The Theology of a Pregnant Stomach

So one of the things I've heard from multiple sources (friends, articles, books, magazines, random strangers) was that once your stomach gets big, get ready for Stranger Danger: random strangers coming up to you and touching your stomach, with or without asking permission. I heard warnings, complaints, laments, and annoyances, the most descriptive and apt one probably being, "I just don't understand how when a woman gets pregnant, it means that her body becomes public property."

So I braced myself. And had two surprises.

The first is that very few people--stranger or known entity--has touched my stomach without asking. I can only think of one complete stranger in the past 9 months. Most seem afraid to even ask permission. This could be in part because I'm a pastor; my parishioners are for the most part very respectful and sensitive people. I smile to myself when I see some of my older ladies' hands start to gravitate toward my stomach, and they catch themselves and pull them back. There's a definite respect for my personal boundaries at war with the desire to touch that big, irresistble belly. It's fun to watch that battle play out. It also could be the place that I live; personl boundaries are very highly respected in this part of the country, along with the flag, 4-H, and anything to do with corn.

But the second surprise for me has been discovering that I actually want people to touch my stomach. At least I certainly don't mind it.  It was hard for awhile to put my finger on why I might be feeling that way, and it didn't become clear until a Mission Trip I took in July with our awesome youth group. We took the train out to a Native American reservation in North-Central Montana. On the way, we were thrown together with complete strangers in that bizzarely intimate way that travel in closed spaces engenders. And the comments were not slow in coming.  "When are you due?"  "Is this your first?"  "Do you know what you're having?"

This was another aspect of pregnancy that I was warned about--the incessant and repetitive questions. And again, I found myself not minding them at all. At one point, I was walking down the aisle (trying to get some circulation back in my swollen feet), and passed an Asian family for about the third time. The mom looked up at me, smiled, and said in a beautiful accent, "When...is you due?"  I smiled and told her. She grinned and nodded, then turned to her 10-ish-year-old son and addressed a question to him in a fluid tongue. He looked up at me and said, "Do you know what you're having?" I told him no, that we wanted to be surprised. He translated to this to his mother, prompting a flurry of head nods and a huge smile. She said one more thing to him, and he beamed at me and said, "She says to tell you congratulations!"

And it hit me, the reason that I don't mind the belly-touching, the repetitive questions, and the blatant belly-stares; the pregnant stomach is a very visible, very obvious sign of something to be celebrated, and it's one of the only things that I can think of that generates an immediate desire to share in that celebration among strangers. It's a condition that inspires hope, happiness, joy across the board; gender, race, culture, income--language even!--you name all the barriers that separate us today, and there isn't a single one that pregnancy doesn't surmount. It's the ultimte equalizer. But instead of equalizing us down to a level playing field, it raises us all up to a state of excitement and expectation.

And isn't that an awesome theological place to be? Sharing joy with strangers, the joy and expectation of something good to come, something beautiful that will happen in the future, something we can't see for certain right now, but by golly we can see the signs that it's coming.

Advent isn't here yet, and neither is this child which we've been expecting. But we know that both are coming. And we wait in happy anticipation of what they will bring.

Why I Love My Town: Reason 1

It seems that one of the most widely accepted truisms today is that kids can't just be kids anymore. They can't run wild from dawn until dusk; strangers can't be trusted, and you just don't know what trouble they'll get into unsupervised. They're never outside playing. And their imaginations are sorely lacking.

I present to you Case Study #1: The Little Boys.

Our backyard connects with the backyard directly behind us. There are no fences in this town--at least none that I've seen. The family that lives behind us has 4 boys: a 6th grader, a 3rd grader, a 2nd grader, and a 1st grader. Or The Little Boys, as Tim and I have dubbed them. They defy all of the above truisms. They run absolutely wild from dawn until dusk, and sometimes beyond. They certainly do get into trouble unsupervised, but the nice thing about a town of 70 people (very soon to be 71) is that they rarely are actually unsupervised--one of us always kind of has an eye on them. They are always outside playing, and by always I mean always. In fact, I don't think the 1st grader wore shoes the entire summer. No seriously; I can't think of a single time I saw him with them on. And their imaginations are always going.

Take this morning for example. Tim and I are sitting at breakfast, in our usual spots: me facing our neighbors to the south, Tim facing our neighbors to the east, which happens to be the Little Boys. We're eating quietly, when I hear from Tim, "What in the...what are they doing?!" I lean over the table (no easy feat 5 days before your due date) just in time to witness a bizarre spectacle; Jaydn and Isaiah (the 2nd and 1st grader, respectively) are busy tying a gigantic rope between their two bikes. The rope is about 14 feet long and about as thick as a couple of gas hoses. Isaiah still has no shoes on. When they've accomplished the task of connecting the two bikes, each boy slings a green reusable shopping bag over a skinny shoulder, and off they go.

Tim bursts out laughing. When they round the corner in front of our house a few minutes later, they've gotten the rope tangled in Isaiah's tire and have to haul the bikes over to the side of the road to avoid a grain truck. "Go ask them what they're doing," Tim urges. "It's bound to be a good story!" 

So I grab my cup of coffee and tromp outside in my pj's (reason #2 why I love this town). As soon as I get outside, I get a cheerful wave from Isaiah and a shy smile from Jaydn.  "Alright," I say when I get close enough, "You've got your bikes tied together and a shopping bag on each shoulder. I gotta know; what are you doing?" 

"We're pulling each other on our bikes," Jaydn explains solemnly. 

"Yeah, and we've had a couple of crashes, too!" Isaiah adds cheerfully, as if that explains the purpose of connecting the two bikes. "And the shopping bags we found in the road." He displays his proudly, Menards tag still attached. 

I rip off the tag for him, and by the time that's done, the rope's been untangled and they're ready to go. Isaiah starts off, pulling Jaydn behind him. As they go, I get a couple of happy waves, and then I hear Jaydn start his motor car impression, the one that you can hear a couple of blocks away; "Vrrruuuuuuhhh, vruh, vruh, vruuuuuuuhhhh!"

Tim just laughs and shakes his head when I tell him their logical explanation for their behavior. As I watch them make their wobbly way down the road, I can't help but smile and think, "That's why I love this town."  Then as I turn to make my way back into the house, another thought makes me freeze.

"God help us when they get their licenses!"