Mystery

“I think I’ll just let the mystery be.” Iris DeMent

You can’t know. You can only believe – or not. CS Lewis.

Are there words to describe the sense of mystery that come to me from deep wonder and awe and surrender to God, even when I don’t fully know what he is?

No, but there is an experience I can describe.

Twelve years ago, I was in a large, all-day meeting for work in a room full of scientists. I was the only woman in the room, and I started to cry, which I never do at work. And I couldn’t stop crying. The men in the room looked at me, flummoxed, and said things like, “we will give you whatever you want! You can have things the way you want them! You don’t have to cry!”

The only thing I wanted was to leave the room.

So I asked for a break and took a quick walk. The whole time I was walking, I was wondering what on earth was wrong with me – and the only thing I could imagine was that I was unexpectedly pregnant. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant: my daughter didn’t seem ready to be an older sister, my husband and I were still trying to find our footing as working parents, I was still nursing, and I did not feel at all ready to go through childbirth again.

But I was indeed pregnant.

For the first thirty weeks of that pregnancy, I was in denial. I went through the motions: scheduled doctors’ appointments, went to prenatal yoga, planned for maternity leave, read books about sisterhood with my older daughter. Throughout the pregnancy, I said words of thanks to God for the miracle of the child growing within me, and for all the resources we had to raise her.

But it wasn’t until a yoga class well into my thirtieth week, when my yoga teacher made us do a hard workout including holding a three minute squat. Ugh! I hated it! But that night in the savasana pose at the end of class, tears flowed. I have no idea what I was releasing, but the workout and the rest caused something in me to release.

The next day I woke up and it hit me: a baby was coming to our family, and I was going to give birth to her. It occurred to me to give thanks for real – not just saying the words – and to offer praise. And it occurred to me to surrender. I wasn’t sure how to surrender to this unexpected twist in our family life, but every afternoon I put Cheap Trick on repeat and danced like crazy with my daughter to the song Surrender. If nothing else, I was declaring my intention with my mind, my body, and my spirit to surrender to the reality and joy of this new baby. After my older daughter went to sleep, I arranged cushions on the floor of what would be the new baby’s room, and stayed quiet in meditation and prayer It was a very stormy summer, and I have many memories of the noisy storm outside and the quiet mystery within.

Because after the thanks, after the praise, after the surrender, came mystery. For almost ten weeks, I was in the Mystery – there’s really no other way to describe it. From the outside, nothing had changed: I went to doctors’ appointments, yoga, work. I read and played with my older daughter. But on the inside, everything was different.

During that time, my yoga teacher asked us to go deep in meditation and imagine our perfect births as a way putting aside the fears many of us carry around birth. I imagined four hours of labor during the day, no pain – except, I conceded, maybe at the very very end – and being able to walk home afterwards. A few weeks later, at two o’clock in the afternoon, I went in to the hospital with a yoga ball and a playlist. For four hours, my yoga teacher rubbed my back and my husband tried to make me laugh through contractions that were intense sometimes but didn’t hurt. While I was there, a mantra came to me, and I held on to that mantra: gently but firmly, God is opening me to have this baby. I held on to an image of widening circles. And then it hurt for a few minutes – just as I had known it would – and then suddenly, from my playlist, Louis Armstrong started singing What a Wonderful World, and my baby was born. The doctor put her in my arms, and she looked up at me and around the room, curiously and peacefully. I could have picked her up and walked home in that moment, and we both would have been fine. But instead I just held her in my arms, and we looked at each other, and sat together – as we had so many stormy nights while she was still in utero. We didn’t use words, and we weren’t consciously praising or grateful, but praise and wonder and gratitude were present. We were truly in the mystery.

Being in the mystery

I wish, for your sake and mine, that I had a one-day formula to offer you for the promise of mystery. But I do have trust in the process of giving thanks and praise, and in the process of surrendering. I have trust in the possibility of mystery, and I am holding that trust for you, even as I imagine you reading this with skepticism. I can almost hear your frustration as you ask, “I came all this way and you can’t tell me how to take this last and most important step?!”

The truth is that I don’t think it is our step to take. Our last step is to surrender, truly, and then – in the words of singer Iris Dement, “let the mystery be.”

We don’t do the mystery. We surrender – fully and completely to make room for the mystery – and then let the mystery. Make room for the mystery and then allow it.

Because – even when I don’t make space for it – I know the mystery is there. The presence of God himself is with us, if only we allow ourselves to be with Him.

So today, just allow. You have given thanks, you have given praise, you have surrendered. In that space, just allow the presence of God. Allow in the mystery.