When our youngest child was about to start primary school, I felt like I was about to enter a whole new stage of motherhood. I was considering two different part-time ministry jobs, as well as various opportunities to serve at our church and our kids’ school and I felt excited at what lay ahead.
On New Year’s Eve I prayed this prayer (I found it this week in my prayer journal):
Eternal Creator, Loving Father,
I kneel before you at the threshold of a new year and hand my life over to you again. I am willing—and excited—to go wherever you lead me. All I ask is that you keep equipping me for whatever you call me to—with love, wisdom, time, ideas, grace, patience, faithfulness and perseverance. Please fill me with your Spirit to speak the life-giving truth and to live by the truth. Please show me how—and who—to love with time and encouragement, food and comfort …
Amen.
When I prayed that prayer, I had no idea that God was about to answer in the most surprising way. After five-and-a-half years of believing that ‘family planning’ was something in our control, I fell pregnant for the fourth time.
I thought I was open to anything, ready to serve in whatever way God asked me to. Except for this. I’m not ready for this. I had had enough of 24-hour ‘morning’ sickness and the other discomforts and anxieties that come with pregnancy, especially at an older age. I wasn’t confident I had enough energy left to carry and give birth to another baby. I couldn’t face the thought yet more years of breastfeeding dramas, nappies and sleepless nights. I was not emotionally prepared for another five years of having a small person attached to me most of the time. I felt like I was being asked to stay back and ‘repeat’ when I had been about to graduate.
Over that summer, I slowly came to accept the fact that I really was pregnant. I gradually came to realise that carrying, birthing and raising another child was the ministry God had planned for me. It was primarily that person that God wanted me to love with my time and encouragement, food and comfort. And it was for the ministry of motherhood that I would need God’s provision of love, wisdom, time, ideas, grace, faithfulness and perseverance, as I had prayed.
I felt a mixture of emotions as I told people the news: sometimes I felt guilty that I was ‘going back for fourths’ while others were struggling to conceive even one child; other times I felt embarrassed (‘Don’t you guys know how babies are made?’); sometimes I tried to second-guess God’s plans—surely this would be that long-awaited daughter! (It wasn’t.)
Now I’ve written a new prayer for those who find themselves surprised by pregnancy:
Lord, you have searched me and you know me. Lord, you see me. Lord, you hold me—us—in your hand.
You are the God who wove me together in the depths of the earth. You formed my womb. Every day of my life was written in your book before one of them came to be. This is not the plan I had for my life, not the future I imagined. But I surrender myself to your better, wiser plans. I offer myself as an earthen vessel—a jar of clay—for you to mould and shape and use for your perfect purposes.
Now who are you knitting together in the dark depths of my womb? What days do you have planned for them?
What a privilege to have the miracle of life forming inside me—to have you at work within my womb, swirling together a universe—a new eternal soul—where there once was nothing.
To me, the future is dark and unknown: Will my baby be healthy? Will it be a boy or girl? When will it be born? Will the birth be straightforward? Will I be able to breastfeed? How will I cope?
It is tempting to let fear and worry overcome me. But darkness is as light to you. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without your knowledge. You even know the number of hairs on my head. You feed the birds and clothe the flowers. Surely you will care for me and my baby. You know what I need before I even know what to ask you.
With Sarah and Elizabeth, I laugh with surprise: ‘After I am worn out and my husband is old, will I now have this pleasure?’ (Genesis 18:12)
With Eve may I soon say, ‘With the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man!’ (Genesis 4:1)
But for now, with Mary, I simply say, ‘I am the Lord’s servant’ (Luke 1:38). May I faithfully carry out the ministry of motherhood that you have called me to. I receive this child as they truly are: a precious gift from you.
Amen.
