I was reading an article about pregnancy.
And before you ask, I am neither keeping the baby, putting it up for adoption or going to Planned Parenthood.
I am a late fifty year old male, with as some overly critical people might suggest, too much time on my hands or not enough meaningful hobbies.
But I prefer to think of myself as a guy with an inquisitive mind who ran across an article with what I consider some very interesting implications.
The article said that the average pregnancy term is 40 weeks or 280 days under the LMP method.
Under the LMP method 80% of all births fall within 10 days plus or minus of that 280 day marker.
Therefore, by definition a "full term" pregnancy is 38-42 weeks, so a full term baby could be born as early as 38 weeks or as late as 42 weeks.
Most births happen after 38 weeks of pregnancy.
This fact brings me to my point.
It has been my observation during my life that in my life and in the lives of the people around me, life happens to us before we are really ready for it.
We plan for it, we train for it, we rush forward to embrace it but when we stand face to face stripped naked before it seldom are we prepared to enter into the void without apprehension.
Because for all we do to make ourselves ready, when we step into the spotlight however big or small, whatever the stage, there is always that pit of the stomach moment where for just a instant when we wonder...
I think that's where the phase "Be careful what you wish for" must have come from.
It is that sense that we are ready but are we ever really totally "ready?" I am at a place in my life where: I have more interstate behind me than in front of me.
I have more runway behind me than in front of me.
I have more sand in the bottom of the hourglass than in the top of the hourglass (Pardon me but Barnes and Noble was having a sale on metaphors) and frankly it's really making me mad! I am not ready for this, not really.
I used to have more "fun things" now I have a Will, a Trust, Long Term Care Insurance, more health insurance than you can shake a stick at and the outrageous premiums to prove it.
Granted those can all be "fun things" but not very "fun things.
" And pending next month's annual check-up I am in good health.
I think my state of not readiness comes from not knowing and knowing too much about what the future will bring.
We spend a large part of our lives planning (most of us) to do the right thing for ourselves, our friends and our family.
We prepare ourselves so as not to be a burden on our family.
We do our best to be of some help to our friends in their time of need.
We prepare our children for what we believe they will need to survive, prosper and make their own way independent of us in the world.
We do all these things so that when the time comes we can be there for our friends and our family.
And when that time comes, when life looks us in the face and says now is the time to stand up we will be ready.
And this is our shared common journey.
In this journey we share, our lives are a collection of these life events; those were we really "ready?" events: When we were little kids and Mom sent us off to Kindergarten with books, paper and pencils (and all we could think about was would someone talk to us? Would someone be nice to us? Would the teacher be mean?) were we "ready?" And then a few years later we're in grade school and all of a sudden it's important to be "cool.
" Then in high school there's dating and dances and proms.
There are people who like you and people who hate you just because you are who you are.
And all the pain and agony that goes with it.
Then maybe you went to college and you were "ready" to get on with life and it was like High School Part II and you thought "Seriously, I thought I graduated?" Or maybe you got a real job after high school and got a real boss who didn't care what you did when you're not at work or maybe you went military and you ending up fighting in a war with real bullets and real dying and it really wasn't high school "no more.
" And life pushed on.
Were you "ready" when you walked down the aisle to get married? It seemed like the right idea at the time so you went for it, for some it was, for some not so much.
Most of us had no idea what we were signing up for at the time.
Children? Oh, my God! Sure let's have kids.
I promise you NO ONE is ever "ready" for the life changing event that is having children.
All you do is worry about them from the time you find out you're going to be a parent until the day you die.
And life pushes on.
When things just can't get any worse and they do.
A job loss, more unexpected bills, an illness, a relationship ends, a foreclosure, bankruptcy.
Are we ever "ready" for our children to move across the country for a new job that means we will only see them during the holidays? Can we ever be "ready" to walk our daughter down the aisle, the little girl we used to push on a swing in the back yard, as she starts a new life? Or watch our son get married.
The same little boy I taught to play catch.
Does anything make us "ready" to watch a best friend in the prime of life die of ALS or a mother die of old age or a father die a sudden and tragic death? But what does an unborn child say about life and being "ready" for all that life throws at you? A full term baby could be born at 38 weeks but most "chose" to wait to at least 40 weeks some even longer.
What does an unborn baby know about the world? Could an unborn baby being saying "Hey what's the rush? I like it in here.
" Or maybe they're saying "I can hear the news on T.
V.
and I am NOT coming out!" Perhaps the unborn child is smart enough to know life will never be better than it is in its Mother's stomach.
Or maybe it's just human nature to push back the inevitable.
Or perhaps even an unborn child has the ability to feel apprehension, that pit in the stomach moment.
Or maybe the birth of a child is the birth of something larger; maybe it speaks to the human spirit.
We spend our life planning to take on the world in one way or another only to find out that it doesn't work that way at all.
What we find out is that while we were taking on the world life was quietly shoving us forward every step of the way the whole time.
And we were left standing there to make our way the best we could.
Whatever the stage we walked, when there was that pit of the stomach moment and we stepped forward, it represented the alternative to fight or flight.
It represented the beauty of the human spirit: it represented courage.
