Random thoughts

Today is my actual due date. . .according to the latest doctor report. It dawned on me today that so many people (not just family members) are sitting on pins and needles with us, waiting for Lily's birth. She is such a special little girl!

My aunt gave me a book today, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions by Sue Monk Kidd. Whenever I get a new book, I fan through the pages and check out the layout of it. I don't know why I do this. While fanning through, I thought I saw "Rilke" somewhere at the beginning, in the main paragraphs of the book. I stopped and flipped page by page to see if I could find it. You see, Rainer Maria Rilke is one of my favorite writers/poets. (I highly suggest Letters to a Young Poet. This book has impacted my life tremendously.) In flipping and scanning, I could not find his name, and I flipped a scanned a few times over. I later decided to pick up the book and read it. There, at the beginning of Chapter One, not in the main paragraphs of the book, but as an introductory quote, was this: "Patience is everything. Rainer Maria Rilke." I swear to you, this was NOT where I had seen his name, and after checking the first time, I just thought, Oh, I must have just thought I saw it. Maybe mixed a few letters up. To go back, not expecting it to be there, yet finding it, was a true gem. As mundane as it seems, it's one of those things that confirms that this book will be worth the reading. Because of that, I will be especially on the lookout for what I call signs. Just like what I was talking about in my post on Ash Wednesday, it's little episodes like this that confirm to me that this is what I should be doing. I wonder if it's a sign to have patience with Lily's coming.

Around the time I had separated from my first husband, I was also dealing with my father having been diagnosed with melanoma and my uncle having been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. It was not a good time. I carried around this huge weight of sadness. I remembered this Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle movie the girls had watched where this little boy kept telling lies. Well, every time he told a lie, a stone was placed in a bookbag that he had to carry around. Of course, the bookbag got heavy. After a while, he began to tell the truth, and when he did, he was able to lose a stone until, eventually, the bookbag was empty and he was cured of his lying habit. I likened my sadness to those stones in the bookbag. One night, I was lying in bed, and I imagined taking my sadness (those stones) out of my "bookbag" and just handing them over to God, one at a time. I got very sleepy doing this, so by the time I was nearly done with my stones, I was almost asleep. In that half-awake/half-asleep mode, I imagined the final stone cupped in my hands. It was as if God had told me to open my hands, so I did. There, instead of the stone, was a small, but beautiful, butterfly. I don't know how it happened, but my sadness went away. I guess you could say that in doing that little exercise, I gave it over to God. What amazes me is the confirmation that everything was going to be ok in that little butterfly.

I have given Lily over to God. I'm leaving her in His hands and trusting that the best will be done for her, even if the best is not what I, the little-knowing human that I am, would like to believe is best.

I am trying to prepare my heart for a thousand-piece break, and I am trying to prepare my heart for a blessing beyond belief and all the in-betweens. Ultimately, nothing I do will be enough to prepare me for the moment she arrives, and in some strange way, that excites me.