Carrying a light

A couple weeks ago, while sitting in meeting for worship, I felt a white light touch down in my head, and then light up beneath my belly button. It was clearly a blessing, and that the time, I thought that it could be a sign that I am pregnant or alternately that our family of four is complete and whole.

The second interpretation was far more likely, but the first one was accurate. We are in shock.

This pregnancy is very new, and I am fully aware that one half to a one third of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. At this point, it seems premature to say that I am having a baby, but I want to share that I am carrying light within me. Whatever else happens in the next year, this experience of the light will always be real to me, and true.

Like in my other two pregnancies, I often feel as though I am caught between two worlds. Sometimes, I float just a little bit out of my body. Sometimes, I feel the company of something wonderful and warm and strong and female. Sometimes, I believe I see things the way the new light within me might see them, and my children, standing beside me in the kitchen, light up like lanterns. They are a source of comfort and guidance.

A message that I received a couple weeks ago is coming into clearer focus as well. The message was that I am not able to do anything very well except to love, and it seems that I have a new opportunity to love here. This opportunity comes at the exclusion of other opportunities. We had planned to sell our chickens at a farmer’s market, but we are not sure we should be planning to do that anymore. We had been talking about a five-year plan for the farm, and now the most basic agreements about that are in question. Mothering babies has been very hard on my health in the past, and this time around, should I get to that point, I will be older and even less healthy than I was with my other two children. I feel as though I cannot see any farther into the future than the next two months. In some way, we are grieving.

At this time, I feel as though my thoughts and emotions are shared by the new light within me, and so I'm doing my best to be reassuring. I picture myself like the Statue of Liberty – solid and bearing the torch of hope. The image feels a bit overwrought, but it keeps coming to mind, so I'm not going to argue with it. More helpful than that is the sensation I had last night of being accompanied by women and bathed from head to foot in light. I know I am nourished by something beyond myself.



(Hi Friends! I’m going to end this essay with a note. It feels so important for me to share this writing with you, and I know that it will be easier for me to keep writing what I really need to write if I can keep posting it on the blog. At the same time, I’m feeling really tender and confused! This was not planned. I really cannot picture myself with another baby, and trying to do so is painful at this point. So even if a person felt like offering congratulations, I’m not at a place where I can receive them well. Prayer would be great, though. I’m always up for some of that.)