At the still point of the turning world

Six weeks has passed quickly and Finn is dealing with the world with a bit more consternation. Gone are his days of blissful sleep interrupted by simple and obvious needs. They have been replaced by evening hours of choking, screaming cries with little or no consolation, which only constant swaying and rocking will eventually exhaust. He is not always this way but his early peace is not unvarying the way it was the first few weeks. He has started to smile though. This makes up for quite a few hours of crying.

In the moments of frustration, inability and fear, I have found prayer to be a surprising byproduct or I guess, companion. It sounds clichéd to say that my lack of control has induced a dependence on God but that is how it is. I need to defer the control, when I cannot have it, to someone or something that can. This started when labor started, or when the inducing appointment was made. Despite the many tubes and drips and utensils of the hospital, I arrived at labor by natural processes and found myself feeling completely without control, or at the whim of this momentum. Knowing that things could go wrong and nothing that I could do would help or hinder this brought me to a prayerful place unlike anything else has in a very long time.

And since we have come home, when I stand in the dim light of the lanterns above Finn’s crib, my leg cramping from the constant motion of jiggling him to sleep, I have found myself making noises like what the old testament gnashing of teeth must sound like. It is an inarticulate articulation of frustration that is a prayer; not a prayer I have ever prayed before. This is why it is surprising. I knew prayers before bed and call to worship and benediction. I even knew prayers of commitment and salvation and confession. Those prayers had become rote and clichéd and the most condemning of all, “evangelical”. But these prayers in the nursery were new, the circumstances and the language unfamiliar. Not any foreign garbling of the Corinthian tongues, but just an energy directed upward in blank supplication that can be translated most closely as: stop the crying; keep us safe; take away my fear.

We surround him, our home is filled, with protective measures. I lay him on his mattress, which is firm to prevent suffocation, surrounded by the bumper that cushions his head from the hard wood spindles of his crib. And I change his diaper on the contoured foam pad atop the changing table to keep him from rolling off. The bottles are sterilized; the outlets covered; I take vitamins. Yet when I return to bed in the wee hours after feeding him and wrapping him and settling him back into his protected bed, I feel fear come over me. I fear intruders breaking into the house and snatching him; or that he will stop breathing or that something will happen to James-and it paralyzes me. My life is tied to these two men, one grown and one small. I would end if either of them did. And in these moments where this fear comes, I can only whisper or think up this wordless or inarticulate prayer that we would all be protected: From faceless burglars, from car accidents, from bad health, from the very air.

Last week I trekked downtown, pushing the stroller over Fountain Square’s garbled sidewalks, over the pristine smoothness of the Anthem Insurance campus, to the vast crosswalks and lunch time clicks of Indianapolis. It was a hot day. I kept the stroller’s canopies shut over each other like petals as we walked through the sun and pulled them back to offer the breeze when trees or buildings shaded us. I walked quickly by the smoke breaks and slowly by the book store, hoping he would absorb only the latter. And then as I left the circle, my Starbucks frozen drink perched in the cup holder of Finn’s chariot, I saw what I assume to be a homeless man approach a marine in full military uniform, grasp his hand in friendship and greeting and then close his free hand over the handshake to bow his head and murmur a prayer. They stood, the crisp lines of one and the mangy margin of the other, both heads bowed for a moment in a sticky city, on a Wednesday. I slowed as I approached them to offer a few more moments of this intimacy. I thought how this was a reversal of expectations, how he could ask all day by wriggling his cup of change and then how the marine respectfully allowed the man to offer him something. I stood there, sweating and got choked up. It was beautiful. I watched them pray, I could not hear them. Someone else’s inarticulate offering made me feel better about mine. My recent prayers seemed to match this streetside incongruity much closer than the call to worship or the alter call. This companionship validated me. And I thought that the pollution and the smoke and the sweat was worth risking this day for the walk and the drink, the lack of control and the surprising circumstances of prayer.