I am 35 weeks pregnant today and I cannot believe it. I can't believe in just a few weeks I will get to see this little baby boy of mine face to face. With the weeks dwindling down, my house is in full-on baby preparation. We have the hospital bag packed. The nursery paint job is nearly finished. The baby swing is set up and the clothes are washed. But last night, as I was sitting in bed with my husband, each of us reading baby books, the Lord began speaking to me of the space in my home, the space in my life, that was not yet prepared.
As I read about sleep routines and fussy weeks during growth spurts and the difficulty of breastfeeding, I felt a familiar knot start to form in my heart. It was the same feeling that I experienced a few weeks before I married Paul. It was similar to the feeling that welled up within me before youth group retreats where I knew I wouldn't get any sleep or the one that comes when I look at my phone and see someone calling who I know I'll have to talk to for an hour. It's the feeling that we all experience: the feeling which the Lord never intended for us, but which the Fall has made so common in our lives.
It is the fear of self-gift. It is the fear of having to sacrifice, to be inconvenienced, to have to think about another instead of just focusing on one's own needs and desires. It is the fear of living for something, someone other than oneself.
And I feel ugly talking about this dark part of my heart: the part that only wants to do what I want to do, to live how I want to live, to fulfill my own desires. But this is the part of my heart that the Lord is seeking most. This is the part of my heart that needs the truth of Jesus most especially, for it is the part of me that is most enslaved.
In Acts 2:35, we hear that we should "keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus who himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, reiterates this claim when he writes that "life grows by being given away and it weakens in isolation and comfort. Indeed, those who enjoy life most are those who leave security on the shore and become excited by" giving their life to others. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it most simply when she said, "A life not lived for others is not a life." Is this not the truth, then, that we need to cling to when this fear seems to cripple us?
For as much as we fear sacrifice and selflessness, I suspect that we would all agree that the experience of our lives has shown that the words of Jesus ARE true. If we look back on our lives, the times when we have put aside our own needs for those of another, the times when we were not so concerned with comfort or convenience, the times when we wanted someone else to experience love, are the times in which our hearts welled up with the greatest joy and deepest satisfaction. And it is in recalling these moments that the Lord reminds us that the most blessed, the most free, the most fulfilling life is the one given away for others.
So today, I choose to believe that these words of our Lord are true. I turn to the Lord and thank him for the GIFT of this baby boy who is coming: for the hours I will spend awake at night trying to lull him to sleep. I thank him for the many showers I won't have time to take because I'm too busy cleaning up spills and changing diapers. I thank him for the way my body will be different, for the stretch marks that will line my skin. I thank him for every moment when I will get to choose to forego my own needs for the sake of this child. For I am confident that through it all, He is blessing me with the fullest and most joyful life.
Today, let us all dare to look into our hearts and ask the Lord to reveal to us the places in which the fear of self-give reigns. Let us ask him to show us the situations and the relationships in which we are seeking our own comfort or where we are placing our own needs before another. And let us come before the Lord with confidence, asking him for the courage to accept the blessed life that he offers to us: the life given away, the life lived for others.
No comments:
Post a Comment