Introspections...

Sometimes, or if I'm really honest, A lot of the time....life is confusing.

Emotions are confusing.

Happenings IN life...are confusing.

Like losing a child.  It doesn't really make sense to my heart. 

And yet, it happens.  All the time.  Every day.  Every minute.  Every second. 

Loss.

But not to everyone.  And not to most babies.

Most babies that make it past the first trimester are born. 

They really are.

I keep telling myself this as I feel my growing daughter moving inside of me.  (finally, I can feel her!)

I tell myself that she will be born.  That she will make it.

But I feel a twinge of fear whenever I see another pregnant woman.  I hear my thoughts..."Will her baby make it?  Oh please...let her baby make it to life."   I don't know who I'm begging.  I don't know why I keep talking to the air as if it can hear me.  I don't know why I have the compulsion to ask for miracles...for it really IS a miracle...life.  All of it.

And yet, there it is.  Asking.  Praying.  Begging. 

For life to work.  To emerge. 

My 7 year old asked me who God was the other day.   I know lots of people have ideas about this.  Whole religions even.   But I had to be honest.  I told him I didn't think God was a who.  I told him that I felt that God was a reality.  A wholeness. An everything.  I took him outside and we watched the trees in the wind, fruit blossoms with all their wondrous color and honey bees dipping happily into the nectar they possess.  I squeezed his hand and said, "Baby bear....this is all God.  All of it.  God's not a who.  God's an everything. God is within and without and intertwined and beyond anything anyone can ever understand.  God is reality. God is all of what you see, and even more than you can comprehend." 

He smiled and said "I thought so!" 

Then, for the first time in this pregnancy, he kissed my belly. 

I felt the tears well up in my eyes, because this little boy-child has been looking sideways at my belly ever since we told our sons we would be having another baby.  Looking at me with concern.  Worry that should never be seen in a small boys eyes.  I've been watching him watching me. 

But...somehow, with the idea that God was more than an almighty BEING...he felt safe again.  Safe to wonder about the world.  Safe to love a little growing girl nested in his mothers womb.  Safe from a God that mimicked the unfairness of the Greek Zeus. 

No, the comfort came from God being everything.  Everywhere.  In that, he could find enough peace to love his baby sister.  In that...he left his fear behind. 

God is real. 

It's just not an it.  Not a he.  Not a she.  Not an identity. 

God is Reality. 
And as my sweet husband wrote in his beautiful book, Being Ourself
God...is Ourself.