Marvelously made

Psalm 139 by Robyn Sand Anderson

Today on my congregations' "Simplicity Calendar" the activity is to read Psalm 139, and memorize one verse that is meaningful to us. Well, I'll do one better. This happens to be my favorite Psalm, and after Michael and I had our first ultrasound, I wrote this reflection on the Psalm. So, enjoy.

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January 15, 2015

Dear Sweet One,

Today we saw you for the first time, and your dad and I cannot get over it. We saw and heard your heart beating like crazy – your heart, your dear, sweet heart that I already love so much. Your heart that is partly my own. (The beautiful e.e. cummings poem comes to mind: “i carry your heart. i carry it in my heart.”) Oh, my love, seeing that little flicker of life in you made our own hearts leap for joy. You are real. You are real and growing inside of me. You are nestled in right where you should be, doing exactly what you should be doing, growing and developing so much every day. Is it strange to say I am already beaming with pride for you? (Get used to it. Your dad has already taken a video of you, and that won’t stop anytime soon!)

This week I am, as I usually do, working on a sermon to preach for Sunday. No one at church yet knows that you exist, and we won’t tell them for a couple more weeks. As I write, I cannot get Sunday’s Psalm out of my head. It is Psalm 139, for a long time my favorite, but this week it has hit me so deeply.

For you yourself created my inmost parts;

     you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I will thank you because I am marvelously made;

     your works are wonderful, and I know it well.

My body was not hidden from you,

     while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written in your book;

     my days were fashioned before they came to be.

Ultrasound at 8 weeks

Oh, Sweet One, to imagine this Psalm being enacted in my own womb right now, imagining God knitting you together right there in your mother’s womb. Your little eyelids, your beating heart, your tiny little fingers forming. (Will they play piano? Guitar? Will they paint? Will they be the hands that love to serve?) You are being lovingly knit together, each precious little part, for the purpose God has intended. Indeed you are marvelously made.

Your dad and I have been planning for you and hoping for you – ah, but our marvelous God has been doing that for so much longer. Your days were fashioned long before they came to be. In the picture from the ultrasound, your Grandma Lois noticed a little glimmer on the top edge of your little pocket in my womb, and suggested the moon was shining down on you. I said no, that was the twinkle in God’s eye. It is the twinkle of knowing something beautiful is coming to pass.

Your dad and I have talked a bit about names, but haven’t come to any decisions yet. But I admit that if you are a girl, one name that keeps coming into my mind is Joy – because this is what fills me when I imagine you. This has been a long journey, Dear One. I have waited for you. And now you, you marvelously made little being, are filling my very core with joy.

                                                                                                All my love,

                                                                                                Mama