Tuesday, August 09, 2005

labor pains

my housemate lara started having contractions this morning at 1 am. it's 10 pm and still no baby. man, screw all those movies where the lady suddenly goes into labor and they have a hilarious frenzied journey to get to the hospital barely on time. the flustered dad would be played by hugh grant or some other actor that is good at acting endearingly bumbling.

anyway, the doctor told her not to come into the hospital until the contratctions were 4 minutes apart or her water broke. we sat in the backyard chatting this afternoon and jeff her husband chalked up our new 4 square court. i've never been so close to a woman in labor, excluding my mom - one time being when i was born and the other two at the birth of my brothers, but i was too young to really figure out what was going on. so i try to hold back from peppering her with too many questions, but she is patient with me, and sometimes jeff and i can get her to laugh.

so hopefully sooner rather than later, their baby will enter the world. and we will have another (really small) housemate. and they will be parents. how crazy cool is that?

anyway, seeing lara breathe her way through a contraction makes the metaphor of creation groaning as a woman in labor for the return of Jesus and the full redemption of the world takes on new vividness for me. hey, i'm in theological school, of course i'm going to be thinking about this. i think we jump to the climactic part of the baby being pushed out because well, it's the most spectacular and painful part. but to see lara go about the day, waiting expectantly, quietly, tiredly because she's been up for the past 22 hours, and watching jeff attentively timing contractions by her side... this is a part of the process too. ordinary as it is, we go about our daily lives, the little things like errands, communicating with friends, eating, cooking, cleaning, dating and so on ... we feel the labor pains come on as we yearn for our redemption for life to be changed and returned to how it was meant to be. and we hope. and it hurts. but what's coming will be so amazing that the pain will be forgotten because it will all have been worth it. part of me feels guilty to have co-opted lara actual real pain to my little analogy. but the other part of me is glad to be reminded that these papers i am writing are not the whole of life, that there are important and miraculous things happening around me, and that there is much to hope for in the waiting.

i can't wait to meet lara and jeff's baby. i can't wait to babysit.

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