Body

There’s a nine pound newborn sleeping in our bedroom down the hall. Cooing and grunting in a bassinet next to my wife, this small stranger currently resembles me more than her. It’s uncontested that his lips are his mother’s. It’s an alien phenomenon… to glimpse a couple-of-hours-old baby and know at the deepest level it’s in one breath part and apart of you. It’s completely and totally you and unlike you. It has a form that resembles you but it’s essence is purely it’s own. It contains a fresh expression of what love, courage, vulnerability, peace and patience looks like.

One-eye-opened, alert to every minor noise he makes, she still looks radiant even after two strung-together hours of sleep. Beau’s body reminds me of God. It reminds me of Kirsten and myself and the Universe wrapped up in one single flesh-wearing body. The floorboards creak under my carefully placed feet walk-run to the kitchen to warm the bottle for Beau’s next meal. The alarm from my phone wakes me up standing and I clumsily hit “stop” to cease the noise. I woke up 17 minutes before the alarm I set could remind me to get up. I drop a few drips on the back of my hand and rush back to the room to grab the increasingly fussy gremlin. Without skipping a beat he knows what to do. Guzzling the bottle like he just finished a marathon, Beau goes full steam ahead. Twelve minutes later he’s slowing down and as milk trails down his wrinkle-less face, his eyelids flutter and he drops his head back in contentment. I laugh and remember. Remember just a few days prior when I was holding him after he had nursed on Kirsten and she went back to bed to get some rest. I held him and rocked him like a novice dad does in a hospital room backlit gently by Seinfeld on tv playing silently. I remember staring from the fourth floor room overlooking the trees and fog and whispering night. I prayed a prayer of gratitude and just stared. Stared at him, then her, then back at him in disbelief. As he dozed off in my arms, all I could think about was a phrase/mantra I repeated often that day:
Be here, now.

And I was. Because that’s all we get and that’s all there could ever be. And that’s what I pray for my wife and I for our family as we grow into parenthood. Present, loving awareness of what IS. Right now. Because we can miss “it” right in front of us. And not just the wonderful times — the less than great times too. I’ve spent far too much time rushing ahead, attempting to drown my present moments in distraction until the desired time arrived. I’ve also gotten lost more times than I can remember looking back at the vapor of previous memories and regrets.

There are angelic beings draped in nurse’s clothing tending to Beau and helping Kirsten heal. With every wince and tear they remind her it’s okay to feel. That she’s a miracle worker and life-giver. To give herself some credit for bringing new cellular love into this world. That kind of act takes time to recover from.

There are friends who bring a week’s worth of groceries and snacks to feed mine and my wife’s tired bodies. They’re a picture, a walking embodiment of the Divine bearing gifts of Mexican food and sparkling water. Literally and figuratively feeding us and, in turn, participating in the feeding of our new baby boy who relies solely on the body of his mother for survival. They are Christ. Not just a reminder of Christ. They are, in that moment, in that life-giving and life-affirming action, Christ for us and with us.

There is a season of Advent, celebrated in December, marking an arrival of a boy to reveal God to the world in a unique way. It’s never been more real.

Dec. 6, 2019