And before you ask, I am neither keeping the baby, putting it up for adoption or going to Planned Parenthood.
I am a late fifty year old male, with as some overly critical people might suggest, too much time on my hands or not enough meaningful hobbies.
But I prefer to think of myself as a guy with an inquisitive mind who ran across an article with what I consider some very interesting implications.
The article said that the average pregnancy term is 40 weeks or 280 days under the LMP method.
Under the LMP method 80% of all births fall within 10 days plus or minus of that 280 day marker.
Therefore, by definition a "full term" pregnancy is 38-42 weeks, so a full term baby could be born as early as 38 weeks or as late as 42 weeks.
Most births happen after 38 weeks of pregnancy.
This fact brings me to my point.
It has been my observation during my life that in my life and in the lives of the people around me, life happens to us before we are really ready for it.
We plan for it, we train for it, we rush forward to embrace it but when we stand face to face stripped naked before it seldom are we prepared to enter into the void without apprehension.
Because for all we do to make ourselves ready, when we step into the spotlight however big or small, whatever the stage, there is always that pit of the stomach moment where for just a instant when we wonder...
I think that's where the phase "Be careful what you wish for" must have come from.
It is that sense that we are ready but are we ever really totally "ready?" I am at a place in my life where: I have more interstate behind me than in front of me.
I have more runway behind me than in front of me.
I have more sand in the bottom of the hourglass than in the top of the hourglass (Pardon me but Barnes and Noble was having a sale on metaphors) and frankly it's really making me mad! I am not ready for this, not really.
I used to have more "fun things" now I have a Will, a Trust, Long Term Care Insurance, more health insurance than you can shake a stick at and the outrageous premiums to prove it.
Granted those can all be "fun things" but not very "fun things.
" And pending next month's annual check-up I am in good health.
I think my state of not readiness comes from not knowing and knowing too much about what the future will bring.
We spend a large part of our lives planning (most of us) to do the right thing for ourselves, our friends and our family.
We prepare ourselves so as not to be a burden on our family.
We do our best to be of some help to our friends in their time of need.
We prepare our children for what we believe they will need to survive, prosper and make their own way independent of us in the world.
We do all these things so that when the time comes we can be there for our friends and our family.
And when that time comes, when life looks us in the face and says now is the time to stand up we will be ready.
And this is our shared common journey.
In this journey we share, our lives are a collection of these life events; those were we really "ready?" events: When we were little kids and Mom sent us off to Kindergarten with books, paper and pencils (and all we could think about was would someone talk to us? Would someone be nice to us? Would the teacher be mean?) were we "ready?" And then a few years later we're in grade school and all of a sudden it's important to be "cool.
" Then in high school there's dating and dances and proms.
There are people who like you and people who hate you just because you are who you are.
And all the pain and agony that goes with it.
Then maybe you went to college and you were "ready" to get on with life and it was like High School Part II and you thought "Seriously, I thought I graduated?" Or maybe you got a real job after high school and got a real boss who didn't care what you did when you're not at work or maybe you went military and you ending up fighting in a war with real bullets and real dying and it really wasn't high school "no more.
" And life pushed on.
Were you "ready" when you walked down the aisle to get married? It seemed like the right idea at the time so you went for it, for some it was, for some not so much.
Most of us had no idea what we were signing up for at the time.
Children? Oh, my God! Sure let's have kids.
I promise you NO ONE is ever "ready" for the life changing event that is having children.
All you do is worry about them from the time you find out you're going to be a parent until the day you die.
And life pushes on.
When things just can't get any worse and they do.
A job loss, more unexpected bills, an illness, a relationship ends, a foreclosure, bankruptcy.
Are we ever "ready" for our children to move across the country for a new job that means we will only see them during the holidays? Can we ever be "ready" to walk our daughter down the aisle, the little girl we used to push on a swing in the back yard, as she starts a new life? Or watch our son get married.
The same little boy I taught to play catch.
Does anything make us "ready" to watch a best friend in the prime of life die of ALS or a mother die of old age or a father die a sudden and tragic death? But what does an unborn child say about life and being "ready" for all that life throws at you? A full term baby could be born at 38 weeks but most "chose" to wait to at least 40 weeks some even longer.
What does an unborn baby know about the world? Could an unborn baby being saying "Hey what's the rush? I like it in here.
" Or maybe they're saying "I can hear the news on T.
V.
and I am NOT coming out!" Perhaps the unborn child is smart enough to know life will never be better than it is in its Mother's stomach.
Or maybe it's just human nature to push back the inevitable.
Or perhaps even an unborn child has the ability to feel apprehension, that pit in the stomach moment.
Or maybe the birth of a child is the birth of something larger; maybe it speaks to the human spirit.
We spend our life planning to take on the world in one way or another only to find out that it doesn't work that way at all.
What we find out is that while we were taking on the world life was quietly shoving us forward every step of the way the whole time.
And we were left standing there to make our way the best we could.
Whatever the stage we walked, when there was that pit of the stomach moment and we stepped forward, it represented the alternative to fight or flight.
It represented the beauty of the human spirit: it represented courage.
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