Deep Magic at 27 Weeks

Today, I am 27 weeks pregnant.

Yesterday, I picked up a paintbrush for the first time since I found out I was pregnant.

I don't think these two realities are coincidental. I've been on pins and needles throughout this pregnancy, waiting for the fateful 27 weeks to pass. Not that it's a magic number; I know it's not. Or maybe it is--"Deep Magic", as a friend of mine at church quoth (very C.S. Lewis of her...) the other day when the incessant back pain I'd been having for 5 months suddenly vanished in the middle of the Holy Unction service of Holy Week. Not magic--but God's hand, God's grace, God's peace--and the little girl in my abdomen finally choosing a more comfy position for what I hope will be the duration of the pregnancy.

I think most people would be surprised to hear me talk like that. The years between 2000 and 2005 beat a lot of things out of me, including the ability to speak in platitudes. But it has struck me constantly, in the midst of those years; in the midst of the Blessing Years that have followed, that God's grace and love and peace are not platitudes. And they are certainly not to be hidden away, but they are very precious, wonderful, mysterious, unfathomable realities that work even when we can't see them. Even when we are so reduced by our circumstances that we wonder if He's even there.

So--27 weeks. Not a magic number. But definitely a point of new vision, and hopefully a point of rebirth of creativity. Deep Magic.

Lucy

17 September 2007, 9:11 AM
The Last Battle

I wonder if their hearts were
breaking as they raced across the New Narnia?
They knew all along they'd have to leave again,
or at least they feared to hope for anything
beyond what they'd known before.

They knew, by the Lion's Mane,

as wonderful as it was to pursue Him
once more, they'd say goodbye again and weep
for loss of something so precious
again
and again
and again.

It always struck me as unfair, how the children
were drawn in, pushed back, rarely offered
much choice in the matter. At the whim of Him
who sent for and sent back, always in His time.

There was a stubbornness in them, I think,
that must needs have been torn asunder
from their persons. Especially Lucy-

I think sometimes I understand her well-

and yet in the end, she understood far better
than her elders. I wonder if her greater obstinacy
and the beatings required to sever it
made her heart softer, more open to hope
just one
more
time

that perhaps there would come a time- perhaps
this was the Time when they would come home
to Narnia and never return to that Other Place
again.