Being pregnant during Lent has certainly gotten me thinking. And this week, Holy Week, in particular.
It always requires a bit of a split personality to prepare for Holy Week and Easter. Even as I try to dwell in the sorrow of sin and death that we walk through with Jesus as he makes his way to the cross, I am working on my Easter sermon and choosing hymns replete with Alleluias. It's strange to bounce from one mood to one completely other, from death to life, from despair to hope.
But this year, I have considered the bouncing back and forth between death and life completely differently, because as I anticipate death liturgically, I can literally feel life moving inside me. Whoa. (To add to the incongruency, on Good Friday, the very day of Jesus' death, we will find out whether we are having a boy or a girl!)
It is in some way representative of how this pregnancy has felt to me all along. I was working on my Easter sermon this morning, and thinking about the resurrection experiences we have in our lives daily. Sometimes mundane, sometimes more significant, but God is always taking our death experiences and turning them into opportunities for life.
Well here's mine: Two years ago, my body grew death. It grew something foreign that literally could have killed me - twice. It betrayed me. My own cells attacked me.
Today, as I lie on the couch and am still, I can feel life knocking at my door (er, kicking at my uterus!). My cells, mixed with Michael's, created a life. Where my body had done exactly the wrong thing before, now it is doing something so right. I am living a resurrection story. I am experiencing, every moment of every day, how God takes death experiences and out of them brings life.
I don't want to theologize about it any more than that. I just want to enjoy it - enjoy every flutter I feel, every glimpse I catch in the mirror of my growing belly, every moment I realize I am living my life-long dream.
Thank you God, for the gift of new life, however it may come.
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