Let there be light

When Patrick and I first started wanting to get pregnant, we had a few years with no success. We went to visit a doctor and I found out I have PCOS, which makes it harder to get pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term.

I miscarried our first baby at just a few weeks - I found out I had been pregnant in the losing of the baby, so while it was sad, it wasn't the same as a loss after knowing.

The second time, after another cycle of fertility treatment, I knew I was pregnant right away. Having a high risk pregnancy meant I was scheduled for regular weekly ultrasounds, as my specialist tracked the growth and safety of the tiny little baby bean. 

The ultrasounds were so cool. A little beating heart, a tiny little grain of rice full of light and life. We watched over twelve weeks as the head and torso grew, and arms and legs and impossibly tiny fingers and toes.

I didn't know it was extraordinary then, but unlike subsequent pregnancies, I experienced a conscious connection to this baby. I felt like we were holding a continual conversation, a flow of love, yes, but also words and thoughts back and forth. 

And then one day it stopped. There was silence.

And I went to my doctor for my weekly ultrasound and she confirmed it. The baby had died. 

She turned the screen toward me and I could not get over the difference in this ultrasound. It was like the lights had been turned off. The baby's body was there but its life was gone, and the ultrasound was dark.

It's been a long time since I thought about that. It's been fifteen years since that day. But look at this wonderful article that I stumbled across.

There is light. I wasn't imagining it. There's light. When life is created, there's light.

We call it the dawn of creation. Yeah - dawn.

Way back at the cusp of us, in the immortal eternity, God began us in the same way, with these words flaring in the darkness: let there be light.

You know I struggle with depression - I share this a lot. But this article has brought me a lot of joy this summer.

We began as light.

Collectively, but also individually - at the dawn of our own creation, a spark and flare, luminous in the dark.

God thought of us - of you, of me, each of us - and said, 

Let there be light.