Before a Name: Inside My Mother's Womb

Inside the center of every flower is my mother's face

          I suppose my story really started before I was given a name, because even before I was born, there were stories told about me by my parents.  Ever since I was a child, here and there, my parents dropped details about the months leading up to my birth.  By their accounts, when my mother was pregnant with me, she had symptoms of dizziness and stomach pain.  It wasn’t until she found tapeworms in her stool that she began to worry.  She went to a clinic where she was told they could do nothing for her, because she was already five months pregnant.  For months, until the day I was born, she hosted not only a fetus but also intestinal parasites that robbed her of nutrients and peace of mind.  Only after she gave birth to me, did she ingest pills to chemically exterminate the parasites.  All the while during her pregnancy she had worried about me—that in some way, shape, or form I would come out disadvantaged due to being malnourished.

Photo courtesy of Maggie C. who
carries and will birth her joy in 2012

           My parents were relieved to see that I was formed without any abnormalities and that all my organs functioned properly.  However, according to my father, as an infant I could hardly keep down my food; I kept throwing up after each feeding.  Even as a toddler, I hardly ate and often times would vomit when overly excited.  Older women would take my wrist in their hands and say, “What is this? It looks as though it’ll snap like a twig?”  Whenever my father told me stories of how any small amount of food used to induce me into gagging, my mother’s eyes would glaze over with shame.  I don't know if there's any correlation between a fetus' development and having tapeworms, but my mother seemed to have thought so and somehow this always gave her a twinge of guilt.  As for me, as a child, the story left me chagrined and apologetic toward my mother because I felt that I too was a freeloader, like the tapeworms in her belly, who robbed her of food and peace during a very trying time in her life.  It wasn’t until I became a teenager that I started to appreciate the story; I became enamored by the idea of vying for nutrients in my mother’s womb.  I thought if I could overcome tough conditions as a fetus, then surely I was prepared to overcome obstacles in life.  I told myself I was created to be a survivor.

I asked my mother to pose for a picture with this tree.
This is what she gave.  Always more than expected :)
(July 2009)

          And so, the stories, which I had heard as a child about myself inside my mother’s belly, became the seeds that would later sprout up into my life-long inquiries up to Heaven.  And on those occasions as a child—and well into my teenage years and eventual adulthood—when in Sunday school, when the scriptural reference every so often would pop up to be: You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139: 12-13a), I wondered in awe.  I couldn’t help but to ask: “God, did you really know me when I was inside my mother’s womb?  Did you know me before I even had a name?"

      

"Look! Look! I Did It!"

My nephew

          I’ve worked or interacted with kids for the bulk of my adult life.  So most of my thinking—how I organize my thoughts in metaphors, pictures, symbols, stories—are set in images involving children.  I suppose I think that if a truth can be pared down—completely shaved down to its bare bones so that a child can understand it—then that is a Truth worth keeping.

          Today, I spent the morning with my nephew E, who is now twenty months old.  He likes to take his toy cars and balance them on the edges of chairs so that they're on the verge of teetering but do not fall off.  He then runs to me and grabs me by the legs and says, “Look!  Look!”  He shines his eyes up at me with his aren't-you-proud-of-me-smile, which involves every muscle of his face.  My natural response to him is a burst of unbridled cheers!  At that point, I pick him up and kiss him all over.  I just want to eat him!

          Today, I realized that when all is said and done, this is how I would like to come to my Heavenly Father.  I don’t want to cry and have Him pick me up.  I don’t want to whine and say, “I can’t do this (life), it’s just too hard.”  I don’t want to pout and say, “Give me this, give me that.”  I don’t want to complain and say, “But that person doesn’t know how to share or play nicely, so I don’t want to either.”  Mostly, I don't want to live my life without wanting to share my moments of joy with Him.  I want to grab His attention because I am happy.  I want to run to Him to tell Him, “Look!  Look!  I know how to balance things on precarious edges and I've found pleasure in doing so!”  I want to run to God and say, “Aren’t you proud of me!  I did it!”  I want my Father to look on my face and beam with cheers.  I want Him to say, “Well done, good and faithful daughter! Woohoo!  Come into my arms.  Let’s celebrate together!”