“Yours is the kind of body I want, when I am pregnant.”

She says this so matter-of-factly to me at a rehearsal dinner last weekend, I forget for a moment that I was still trying to remember her name.

I am flattered by the compliment but not sure why she has revealed this information to me. Her tall slender body promises her hope to come true and so much more.

I feel a little more at ease, that I am not the only woman who has feared what they will look like pregnant. I wonder to myself if I will be able to master the pregnancy glow, those few women of power and assurance, who wear their protruding belly like an icon of glory in it’s most compelling moment.

There has been no initiative on my part to engage with this jutting abdomen of mine. My husband’s accolades have fallen short of my insecure glances into the mirror.

“Lord, what did you want me to feel about my body in these 36 weeks?”

“In these 252 days of wrestling my belly against gravity, did You hope that awe might be my only thought?”

I would not change this baby growing within me, I want him there, bumping up against my internal organs, pushing them into my chest cavity to make room for his precious little body to form. And should my tegument mimic his stretching limbs across abdomen, I will mourn the unchosen tattoos against my toasted skin and hope to one day wear them proudly without thoughts of erasing them with modern aesthetic lasers.

My husband often banters with me by offering to “hold” the baby, as he puts his hands under my stomach. I am both envious and relived he does not carry this baby within his body as there would be both comfort and disdain to his experiencing this without me.

I would not choose not to feel this little one’s restless growth reminding me of a Creator who is secretly crafting a little human that looks something like where Andrew and I come from, a surprise structure from our family lineage and perhaps a personality that might lead us to laugh with him long into the night.

And I know if I go where He invites me, I will learn much of the ways of a Master as He creates masterpieces…this is my exclusive invitation to be a part of who God is as the Creator.

Yet.

I am human, and even more specifically, woman.

Cursed with the desire to offer beauty in its purest form.

To which I wonder out loud again to the Father, “Really. Is pregnancy what You call beauty or curse?”

I fear His answer, I already knew.

“Both.”

“Welcome my daughter.”