Learning to Breathe Again

His name is Noah. Everyone told me for the first twenty weeks of my pregnancy that it must be a girl. Why else would I be so sick, why else would his heart be so quick, why else would I burst into a fit of tears in the face of a poor, desperate bookstore employee charged with the unfortunate task of informing me I had to purchase a new cap and gown for graduation? (Aside from the fact that more than I’d like to admit I’m not a very nice person.) They all assumed it must be a fierce little redheaded girl. Justin and I even started believing them. But I really wanted a little boy first. I wanted Noah. And at our ultrasound there he lay (feet firmly planted in my bulging bladder), Noah, fidgeting in the dark, my baby boy.

 

And at the same time not mine. God is God who calls the leviathan from the deep and puts a hook in his nose. He owes me no answers. And Noah is His. I never had any delusions about being gifted with tremendous faith. Yet, somehow in the last year, I learned to trust without a doubt that He is God, and I am not, and things are better that way. I read the entire book of Job in one sitting at the lowest of my lows. I wept with Job, I raged at his so-called friends, and in the end I was silent in the face of my Maker. Those who don't know God tend to hate the book of Job. Most of those who love Him are not much more a fan of it. For me, it is the most beautiful book in the Bible and has offered solace in pain, strength in darkness, and hope that above all is God and closer than my baby's heartbeat is God.

 

I hadn't noticed that I had been holding my breath. Somehow after the pain of a miscarriage dulled and the grief wasn't so near I took in a sip of air and caged it in my lungs. I lived five months on one breath. I got pregnant again, taught classes, laughed, lived, loved all with one inhale. As I lay down staring at a screen, cool gel on my belly and my husbands hand in mine, I saw the Christmas light blinking of a heartbeat and I exhaled. I felt like I breathed again for the first time. I felt like all the oxygen in the world had been remade and for the first time I would taste sky and become alive.