Author: Bec Oates.
Have you ever eaten so much that your stomach felt uncomfortable? No, no, of course you haven’t. Well, try and imagine it. You feel bloated and uncomfortable. Imagine that feeling and then increase it by, I dunno, maybe 1000%. That is what it’s like to be pregnant, full term.
You start off rubbing your belly as a small bump emerges. Caressing it, enjoying the sensation, swanning around the shops in a fitted dress with your belly on show, buying cute booties that you’ll never use and obsessing about which pram to buy because having the right pram is important so maybe we should mortgage the house a little.
That’s 30 weeks.
Then there is 38, 39, 40 weeks.
Your swanning around becomes waddling. Your fitted tummy dress is quietly replaced with a tent. You buy bras with letters from the alphabet you did not know existed. Your feet have swollen, but it’s not so much of a problem because you can’t see them anymore. You wee… a little too easily. And you can’t wait. You can’t wait to get this HUGE THING OUT OF YOU. And do you know what you don’t think? In the history of pregnancy do you know what thought has never entered the mind of a full term pregnant woman?
I feel like riding a donkey.
I’m pretty sure Mary was stoked.
Cos when you are about to give birth to the son of God it’s not like you are thinking perhaps God would grant you some kind of comfort? Some special treatment? Perhaps a delivery fit for a king ?
Cos God’s plan for my life includes a smooth road right? No adversity? No discomfort?
Cos that was what he promised right? If I follow him?
Or does he ask me to trust him through adversity?
Trust that even though I pictured myself reclining with a glow on my face as my brow is wiped by my buff husband, my pillows fluffed and my hair cascading over my shoulders as I birth my son with minimal discomfort and maximum elegance, I find myself straddling a donkey at 39 weeks pregnant, frequently wincing as my hemorrhoids kiss the saddle, that God knows what he is doing.
Because he is God.
And I am not.
*Mic drop God*