reluctant prophet. Be passionate and angry and loving and loved and thoroughly alive. Be swallowed up and reborn again and again in a thousand different ways. There will be a lot of giant fish: places that scare you, challenge you, rescue you, change you. Emerge from the belly of the fish to claim anew the Land that we call life again and again and again.

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