As my frame grows, the aches and pains increase.  I can’t help but let out small verbal outbursts daily routines demand me to bend and stretch these small bodies of ours – mine (32 years) and yours (33 weeks).  The growing pains are reminders of all the aches and pains still yet to come.  It is as if my Body is remembering the physical suffering and stretching and making room to come.  It is as if my very physical frame has its own memories stored within that require their own processing in preparation of upcoming transitions.

The Body’s memory triggers the Mind’s.  I begin looking at the calendar to prepare me for the long December nights that will bring the long December days to follow.  My Mind sees the rounder face in the mirror and struggles to resign to its shape, knowing that this face will remain for many months to come before I can climb out of the valley created by pregnancy’s manipulations.  It is not simply vanity or selfishness that the Mind triggers.  It is the naming of time before I truly recognize myself in the mirror, before I feel the runner’s high after letting my feet fly on the trail, before I feel the fabrics and see the sights of my clothes packed away this past spring, before I remember fully who I am.

But the Body and the Mind cannot claim dominance in these next months.  They are not the primary story-tellers.  The final weeks of pregnancy, baby boy’s delivery, and the newborn months are when the Heart takes the lead.  This is the time when the Heart soars – swelling to beyond its usual size, bursting forth beyond its tame boundaries, spilling beyond appropriate limits, exaggerating itself to mirror the power of the moments.

As Krista Tippett names, Love in its purest form is like the womb.  Love is the raucous, out-of-control force which breaks and makes those intimately involved.

“A merger of pleasure and risk and sacrifice.
A dance of alternating vulnerabilities.
A wellspring of joy.
A challenge to endless learning by mistake.
A moment to moment evolution of care.”

For the months to come, Love will wreck my Body and test the strength of my Mind.  Love will invite the Heart to take the lead as I willingly sacrifice self to bring new life into a tired world.

To the one who wriggles around and already stretches the limits of the love within, I will give to you that which Love demands: my fragility, my vulnerability, my identity, my routines, my time, my energy, my very life.  Love will wreck me to make you.

Even as my Body groans and my Mind swirls, my Heart praises the wreckage.  My Heart still trusts in this radical hope that Love’s wreckage will make me, too.