Birth

The darkness is about to end in new life

There are moments in life when the rare confluence of adverse conditions creates a nonscientific phenomenon or “perfect storm”. This unusually intense interaction of multiple factors occurred yesterday before 2PM.

I groaned beneath the weight of grief from my mother’s death last month and forced myself to address the tedious matters of her estate. The holiday hum from the flat screen above my desk purred soothingly as I began another interminable hold time with another Department of something. 

With more financial matters wrapped in obligatory condolences, I sat back in my chair and watched Steve Martin and Diane Keaton have a baby at the same time their grown daughter gave birth. A little strange but wrapped in the Hollywood holiday flare of 1990’s saccharine slow shots and ever-present lip gloss, it got my heart.

It was about birth.

This darkness of Advent and the season leading to new life is about birth.

Healing from my mother’s death is interlaced with genetic life and my birth.

I never gave birth.

I heard myself whisper out loud, “God, I want to have given birth.” Knowing it has been too late for some time, I cried. I saw the birth of new life my body never gave. I felt the infant wrapped in soft cloth I never held. I watched her sweet and tender beauty grow into a young woman I never knew. 

And I wept.

I folded over my knees and sobbed. 

My heart broke, mended, broke again and healed within the waves of pain and my flow of tears. Leading me to consider this season of darkness about to reveal this new life. This birth. 

The end of the darkest days merging into light, the light of this birth. Of a savior, my belief, or a prophet or simply a carpenter for others. But, nonetheless, a birth.

I broke yesterday over never having given what God reminded me, in the lamentation of a perfect storm, I’ve received. 

©️2025 Lisa Blume. All rights reserved.