Pregnant Thoughts in the Afternoon

Les disciples Pierre et Jean courant au sépulcre le matin de la Résurrection. Eugène BURNAND, 1898. Musée d’Orsay.

Let's see if I can get this out before I have to run for refuge in the bathroom. (If I use bigger words than usual it's because I get that way when I am sick and tired. . . just a quirk I fully realized recently.)

While in one of my many horizontal positions yesterday, feeling particularly afflicted and needy as I groaned under the blanket that I wear like a cape when it isn't over me, I caught a glimpse of these two anxious fellows on my wall.

The first time I met them was during my days as a post-mission traveler in France, cruising through the culture-doused streets of Paris with nagging anxieties about my future clawing into what should have been a care-free vacation with a good friend (whose rich "uncle" was paying for the whole shebang!). While I should have been joyfully diving into patisseries and appreciating only the layers of butter and air, I was worrying about that whole husband thing. Would I ever meet him? The One? Would I be too flawed for him to love me back? There were no prospects at the time and while I was prepared to run to him with open arms, I had serious doubts that he actually existed.

We wandered through museum after museum, feeling that floaty sensation that carries you through truly good art--the one where you feel like the paint is lifting you with soft fingers over the crowds and over all your woes just because it is there in front of you. Snapping into an ethereal connection between creator and audience, like they created it just for you in that moment.

In the Musée d'Orsay, I could almost hear the ghost trains sighing out steam around us as we wandered the hallways. That's when I saw Peter and John. That's when I saw me in their worry-ridden faces and clenched hands. I was them, running towards the unknown, not knowing what its face would look like when I saw it.

But I couldn't deny the beauty of that breathless morning behind them--all around them. Something bigger than what was inside of them was all around them. Undeniable despite not being seen. . . yet.

The fact that they were frozen in the tension just made it more breathtaking, more like how I felt most of the time.

I bought a print in the museum store and carted it around with me the rest of my trip, bringing it home a wrinkled mess after all of the travel, which was fine because it seemed more appropriate that way.

The rest of that particular chapter is family history. He did come. He did love me. And I only had to wait two aching years to make the dream real.

So yesterday, Peter and John reached out to me again. They were me again. They are me again. So much unknown. So much stillness. So much hope. So much frozen motion. . . and motion sickness.

And yet the sunrise is there too. I have so much beauty ahead. It will come because it always does. He always does.