This Fragile Life

For You shaped me, inside and out.

You knitted me together in my mother's womb long before I took my first breath.

I will offer You my grateful heart, for I am Your unique creation, filled with wonder and awe.

You have approached even the smallest details with excellence;

Your works are wonderful;

I carry this knowledge deep within my soul.

Psalm 139:13-14 The Voice

This summer I had the privilege of watching a pair of nuthatches sing their calls back and forth to each other, taking turns to fly in and then out again of the blue and green woven basket that held sand buckets and shovels and their babies. At first, they were cautious and noticeably hesitant for I had invaded their space.

Weeks before, I had started lifting out of the basket the big yellow dump truck when I realized there was a pine needle-colored nest with bird eggs somewhere halfway down. Oh no. I backed away; sure that I had destroyed some momma's happy home. Jeff told me a couple of days later he had seen a nuthatch fly into my writing shed. Open-air, tin-roofed, rafters high, it overlooks the sandbox where Barrett and Mikah build sandcastles and dig for treasure. The perfect place to raise a bird family. I kept my fingers crossed.

And sure enough, if I sat quietly, I could watch a pair of little soft-brown birds sing their morning song to each other, fluttering from the Elaeagnus to the Nandina, alert, looking quickly in every direction until deciding it was safe to descend. She would disappear into the basket with something soft in her beak; within moments the eager little peeps of the hatched babies would ring out as she ascended and flew away. A minute later her mate would appear, and he would do the same. I was so relieved. I hadn’t destroyed her nest after all. She had not been forced to abandon her eggs.

One morning Barrett sat quietly in my lap for a full 5 minutes. Only whispering back to me as we watched and listened to momma and daddy feed their children. Again and again and again. That was a lot of quiet for a 3-year-old.

The morning before I had discovered my little nuthatches tirelessly feeding their baby birds, I had watched a 5-minute video telling the story of a couple who discovered that they too wanted to choose the fragility of life. She said she was young. They were not together as a couple. They thought their only option was an abortion. The young woman insisted the young man drive her there. There was a stop sign near the entrance. A woman approached their stopped car and asked her to roll her window down. She did. And the woman told them there were other options. Other possibilities. This kind stranger offered a sonogram.

The young woman accepted. She heard her daughter's heartbeat. She saw her moving body. She chose to hold onto hope. She chose to reach for life. She chose to protect their daughter, forming inside her.

When I was younger, in my twenties and thirties I followed the common thinking of our culture that women had ‘a choice’. The ones who shaped the culture chose their words carefully. They didn’t say kill or destroy or baby. They concentrated their message on the woman. They described a decision. A solution to the unexpected, the inconvenient.

Oddly, for me, one evening reading a rather feminist authored book about folk tales that women hand down from generation to generation, I changed my thinking. (I had never realized all those tales of staying away from the river, the dark woods, the seemingly friendly old lady offering the apple were warnings to these ancient women’s children to keep them safe!). Anyway, in one paragraph the author asked the question, “What kind of culture tells you to destroy the life inside of you that every fiber of your being tells you to protect at all costs?” (My paraphrase.)

That question gave me pause. I remembered the wave of nausea that washed over me so many years before. I had just sat down around the table on my friend’s deck for our monthly ‘Girl’s Night’. I lit my first cigarette of the day, (obviously I was just a social smoker) and immediately put it out. I gave my freshly purchased pack of Virginia Slims Menthol Lights to one of my friends and bought a pregnancy test on the way home. Yep, the next morning, there was that line, sure and undeniable on the indicator. I was pregnant. My body had chosen to protect the tiny one hidden within my womb. I never smoked again.

A few months later I stood in my kitchen, tears running down my cheeks as I held on to every word spoken by my doctor on the other end of the line. “If you are miscarrying there is nothing you did to cause it…”. All I knew, as I listened to her words of reassurance was that I was already completely connected to this child unseen, and I didn’t want to lose it. I had pretty much no control over the child growing within me, but I would fiercely do anything necessary to protect it.

That child would hold onto life, enter into our world in a darkened delivery room without a cry, and be placed in my waiting arms, staring into the light with wonder.

Life. It is a mystery. It is fragile and delicate.

These days in my conversations with the Lord I think I hear one instruction. Embrace this life. Don’t take a minute for granted. Hold hallowed each day, from the orange dawning of the sun to the darkened skies of the night. Breathe deeply the breath of God. Share His word. Forgive the broken. Offer a grateful heart, filled with wonder and awe. In everything be thankful. For this life is fragile.

Question: What would your life look like if every morning you offered each moment of your life to the Creator of Life? And if each evening you contemplated what you were most thankful for that day?

This is the video I referenced. I found it amazing that this young mother chose life – because a stranger was persistent in asking questions and offering another ‘choice’.

Joyce and Stephen’s Testimony The Hope Center Woodstock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRjSZQJlp2c&t=353s

Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype is a book by Jungian analyst, author and poet Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., published in 1992. This is certainly not a ‘Christian book’, but God used it to matter-of-factly challenge what I had accepted as a 'convenient’ and logical truth. I was very wrong.

Small StoriesGeorgia TannerAugust 20, 2021Comment