Quickening

Our daughter and son-in-law are expecting their first child in July.  Let’s just pause right there and scream with joy because that is very awesome news. They are established in their relationship, home and careers. They have planned and prayed for this for a long time.

Our whole family is trying to get our minds around our new roles. My husband and I have never been grandparents before and it is very strange because we look and feel super young. Our boys have never been uncles before.  Our parents have never been great grandparents before. So yes, this is scream-worthy news.

I’ve enjoyed this new chapter of my relationship with my daughter. She needs my consultation in a way she never has before. I’m writing down her different calls and texts because they are so precious and funny to me.

I like being the kind of wise person who has mastered three pregnancies and child rearing. I have answers for some of the things she is asking about these days. Although, some rules about pregnancy have totally changed.  Did you know pregnant women can’t eat Caesar salads anymore? It has something to do with uncooked eggs but the rest of us pregnant women through the centuries have been eating those salads since Caesar invented them. Weird.

Anyway, on Friday, I received this text from my daughter:

Her: I think I just felt my first flutter!

Me: EEEEEEEEK! Really?  What did it feel like?

Her: Like a quick whoop whoop waverly thing.  Really fast.  (My daughter has always been a master of inventing her own words for things; that’s probably why she’s a speech pathologist).

Me: Oh my! That sounds exactly right.

Her: EEEEEEEK!

Me:  I cannot tell you how exciting this is.

Amid the eeeeeeks, I just had to stop whatever I was doing last Friday and take it in.  Quickening is what it is called: the moment in pregnancy when the pregnant woman starts to feel or perceive fetal movements in the uterus.  

It’s such a big deal. It’s such a theological thing too.  Really. How many times have you or I been minding our own business unaware of the new life God has been knitting in some dark place for us?  We are walking along believing all is as it always has been, or even believing all is lost and then this whoop, whoop waverly thing happens.

We stop. Our eyes open wide. We become suddenly a little more alert. Our whole being opens up and says “What was that?”

And maybe we go about our business; thinking and believing those same usual things and suddenly another whoop whoop waverly thing hits.

Our Bible has been trying to tell us about this whoop whoop waverly thing for some time.  We can read story after story of God getting someone’s attention with some kind of flicker of new life. A burning bush, whoop, whoop waverly…a rainbow; a baby born under a star in a stable; the waters of baptism; a woman caught in adultery, released; a woman at the well, given Living Water; healing; resurrection.

Can you just picture the darkness and dankness behind that huge stone where Jesus’ body was entombed?  I cannot begin to understand what happened there; but it had to begin like a quickening.  In that dark place where all was lost and only death was present, something new was being knitted. Maybe it began like a flutter, like a whoop, whoop waverly thing. New life. Hope. New chapters. More to the story. God not finished.

EEEEEEEEK!