In the background of our hospital stay, you can think of parenting as a sequence of horrible thoughts. We all have horrible thoughts about the things we care about, like the way my fellow students and I are having exam-time nightmares about impossible questions and train delays. Parents' horrible thoughts are not here for a season, though; they stay background like the colors of your walls. We have (and I think I can speak of "we" here) horrible thoughts, because horrible things happen to people, and when these things happen to babies, to any children, then this new, common, transcendent, and entangling love that I've described elsewhere is ripped out of the chests of parents and communities, irreplaceable.
In my own experience, baby's complete dependence and vulnerability make the horrible thoughts so pressing, because in many cases, I'm the one responsible. What if I slip and fall down the stairs while I'm holding her? What if I nod off on the couch and she slides off my lap? What if she's not swaddled properly and she pulls the blanket over her head? What if the bedroom temperature isn't precisely 18 degrees Celsius, which we read somewhere is the least dangerous temperature for babies to sleep in? What if I touch her after eating peanut butter only to discover an acute peanut allergy? What if I left the coffee machine on because I was in a hurry not to be late for an exam and the house burns down with the three most important people in my life inside it?
Such questions circle my brain like dancing devils, and though anxiety is health-reducing bit devilment, I've surprisingly found these horrible, horrible thoughts to work towards something else entirely. A horrible thought ambushes me when I'm minding my own business, and then I cringe and I say, "Oh, God," not as a swear, but as a prayer. My child is at the mercy of everything from my own powers of concentration to diseases in nature still unrecorded, and so I plead to God for mercy. The babies under my roof have increased my prayers in frequency and intensity, the entangling love for them entangling our very beings into his sovereignty. This is not a get-out-of-trouble card, and I'm under no illusions that these things can't or won't happen to us. Nor is this an excuse for fatalism, and our prayers have the opposite effect, promoting a careful and engaging sort of love between parent and child. Rather, this is a sober kind of hope, not always comforting but always providing a an unanswerable form of joy, that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
A few days ago, I was walking home, lost in thoughts about my university exams when I was almost killed. I was crossing the street, legally, when a car made a hasty and illegal turn. Had I not been awakened and jumped out of the way, I would have been hit. The car screeched to a halt a good thirty feet to late then pulled over. The driver didn't get out, but I can assume she was as shocked as I was. This experience is not uncommon - it happened to my wife back in the U.S. But it served as a reminder that however adult and in control we are, our situation is precarious.
This precariousness makes love all the more costly, and this is acted out in family and community as we do things to make each other happy, better, and alive. Drinks with friends, jokes among my co-students, an episode of Dr. Who while feeling my wife's warmth against my thigh, playing Frozen with my daughter - all of these things shine through the precariousness like the sun on a summer morning. It deepens the joy of holding my own baby daughter, ten pounds of helpless, human warmth, in my arms. Horrible thoughts are drowned out by the knowledge that this moment with the Second is an unmatchable gift.
This is the seventh and final chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here.
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