The Sea in my Head: tossed by the waves

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Even with a toddler lying between us in bed, I can sleep as hard as a rock until I wake up to nurse him back to sleep. But lately with pregnancy taking over more and more parts of my body, my mind races at two in the morning and I hope upon hope that the pain shooting through my right leg goes away before I have to get up to pee again.

The past few days my mind has been a sea of waves, certainly tossed and blown by winds of all sorts. I still wonder where I should have my baby, scared that I may make the wrong decision. We wait four more weeks and then go get my platelets checked; if they are low again, I’m high-risk category and everything changes.

There are things that are easy to pray about, that are clear and answer-worthy. Then there are weird things like this, decisions that have to be made but can’t really be clear, except that I have more peace about one place more than the other. So this morning I rely on that peace, and in tears I hang up the phone after making my first OB appointment. I’m 17 weeks pregnant.

Eliot and I have been sleeping in until 9 or so every morning, and I’m so thankful that I’ve got a boy who likes the late morning versus the early sunrise. Today my body and mind and soul woke up ready for some quiet. Travis is home this morning on spring break, so I left them at 8:00 to send a few emails and make banana nut muffins.

On Facebook I saw that Chinua Achebe died. His most famous book is titled after this line from a Yeats poem: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…” I feel this anarchy inside me. We spent part of the break watching movies and resting at home. I hardly left the house, except for some breakfast outings or to visit friends here and there. I wonder day after day why I can’t get quiet enough, why I’m so prone to distraction and so tired of sitting on the couch.

This morning the TV haunted me from across the living room. After eating a half of a muffin, I put it away. Sound familiar? Probably because I do it every few months. Though I’m not really consistent, I can’t explain how much peace fills the room when that black box is not in it. Still, I long for the relax of watching a film.

There seem to be so many things I want, and still my little world is prone to fall apart. I want to put Eliot to bed on time, in his crib. I want to clean my living room and keep it organized daily. I want to gut out Eliot’s room and get it ready for a brother to share it with. I want to go get groceries that are healthy and take me 30 minutes to make meals out of. I want Jesus because of who He is and all that He’s done. And I really, really want this little Isaiah Desmond inside of me to be safe.

All I can hope for this morning is that my mind settles and the waves die down. That’s all I can hope for daily, and I wait for the sweet peace of Jesus to cover me. I say again, I need you. And I sit back and realize that maybe all things haven’t yet fallen apart, and that the center is in Someone who cannot be fathomed or understood by the storms of my heart.