I fully expected our baby to arrive during Holy Week or Eastertide—after all, first babies are notoriously late... But our unnamed baby came during Lent. He needed to come early for his sake and mine. Looking back on it all, I know it was a severe mercy that nothing in our birth plan got to happen. It was a mercy from God that I had to be cut open, as I had an internal infection no one knew about, and baby had two knots in his umbilical cord. It was a Lenten kind of mercy, where all our prep and planning turned to ashes, but we were alive.
It was a howling whirlwind for those five days in hospital, a nightmare of emotions, doctors, nurses, specialists, and unhealthy food (seriously, why is hospital food made out of nothing nutritious?). It was overwhelming with so many lights, so many instructions, and medications I'd never have chosen, all accompanied by almost no sleep. Tohu vavohu. Chaos. Lent.
We were finally released to go 'home'—a house I'd never slept in before. Not only did we end up in the hospital (the last place I wanted to have our baby) two weeks early, we left our Summit cabin and came 'home' with baby to our new house full of still-packed boxes. We were supposed to have a proper farewell with our cabin, to have all the boxes unpacked, and a home ready to welcome our baby. Instead, we were bleary-eyed wild people, one of us with emotions off the map of the known, wondering where to find the soap, the blue jeans, and our cast iron skillet. Nothing felt normal and our bedroom didn't even have a door on it that first night. Lent—long days.
I missed Holy Week. I missed Easter. I missed Pentecost. I was stuck in Lent. I found out that I don't like my Lenten self. I've never known I could be so scary and unfeeling. But there were moments, whole days, where I wouldn't recognise the person inside my brain and body. She was unstable and mean and angry. The darkness and despair of Good Friday indwell me far more than I imagined.
This Lent feels long and tiring in a way I've never known Lent to feel before, even in some dark times. And while I know we've entered Ordinary (ordered/numbered) Time in the Church calendar, there is still part of me that just feels Lenty. The part of me that cried to my sister that I don't like being a mom (I actually do, but I'm a wimp and this is hard). The part of me that gets frustrated with our little guy when he wiggles nonstop and kicks me during feedings. The part of me that has yelled at my husband because everything is out of my control and I don't know what he's thinking. It all feels like Lent is still indwelling me, and I just want to get to Eastertide's glory or Pentecost's crazy awesomeness. Maybe I'd even enjoy hanging out in Ordinary Time, though it's not usually my favourite, since much of it takes place in horrid, hot summer.
Maybe I need a little more time to soak in Lent... "Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift." Like Mary Oliver, maybe I need to realise that seeing even the darkness in me is a gift, causing me to fall on the Mercy of God.
Things have evened out a good deal since Baby T's arrival. Walks help. Visits from friends have helped. Sleep helps. Worship helps shine the Easter light into those dark places of my Lenten soul. Work helps (until it doesn't). Hikes and coffee shop visits, and weirdly, grocery trips all help me feel more even-keeled. But now I know that the ashes of Lent are smeared deep and dark across my soul. Hope is not a thing with feathers, as Emily Dickenson famously wrote. Hope is a Person, real and solid, someone to be grasped—to grasp me when I'm sinking into my Lenten darkness. Hope is a Person: Jesus the Messiah—the Light of the World we're reminded of in Advent, when the calendar resets...still in darkness, but with an eye ever toward the Morning Star.
