Nesting

T-minus 3 weeks until we meet this newest little blessing, and guess what? I’m ready.

No, I don’t mean I’m “over” being pregnant. Honestly, I don’t mind the discomforts of carrying a baby; I treasure each and every moment, even the kind of rough ones. The tail end of pregnancy is definitely a period marked with “whose body is this?” moments that, when you get down to it, remind you on a second-by-second basis that the answer is not “mine” but “God’s.” You cannot escape it: you are a vessel. A participant in something bigger by far than your heartburn, your aching back, or your swollen feet.

No, I’m not done with this. I am ready for the next step– staring into the face of another person whose fingers I will memorize, whose cheeks I will caress, whose lips I will brush a hundred times a day.

It’s funny that God has programmed into us a preparation time, a flurry of days where we can’t escape our need to tie up loose ends. The whole of pregnancy is, for many, fraught with an urgency to make ready. I remember that internal drive with my first two babies. As time has passed, nesting has taken on a different tone in my heart. Practical aspects aside, I find that my eyes turn inward. The housekeeping, though tied to details like making a crib skirt, knitting a gown, lanolizing wool diaper covers, is more a matter of my soul than my hands.

Somehow, in keeping my hands busy, I buy time for my usually distracted soul to rest in the Lord and listen.

This pregnancy (obviously) crept up on me while I was allowing cobwebs and dust to gather in the prayer room of my heart. Being still, allowing God to speak … honestly, without the enforced focus of a new life growing, I’m not sure I would have been soft to allowing his voice in my ears. But with the knowledge of this blessing, and the need to make ready my arms for another gift, I’ve found myself quiet, receptive, and open to His gentleness.

The other day, as I sat at my sewing machine putting the finishing touches on a sweet little mobile to hang above the baby’s crib, I felt a small tinge of the fear I’ve fought back all along creeping back into my heart. See, having a baby here has been tinged with the unfamiliar, and it has caused me to question, again, the why of His wisdom more often than I’d like to admit. In this place, to decline a Hep B vaccination at birth, to say no to routine circumscision … these are potential red flags in the medical community in ways that they are not in the Pacific Northwest. When I contemplate confrontation over our convictions, I taste a small bit of the leftover nakedness my heart still harbors about the death of our dream of field missions.

So it was with a mix of awe and gratitude that I leaned in to these words as they washed over me mid-stitch:

“Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back,
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.
For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
your descendants will dispossess nations
and settle in their desolate cities.”
Isaiah 54: 2-3

Do not hold back.

Lengthen your cords.

Strengthen your stakes. 

In other words, be ready. Not just for this baby, for these next weeks and months. But prepare for a time when I will restore you beyond this, even more, to the point of a vast spreading of my grace. Nest in this. Feather not just your surroundings, but your soul in advance of the things I planned.

So, I am ready. Ready to meet my son or daughter. Ready to face the challenge of parenting nine children in nine different stages of life and three different time zones. Ready to move into a place of an enlarged tent.

It is almost time.