I just took
a personality test and discovered that I am “The Achiever.”
This wasn’t a
huge surprise.
I’m the type
who decides and actually follows through with goals. I
wanted to be a runner, so I started running daily. I was determined to learn to cook, so I made
a weekly menu and forced my roommates to join me for our home-cooked meal every
day for a year. When I decided to start
blogging last year, I jumped in the day before a challenge to write EVERY DAY
for 31 days—and I did it. And when I
moved to China and saw that a friend of mine who had been there for a month was
already advancing in his language skills, I found a tutor to come over EVERY
DAY to help me. And after five years, I
learned to speak, read and write Chinese.
Hello. I am Leslie Verner and I am an Achiever.
But now this
achiever is also a mom. I have two
children with one on the way, and now any figurative race I run is a bit like
competing with your legs tied together.
AND you’re blind-folded. AND you
have to run backwards.
So today, my
major “achievements” of the day amounted to getting my children dressed, fed a
semi-nutritious meal, teeth brushed, curly boy hair tamed with water and wispy
girl hair combed into a tiny pony tail.
I’m even proud to admit that not only are my own teeth brushed, but I
even washed my hair for the first time in a week and managed to go for a walk.
At the
beginning of the summer, I had aspirations of daily Bible time with my kids,
running until I was 36 weeks pregnant like I did with my daughter (I made it to
20 weeks this time), visiting a diverse park in my city once a week to strike
up friendships with international student families and actually planning activities
using Pinterest as a springboard (ha).
What I didn’t
take into account was that pregnancy would suck the wind from my self-motivated,
driven, over-achieving sails. I sit here
now, sails flapping in the wind, with my kids stuck (screaming) in my boat in
the middle of a sea that I can’t navigate us out of. And I just can’t find the energy to hoist up
these sails, make a decision about where to go or even admire the scenery.
But God is
beginning to show me that this hugely
pregnant body of mine that feels more like a handicap than a blessing is, in fact, swaddled tightly in grace.
Pregnancy is
the strong arm that forces the achievers like me to just stop. Stop doing, achieving, scheming, strategizing
and striving and just BE. Be a mommy. Be a wife.
Be a beloved daughter of God. Be
served, loved and spoiled. Be
simple. Cut corners. Accept foot rubs. Do less. Sit on benches. Walk slowly. Order
take-out. Indulge in pedicures. Let people
carry things. Take elevators. Receive.
Embrace this
season of slowness that feels like weakness.
There is strength to be found there.
A year ago I
was training for a half marathon, running about 10 miles in a go. I explored the city, ran
trails hugging the Rocky Mountains, crossed streams and laughed at prairie dogs
that warned one another of my arrival just in time to dive back into their
holes, their whistles trailing behind them.
Today, it took me 40 minutes to walk less than two miles, with a brief
stop at a bench at the halfway point. At
36 weeks pregnant, I can’t go fast or far from home. My feet pound the same steps of the same path
and I’m passed by the same retired go-getters who comment that “I’m walking for
two” or “Must be any day now, eh?”
But in the
slowness and the sameness, I strain to hear that still, small voice that speaks
to me as I pass one strong tree after another, standing stately by the stream
my path parallels. The Voice whispers, “She
shall be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water that brings forth its fruit
in its season. And its leaf does not
wither; and in whatever she does, she prospers.” And the words, strangely familiar, are the
first of many such songs of hope for the weary that I happen to come across in
Psalm 1 in the few minutes of quiet I snatch in the mornings.
Firmly
planted. Watered. Bearing fruit.
Prospering.
Without even
moving?
Like the
story that Jesus shares with His disciples about birds not panicking over lack
of food or flowers not being frantic about finding clothing, I can sink into
the soil here for a little while. A
constantly transplanted seed cannot thrive as well as one that stays firmly
planted. And so God seems to be urging
me to remain as I am. Accept this gift. Dig deep, be watered and revel in the slow
work of God.
"Cease
striving and know that I am God. I will
be exalted in the nations, I will be exalted in all the earth," another psalm
singer belts out.
My pregnant
body is teaching me the beauty of diminishing, distilling my faith into a
silent pool to soak in instead of a body of water to forge.
But this
changed body is also teaching me about love.
It is only
twisted God humor that chose women, who innately struggle more with body image
than men, to be the ones to gain weight, be stretched, left with permanent
scars and marks like the rotten milk ruts left under the lazy susan of my parent’s
kitchen table, charted with purple veins mapping courses to unknown lands, left
with too much saggy skin some places and not enough padding in others and a
belly button that resembles a Muppet nose when all is said and done. Good one, God.
Or perhaps
rather than a malicious meting out of a curse on our bodies, it is God’s upside-down
way He likes to hand out unexpected blessings.
A severe mercy.
Sometimes I
like to stand naked in front of the mirror, marveling at this ludicrous body
that doesn’t feel like mine. I tenderly touch the too-tight skin stretched over a tiny human body and soul
growing within mine. I'm in awe of this mystery.
But I also fear that my husband will laugh at making love to a body that
is so deformed and abnormal—so different from the woman that he married. And yet all he ever says is exactly what I need
to hear:
“You are
beautiful.”
“You are the
perfect size.”
“Your body
is incredible.”
And in those
moments I know that I am truly loved.
Not for how fast I am, what a good cook I am, what I can achieve in
school, how many languages I am fluent in, how creative of a mom I am, or how
unblemished and perfect my feminine body is.
I am loved
because I am loved.
Not even
loved in spite of being
pregnant, but loved even because I am pregnant. I’m loved just because I’m loved. And I
will be loved even after this baby leaves its forever tattoos behind.
Pregnancy is
a gift. God gives some women the
inconvenient, uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing experience of pregnancy to
teach us that we can no longer define ourselves by our achievements or by our
appearance. He wants us to be weak so
that we will accept help from others. He
wants us to slow down so that we will notice more. He wants us to be needy so that we will look
around for healing and find that He is already feeding, clothing and nurturing
us in ways unique to us. He wants us to
cease striving and know that He is God—and that we are not. And He wants us to change form so that we
will know that we were never loved for our bodies to begin with.
And so in
these final weeks of pregnancy, though I feel frustrated at being grounded when
my over-achieving self wants to be out doing, I will think about those strong
trees firmly planted by streams of water, calmly stretching their roots down to
the stream. They do not fear heat or
cold, rain or storm, because they are nourished by the Source of everything
good. Just because they are not moving
doesn’t mean there isn’t growth happening.
And they know that not only will be they be taken care of, but that they
are lavishly loved, adored even. Just
like me.
~~~
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Labels: motherhood, pregnancy, Spiritual Lessons, womanhood