Seasons of Grace

My husband has been gone for six months now.  He wrote that in some ways it seems impossible that he’ll see me again– that I seem almost more a figment of his imagination–and I understand.  After months and months of talking through keyboards and the occasional computer screen, it is very hard for me to comprehend that I’ll see him in flesh and blood, that he’ll have shape, that my hand can cup skull and find roundness, not an object flat.

I’m not sure how people made it through 14, 18 month deployments.  Or in other wars, how they made it through years of separation.  It must be an entirely different mental process than what I’ve allowed myself: would one really have to function as if the other was simply no longer a part of their world?

At any rate, David has been gone for six months and I couldn’t have imagined what that would feel like before actually experiencing it.

My midwife spent my prenatal yesterday carrying on gentle conversation while pressing her hands on my body to do cranial sacral therapy.  It was one of the few times since David left that I’ve received intentional, giving touch.  I left the appointment and cried happy, grateful tears.

This weeks marks 35 weeks of pregnancy.  I dreamed I stood in a sunny room talking to my mom and grandma, and out slipped a tiny, baby girl.  We’ll see if dreams hold the water they have in the other pregnancies and can actually predict the baby’s sex.

But, a tiny baby.  It flips and turns in my belly and while it has made the deployment all the more challenging, it’s also been one of the key gifts that has ministered strength to my heart.  Somehow, when I quiet and feel the miracle growing and stretching inside, when I watch my belly roll as knees and elbows swipe across my flesh, all the world quiets as well.  It all makes sense again.

This has been, emotionally and physically, the easiest pregnancy I’ve carried.  It’s not without its own sets of worries and aches, but on the whole, it has only been a gift.  This is a baby full of grace.  And hard as it’s been, I’d have to say this deployment has been six months of grace (so far) as well.