a prayer for my son
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan and I were talking about how we as children both came to similar conclusions about prayer. We thought we were so clever, like so many others who have arrived at the same logical place: if I never say “Amen,” I’m always praying.
I didn’t pray without ceasing until this Mother’s Day—the day I met my son. But now it has been a week and a day of nothing but supplications and bleary-eyed questions and wonders and praises and wailings into the night and tears of the deepest joy.
Oh, God. This is terrifying.
Oh, God. This is wonderful.
A couple of days ago, I told him about whales. My God! He doesn’t know about whales yet! Or tacos, or waterfalls, or the deep belly laughter of a perfectly delivered joke. What wonders this world holds. Time seems to stretch and bend as the wonders wait for him to see them for the first time.
Shit. He doesn’t know about war, about genocide, about the ways we hurt each other. God, am I going to be the one to tell him about these things? Breathe deeply. We’re not there yet. You will know how when the time comes. God, help me to know how when the time comes.
This beautiful child, with tiny blue whales swimming unbeknownst to him around his tiny body on the tiny onesie that his father and I are starting to get the hang of putting on him.
At least for this moment, may he know only love.
My son. My child. My very flesh and blood, for whom I gave the biological building blocks of my body so that you may have life and have it abundantly.
As I pray for you, I watch for the rise and fall of your chest asleep on mine. Your hands fall to either side of my torso. Your daddy especially loves when you settle in like this on him. “I can already feel what his hugs will feel like,” he says.
Your tiny arms.
May they always open wide in welcome.
May your tiny arms find their home interlocked with ours, toughened and softened, toughened and softened by the years.
May you always return here.
May we always return here.
As we prepared for your entrance into our lives, I bought a rose bush from the clearance shelf at Lowe’s. “It just needs water and some love.”
I didn’t realize at the time how much I was praying for you then, too. As I watered and pruned that bush, as we planted and cultivated and cared for our garden, the vegetables and flowers were an insufficient stand-in for you. With each scoop of soil, I spoke to the ground shaded underneath my pregnant body:
May this be a place of nurture, of gentle care.
May this place nourish the ones who take root here.
May we trust that we have what it takes.
May we stroll through this garden in the early mornings and the dusky evenings,
Remembering, remembering, remembering.
Remind me, Spirit of this ground, that no matter how much I water, prune, fertilize, compost, and labor over this land, I cannot control what grows from it. I can only continue to show up for the growing.
Give me the grace each day to show up.
That rose is now yours entirely, my son. It could never belong to anyone else. It bloomed for the first time on the day we brought you home and it is blooming bigger and brighter still today.
Hoping, hoping, hoping.
My child—I sang to you every day in the womb, especially on the hard days. To you and only you, I sang and I sang. It felt good to let the resonance of the melody move through me. I prayed you could feel it, too.
Thank you, thank you, God. When I sing to you now, there’s a spirit of recognition in the room.
I know that you felt it then.
I pray that you feel it still.
You love your daddy’s singing voice, too. “He’s the only one who does,” he says.
Your favorite song is Mambo No. 5.
I’m not kidding.
Not the Disney version.
No—the Lou Bega original.
You cried through the whole Disney version the one time we played it for you. “A cheap imitation of the original,” you seemed to say.
Your inconsolable cries turn to tiny settling sighs every single time your daddy starts out, “one, two, three, four, five, everybody in the car, come on let’s ride to the liquor store around the corner…”
The sound of your wailing is exchanged for the bursts of my laughter as I revel in how weird and wonderful you are.
My God, my God! Oh Spirit of weirdness and wonder, may you stay alive within this child.
If I never say “Amen,” are my prayers amplified? Do they somehow count more? Is there an automatic cut off after each 1 minute increment of divine voicemail? Do I gain a heavenly reputation among the rest of the rambling, sleep-deprived, anxiety-riddled parents? Who can blame us for talking so much, asking so much, praying, praying, praying so much?
My son. May he one day know the depths of this love. And each night until then, may my sweet, miraculous, beautiful child be held against warm chests and wrapped in whispered, unceasing prayers.
Amen?
No. Not yet.