On Babies

I finished knitting a baby gift last night. It’s a sweet little vest— my favorite pattern— in some of the squishiest variegated yarn I’ve ever used. It was a joy to watch this tiny little project take shape on my needles. I’m a notoriously slow knitter, primarily, I think, because knitting is, for me, a prayer in motion. I only cast on projects when I have an intended recipient, and each and every stitch is something like a rosary bead to me as I work my way through praying over the person who will wear or be wrapped in or hold fast to the item I’m working on. And baby items? Oh, there is so much to pray over when a fresh, new, unknown person is the recipient.

As I finished the vest, it occurred to me that my own baby will be five years old in a handful of months. Five year-olds are amazing creatures, blossoming little people with so much to say and so much ability to do the things they dream up. But they’re not sweet, dependent babes in arms, content to be wrapped across their mother’s body for the bulk of the day. They don’t have tiny fingers that curl around your own and refuse to let go. They’re not any of the vulnerable, precious things that make a mother’s heart ache for another baby.

A decade and a half ago, I remember mourning the fact that I might never have another baby in my life. The pain of it was so crippling, and I just couldn’t grab on to any of the peace that Scripture and friends pointed me to. God’s plan is good, everyone said. But I couldn’t feel it. All I knew was that I wanted something— something good, something that blessed the whole world— and it was denied me time and again.

And then, just as I finally felt a blanket of spiritual contentment settled over me… the babies came. Five of them, through both birth and adoption.

But here’s what I realized last night— even if they hadn’t… they still actually do.

It’s not a riddle, it’s one of God’s upside down truths that you can’t see when you’re standing too close to it. I think I am finally far enough removed to not only see His beautiful plan for us women as we step into our next season, but also to feel the excitement for what comes next. I’m sharing it with those of you perhaps sitting in the aching place and wishing you could feel the weight of a newborn on your chest as you fall asleep at night in the hopes that some joy might creep in to your waiting.

Here it is: I have knit more baby items since my own family was completed that I ever did in the years it was being woven together. Vests, sweaters, bonnets, booties, tiny bunnies, gowns, bibs. I have prayed over more little ones in the past five years than I did even when we fostered. I have had no lack of wee ones in my life; as a matter of fact, I have had so many more.

The lie of a woman’s heart is that a door is firmly shut when the children of her own house become gangly teenagers, or when no more preschoolers sit around the table coloring while she teaches math to the older brood. So many of us stubbornly cling to that season of child-bearing and inadvertently idolize that open door that allows us to stay in the baby years. But that door doesn’t close. It just stops being the main entry point for a while. Instead, the mailbox brings good news, or the phone, or the computer. And your job begins anew with each announcement: praying into the Kingdom another soul, one that doesn’t get share your bed in the wee hours, but can always, always share a place alongside you in heaven.

Eventually, we all know, that door becomes a highway. I already see it in the lives of so many of my friends, and I am giddy with the expectation of it myself; sons- and daughters-in-law! Grandbabies! (You’d better believe I have a list of knits at the ready for my first Nepali grandchild!)

Yes, there are a lot of babies in the lives of us older women. We have moved from the season of physical fruitfulness into one where our spiritual fruitfulness sends ripples throughout the world, if we let it. Friends, we inhabit a very special place in the economy of the church. We are to be reverent, to teach, and to be sensible, yes.  But we are also to be the welcoming committee. We who love life need to be the first to celebrate it. We need to not look only to our own cradles, but into the homes of our sisters in Christ, and be the voice that is raised in greeting for every child. This is how we show God’s love, and how we share the precious gift of nurturing He wove into our souls. This is how we live out the desire of our heart to be engaged in the act of mothering… for generations to come.