On Gestating Peace

Advent II

I heard a great sermon on Sunday¹ about how peace finds us, not always at our most blissed out and best, but sometimes amidst life’s crushing load. The way the lullaby chimes in the hospital sing out a baby’s birth, even on the pediatric cancer unit, even in the CCU, even in the midst of code blues. This second week of Advent, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to cultivate (or gestate) peace. Especially in such an anxious, broken, and brutal world.

Some of my favorite scripture passages, both from the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures, are the passages that speak of peace.

John’s version of the gospel gives us Jesus’ farewell discourses, his long goodbye to the disciples. Amid that teaching are these lines:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

Peace is a gift we’ve already been given from the One who comes to teach us how to walk in the path of love.

Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi includes instruction for an anxious age:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-8)

The peace that comes from our Creator, our Source, defies and surpasses what we can understand. Often it doesn’t make sense. Like the calm that can be found in the eye of a storm.

And then there’s the treasure trove of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, a word that is thick with texture and meaning. Peace is part of what it means. So is wholeness. Which gets at the idea that peace is not simply the absence of war or discord, but the presence of justice, of people and situations made right and whole. The Psalmist sings of this in Psalm 85, verses 10-11, casting a vision of the day when:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
    righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
    and righteousness will look down from the sky.

I love that image of the right and the whole embracing each other with a kiss. What a stirring and wholesome vision of peace.

After a lot of high drama in the early days of fertility treatments and pregnancy, we have reached a relatively peaceful stage of gestation. My energy has returned (I don’t feel like I got hit by the fatigue truck daily like I did during the first trimester), the poorly named “morning sickness” that caused nausea all day has mostly gone, and the anxiety about whether this is really happening has dissipated. (I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve checked a chart on the statistical risk of miscarriage by week.) There are new things now: wildly vivid dreams, back pain, middle of the night wake ups. But mostly we are enjoying the gifts of peace: grounding, growing, healing, nesting, and dreaming.

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As I reflect on the journey that brought us here, I’ve been thinking about some of the things that conspired in earlier days to disturb my peace. Not to wallow in them or for you, dear readers, to say “poor Lindsey,” but to remember that peace is often elusive. Especially when we are in pain and our monkey minds are wrapped up in anxiety and the need to escape the current situation or control what was never ours to control.

I’ve been thinking about the handful of people, who upon news of my leave taking from parish ministry and journey with infertility, told me to “just relax.” They were few and far between compared to those who received the news with grace and the vulnerability of their own stories and understanding and prayer. But those were painful moments. As though I hadn’t been doing my best to “just relax” for the last three years. It’s not a state you can simply will into being.

I’ve been thinking about the stress of just-in-time, mail-order fertility meds. And how helpful it is to have a partner who can be a little bit of an asshole on the phone. Who knows how to wield words like “complaint” and “manager” and “escalate” so the last dose of medicine that you need to administer by 8:30 a.m. (to make sure you don’t blow your whole cycle) is on your doorstep by 6 a.m. and there’s a backup plan in place if the plane or the truck or the conveyor belt gets delayed.

I’ve been thinking about the former colleague who reached out to offer me an embryo. On its face it was an extremely thoughtful and generous offer. But, as a college professor liked to say: “The how is just as important, and often more important, than the what.” At that particular moment, we were waiting on my period and hopeful for our first IVF cycle, not at all in a place to consider donor embryos. Especially from someone I had history but no current relationship with. Suddenly someone I hadn’t spoken to in years had inserted themselves into the most intimate and vulnerable part of our lives without a single question about where we were in our process and it didn’t feel good.

My mouth (and later text) spoke true words: This is so thoughtful and generous, but we’re not at that point in our journey and think it would be better to donate the embryo anonymously to the lengthy list of people already at that stage of their journey and waiting.

But my body spoke true words to me, too. (The older I get, the less it lets me bullshit myself and the more it pushes back against my socialization.) When I got off the phone, a wave of nausea swept over me. I was in my car and actually had to pull over to make sure I didn’t puke. This was not the path to growing our family. I didn’t need to give it another thought. Of course, that didn’t keep my monkey mind from winding up when we reached other difficult points in our journey – should I have responded differently? Would we end up needing a donor embryo? What then?

Peace is difficult to find in moments like these. When you’re so wrapped up in your head, or stuck in (or distancing yourself from) your body because of pain, that it seems as if nothing will ever break through. If this is or has been you (and hasn’t it been us all at some point?), I am with you and sending prayers for peace that is beyond your understanding.

I did a lot of writing and praying and crying and laying on of hands in the pursuit of even some semblance of peace through the worst of these moments. I also tried to keep in mind one more description of peace from the gospels. When Jesus sends the disciples out into the world to share his message of healing and love, he instructs them to depend on the kindness of strangers. But he also tells them that if they enter a house and do not encounter peace there, to shake the dust off their feet and let their peace return to them. (Matthew 10:12-14, Luke 10:5-6)

I really love that image, both of shaking the dust off and remembering that there is a peace that is mine. There is a peace that is yours. We can share it. And if it is not reciprocated, we can call it back, let it return to us, to sustain us until we find someone and some place where it is.

It’s almost as if, on the path to peace, God wants us to remain whole.

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This week I started a new project that is a bit of a throwback. When I was a child, my mom (a home-ec teacher turned school counselor) would dust off her sewing skills in the fall to make me a new dress for Christmas. She taught me some of her skill, coaching me through summer 4-H projects. It’s been a long time since I’ve used my sewing machine and even longer since I’ve made anything to wear. But my growing body and a desire for some nostalgia and nesting sent me to JoAnn’s this year just to see what I might find. A gorgeous forest green knit velvet with sequins worked into the fabric grabbed my eye the moment I walked in the door. I made several loops around the store before I let myself do more than look at or even touch it. I found a doable pattern and made a promise to myself. This year, instead of pushing and pulling on clothes that aren’t quite right in dressing rooms all over the metro, I’m measuring my body and doing the work to take the pieces and make something beautiful and unique and whole. There’s a lot of peace to be found in shaking the dust off and piecing things together.

Praying that peace with, for, within, and around you, too.

Much love,

Lindsey

1. Thank you to the Rev. Robyn Bles and Wakonda Christian Church for the warm Advent welcome!