So. Long. Yet So Short.

We're entering the final turn of pregnancy with Baby Girl. I can honestly say we've prepared the nursery (pink sheet and all), though all of our Christmas decorations are stacked neatly in it just now because the plan is to decorate the house come Friday. I say "the plan" because, of course, all that could change in the next few days, tomorrow, even in a few hours.

It's a weirdly unsettling feeling, knowing that our lives are about to change momentously as we move through our daily schedules. We get up in the morning, I work a few hours, Papa takes care of breakfast with the boys and dresses them--yes, he is priceless!--he heads off to church/visits/Bible Study, we do whatever is on The List for the day, mixed with reading stories, doing puzzles, listening to music (St. Paul's Children's Choir, The Civil War soundtrack, any number of Wee Sing albums), making a tent house out of the kitchen chairs because I need to clean the floor and this is a great way to keep the boys corralled.  Voluntarily, of course. We eat lunch (lately, peanut butter on whole grain, pretzels, pick your fruit, and milk. And maybe Halloween candy for dessert). We nap. We play/work again until Papa comes home. We eat supper, do baths, read stories, do a shortened version of "Close of the Day" from LSB (I almost wrote TLH... old habits. :)), the little boys go to sleep and Papa and I finish projects and/or take a bath to relieve our my aching back. We sleep.

It's remarkably simple, even mundane. But no day is alike, and I never know when P is going to look over at me suddenly and say, "Ya know, Mama...I like ya." Or S is going to tell me in his half-jabber, half-articulate wording that he's got "Duncan on choo-choo tacks." Or they're going to make up a game involving their fold-out Thomas the Tank Engine, climbing in and out of its doors, all the while laughing hysterically and saying "Stinky fish!" I really, really can't make this up.

And while all of this is going on, the unpredictable predictability, the bags are packed (finally), just sitting and waiting; the kind people who have volunteered to step in when The Big Time Comes have (mostly) all been called; the must-have-dones feel mostly done. And I'm feeling pitch and roll, pitch and roll. Occasional muscle spasms, breathlessness, even some Braxton-Hicks that sure don't feel fake. P's been saying the last few days, evidently when I get a certain look on my face, "Mommy, it's hard for you to bend over, isn't it?" I told him that once, about a week ago. And he knows.

But he really doesn't know, and neither do we. Nothing--not even going through this twice before--can prepare us for the change, for suddenly holding a new life in the midst of ours, for adapting to the sleeplessness and the chaos that comes with such upheaval. If it sounds intimidating, it is; if it sounds impossible and something to be avoided, it isn't at all. Everything right now just feels so... normal. Except we look at the clock, and rewrite the to-do list, and wait.

Quite timely, then, that the reading on Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year, was from Matthew 25. The parable of the ten virgins used to strike me as an incomprehensible lesson in selfishness condoned; that was when I was about ten and didn't get that parables, like allegories, represent something other than what they tell. I just thought those wise five virgins were really stingy. But it's kind of like being pregnant and waiting for labor; no one else can take on that experience. I couldn't at the last moment say, "Hey, BF, got a little extra physical strength and fortitude you can spare?" Encouragement, yes; actual bearing, no. It just doesn't work that way. And there's Jesus: "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." So true. SO true.

And in the meantime, as we wait--for Baby Girl, and for Christ--life can feel so long. So incredibly, painfully long. And yet so short. We blink, and the time is here. We turn, and it's over. And I try to remember this, as I one minute wish This Could All Be Over and the next wish for a Little Bit More Time. I guess that's what this is. And, come to think of it, it's a good thing He knows when all this will happen and I don't. That way our waiting is a blessing, as we live, and sometimes groan, and sometimes relish, all that is immediately before us.