Resting in Hope

Keep me safe, my God,

for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord,"You are my Lord;

apart from you I have no good thing."

I say of the holy people who are in the land,

"They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight."

Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.

I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods

or take up their names on my lips.

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;

you make my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;

even at night my heart instructs me.

I keep my eyes always on the Lord.

With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;

my body also will rest secure,

because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,

nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

You will make known to me the path of life;

you will fill me with joy in your presence,

with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

-Psalm 16 (NIV; emphasis mine)

Things are difficult at work. I'm not sure what the future holds for me professionally, and of course pregnancy and my emotions complicate everything. The stress of the situation has been all-consuming, suffocating, hard on my body. Today I'm grabbing ahold of these words and not letting go. I will rest in hope; my heart will be glad, even my body will rest secure that God is in control of this. Thank you Lord, for the promises of your word.

A Tale Begun

Friends, we are expecting a baby boy this spring! Hubby and I are overjoyed, and our lives now seem to be filled with preparations for our new arrival. (I will be posting more about it as we get closer.) This time in our lives is reminded me of a poem I heard once read during an NPR interview, about 4 or 5 years ago. The interview was with Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1996. I was reminded of her work again today when it was announced that she'd passed away. Though the segment discussed many of Szymborska's poems, they ended the segment with a reading of a poem she published in 1993, in a collection entitled,"View With a Grain of Sand". The poem is "A Tale Begun", and it opens:

The world is never ready
for the birth of a child.

That's certainly how life feels right now to me! Every movement, every molecule of energy is directed by the anticipation of our son's coming, in getting our world ready for him. It is a busy time, with lots of joy and happiness, but also worries and weaknesses that accompany such a life change. It is a time of renewed gratitude and awareness of God's faithfulness as we endure these new challenges and prepare for all of the ones that lie ahead. The last two stanzas of the poem end in a sort of prayer for the coming child, and these are the words that have stuck with me for the past several years:

May delivery be easy,
may our child grow and be well.
Let him be happy from time to time
and leap over abysses.
Let his heart have strength to endure
and his mind be awake a reach far.


But not so far
that it sees into the future.
Spare him 
that one gift,
O heavenly powers.

-Wislawa Szymborska
(Polish Nobel laureate in Poetry, who passed away at age 88, yesterday)

I could sit here and dissect what it is I love about the specific, measured wording of these wishes-- for health, first and foremost; for happiness (but not continual, monotonous happiness); for the ability to overcome and endure things. But I most love the mental image of a mind that is awake and can reach far. Such a powerful gift that would be!

And yet, at the end, she cannot help but temper even that wish with a request for a protective limit.
It says so much about the heart of a parent, to me. And also, of our temptation to want to snatch control away from an all-powerful, all-loving God.
Beautiful, evocative stuff.

~Heather