STRETCH MARKS| Beyond Writing, Part 1 of 3
(This is the first post in a series, "Beyond Writing." Click to read part two and part three.)
I guess I should be proud of my stretch marks, those
remaining lines that zigzag across my belly, leftover from the contraction of
my skin related to carrying six growing babies, five of whom survived to see
light outside my womb. I’m really not, though. Seeing the beauty in flapping skin
is elusive to me. It’s a concept in my head that I know I should embrace, but
the truth is I wish I could erase them all. Not the babies, just the marks, but
I can’t—they come together, and I keep them both.
As those first tiny movements burst like bubbles inside me,
as I sensed the karate kicks that caught me off guard any hour of the day or
night, they reminded me of the life I carried hidden inside me. I planned and
labored and delivered, and then we tested the car seats and strapped in each
baby…one at a time…most of them roughly two years apart. My husband and I would
glance at one another across the space between our bucket seats on the drive
home from the hospital asking ourselves, “How did this happen? What are we
doing?!”
Of course we knew how it happened that each of these lives,
planted individually inside of me, grew and came forth from that secret place
into the light of day, but the wonder of it all never lost its mystery. As for
what we were doing, we clung to the words “by faith,” because we didn’t know
what it would mean to nurture and help our little ones to flourish as persons
outside of the womb and give them wings to fly into the world. We still don’t
know what we’re doing as we cross the threshold into the teen years, but our
mantra continues to be “by faith.”
Giving birth is the closest analogy I can find for writing.
I plan and prepare, labor and deliver, and then I wait to see if my words will
take wings and fly to the person or people for whom they’re meant. Will they
take on a life of their own? Will the Spirit take my meager thoughts, mere
words, and through a mystery of his working use them to speak life to someone
I’ve never met, to help and encourage?
I’m left with the stretch marks. The labor and delivery of
writing is a process, sometimes beautiful and often painful, full of self-doubt
and vulnerability, usually humbling in one way or another. As much as I’d like
to erase the marks or skip the process altogether, I know in my head that I
ought not merely to acknowledge but to appreciate what they represent. They too
tell my story.
These are my stretch marks, and they are beautiful because
they tell of giving birth when it’s frightening, of going through labor when I
don’t know where it will end (in a book or not, in publication or not), of
pushing myself to do something I’m made to do even if it’s uncomfortable for
me.
Email Katie at lovingmychildrenbook@gmail.com.