A Love Story

A Love Story

By: Emily Joye McGaughy

August 30th 2011

"I cannot live with a single body cut off from the rest. I want ways of holding on to what surpasses me, of adding to myself a mother or other. (...) I am the finite that wants its infinite. Love infinites me. Without you I am a pebble, and my skin closes narrowly over me. Without you, stub, stump. All I need is you in order to pass over into infinity."

"...I pass through an incomprehension of you towards you, one that doesn't abandon you. (...) O you of whom I'm thinking...contemplated belly to your earth like contemplated from the ground up, you pure manifestation of you, you moon, you other, my togetherness with you I will never know, but it exists. (...) I tell you yes. I begin us with a Yes. Yes begins us."

--Excerpts from Helene Cixous’ Stigmata “What is it o’clock? or The door (we never enter)”

                Every birth is a story. They are stories of flesh, flesh that gives of itself in love and risks rupturing the very foundation of the human body for the continuation of life itself. They are stories of seeds and beans. Stories of struggle, miracle and uncertainty. Stories of God. Stories that implicate history and herstory and every little crevice of incarnation that came before both of their stories. Stories of the body. Stories of the earth and her incessant need to return to herself, her constant craving to continue. Stories of love.

                I’ve got a love story to tell. I have loved the baby that is now growing in my belly before I ever conceived incarnationally. Loved the promise of planting a seed and nurturing it into growth. Loved the promise of giving my body over to the threshold of life that is also the threshold of death and therefore meeting God in the process of birthing. Loved the idea of something coming out of me that is not me, something that will become outside of me and in the process enable me to be even more me than I’d ever be without it. Loved the idea of seeing this child become something entirely mysterious unto itself, someone that will change the very nature of nature just because she/he is here. Loved the idea of my mom becoming grandma. Loved the idea of continuing the bloodline. And now, now that the baby is growing within, I love the small changes happening in rhythms I do not understand. I love the heartbeat I heard at 7 weeks. I love the people who have promised to surround this baby with their love and support. I love that this baby is surviving and making its way daily. I love the welcoming “yes” that awakens me every morning.  And then there is the love story I cannot tell because I am an apophatic theologian at heart and know the limits of human discourse when it comes to love, divine love, divine life, etc. I cannot, in the fullness of truth, describe the body yearning/knowing/truth of motherhood that has been with me all along, truth that only I can discern because it lives inside with incredible force and precision but does not employ language. I cannot explain that love to you because it is of/from God who is always beyond words, ever glimpsing and reaching into our capacity for knowledge beyond the alphabet, knowledge in the depth of our skin, bones, breath, heart, brain and willing wombs. 

There is the love story of my love for this coming child. There is the love story of God’s movement within me, making way for this coming child. They are the ground of this birth story.

                And while this story is one of mothering and divine love, there will be some who question its truth because the family structure and conditions of life for this child do not match our culture’s sanction on what’s normal. I have heard the critiques already, read them in bold print. I could spend hours writing responses to the fears people have for/about me/us. But instead, I just want to say this. At the heart of all things violent, arrogant, judgmental, erasing and distancing is the belief that we know the truth of someone else’s body/life better than they do. At the heart of all things loving, compassionate and supportive is the belief that God’s revelation is in the body of everything that lives, moves and has its being. Our work on this planet is to together discern and live out that revelation. That is what I am doing in the process of procreation: discerning and living out a revelation that has been in my flesh for a long time.

This pregnancy comes out of a two year discernment process that was originally kicked off by a  diagnosis of potential long-term fertility impairments due to polycystic ovarian syndrome. That doctor told me that if I ever wanted to have kids, I needed to get busy. I took her words seriously. She also told me it might not be easy and that I shouldn’t have high expectations. The fact that I got pregnant after two attempts at insemination is, in the words of my Ob-Gyn nurse practioner, a miracle.  The two year process of discernment has included accountability and support from the people closest and most important to me including my own family, ministry colleagues, mentors and friends. I gathered medical and spiritual information. I prayed hard. A donor came into my life in ways that still leave me breathless with gratitude. I have family-by-choice in place that will be present in the raising of this baby. I have a community of friends and extended family-by-choice that will support me. Every step of the way has been accompanied by mercies and miracles. I am the happiest I have ever been. I’ve never felt more gifted from the outside, careful, tender and attentive with the inside, never felt so humbled and empowered simultaneously.

I am due in late March. I delight in the promise of a spring baby that will enter the world right alongside the Iris’ and Marigolds of Michigan. Between now and then I pray you will join me in prayers for this little one: safe passage, welcome and sustaining support, love without beginning and without end. A life of infinite love. A life of yes. Amen.