Seed of Goodness

I have been silent for a very long time. I am on a journey which began almost a year ago. My hands have welcomed many babies into the world and today I am waiting to welcome one particular little boy into the world. I am 38 weeks pregnant.

For a long period in my life I thought I should not have children. I thought about all the things I would not be able to do, all the struggles, all the limitations. I love children but I have no illusions about how much work it is to raise a child.

I often thought of how pursuing my own dreams would mean less time with my children, how living the life I am choosing in Africa might mean my children would not benefit from the certain opportunities my parents had struggled to provide to me and my brother.

I often thought about dreams and sacrificing my dreams in order to raise children. I have seen many people sideline their dreams when they have children and then later burden their children with the pressure to own and pursue these unfulfilled dreams. Could I fulfill my dreams while raising children with enough security and freedom to let them follow theirs?

I thought a great deal about suffering. In Malawi I witnessed so much of life’s darkness and wondered why anyone should consciously invite new life into this world. This world is often a very hard place and no life concludes without intimate knowledge of pain and suffering. Could I invite an innocent being into this world knowing that accepting my invitation would eventually lead to suffering?

I thought about the competing needs of my child and of other children. If I prioritized my child I imagined I would have much less to give to others and there are so many people with needs already on this planet. And then, if we had a child with special needs, how could we provide for that child? How would we provide the best possible care to our child without marginalizing or abandoning our larger goal of striving to provide good care to the poor in Malawi?

I thought about my impact on this planet. I thought about the resources I consume in my privileged life and the resources my children will consume and how this will only increase the burden on fragile ecosystems of this beautiful planet.

I talked with my friends about the overwhelming love they feel for their children and I thought (perhaps naively) that I don’t need my own child to experience this love. I have certainly tasted this love at moments while holding a newborn in my hands. In those moments, standing in Bottom with the craze of the ward swirling around me I felt flooded by love and the desire to nurture and protect the small tender beautiful amazing life in my hands. I enjoy feeling that way about other people’s children. I enjoy feeling that the children I meet in the hospital and who I welcome into the world with my hands, and those who shout at me on the street also belong, in part, to me. I value this sense of responsibility to the children of strangers. Will I continue to feel this love once I have my own child? Will I want more for my child than I want for other people’s children?

These are the thoughts I had for years but at the age of 34 married to a wonderful man who yearned to be a father, I knew children were most likely in my future. Still I felt an urgent need for peace before taking the step towards motherhood. Over the years of debating the topic with many people, I have received much advice but nothing that validated a personal desire for children. A year ago I spoke with a wise older friend with no children. After listening to me for some time she simply said, “We must continue to bear goodness into the world and a child born in the midst of love is such a seed of goodness.”

I let her words sit quietly for some time. They did not silence the concerns long debated by my psyche but after a few months a new thought spontaneously arouse . . .

Inviting new life into the world is completely irrational, but it is also one of the most deeply hopeful acts possible.

Inviting life into the world is based on faith alone, not reason. For all the hardness and suffering life encompasses, the birth of new life – whether in the form of a baby, or a flower, or a tadpole – is the renewal of a promise; the answer to that act of hope. New life offers the world the opportunity to experience those moments in the labor ward, when love eclipses all else. Life is wondrous.

It would be infinitely better if people didn’t throw garbage in the streets, and act out of greed and jealousy, destroy, fight, and murder. But, somehow the depravity elevates the urgency with which we must attune ourselves to the astounding beauty around us and work towards change, and keep hoping. The conscious act of inviting a pregnancy is the manifestation of hope - that the world can be better, that we can as a species learn gentleness and compassion, that delicate life will be respected. It is a hope I did not know I was capable of until I let go. I opened myself and welcomed the possibility of life, relinquishing the illusion of control and honoring the source of perfection and hope, and promising to offer the best of myself.