During this Jubilee Year, I’ve been grappling with hope. I spent the first few months of the year contemplating, “What does the virtue even mean?” I was never quite satisfied with the dictionary definitions I found.
My pondering continued as I received a positive pregnancy test in the spring, felt the little one’s first flutterings in late summer, and dreamed about the future as my stomach grew larger and larger with each passing week.
As the Jubilee Year comes to a close, I think I’m finally beginning to break ground.
Hope, I’ve realized, is the place we live in the in-between. It’s a lot like pregnancy.
Pregnancy, like Advent, is a season of the in-between. It’s knowing that you’re a mother — you became one at the moment of your child’s conception — but you don’t yet have the child in your arms. You have a child, yet they are still being stitched together in your womb. Hope, like pregnancy, longs for what will be realized, but what has not yet come.
This is the definition I’ve come to: Hope is the expectation of good gifts from God.
For me, pregnancy has been a school of hope, a training ground for this virtue.
Between the unshakeable nausea and hormone shifts, the fractured sleep and pelvic pain, I feel like I’ve been pregnant for forever. I’ve needed hope — the expectation that there’s purpose to the pain, the reminder that the crucifixion is trumped by the resurrection.
I’ve learned that hope isn’t a fluffy, feel-good virtue or an escape from reality. It doesn’t dismiss suffering or promise a life without it. It isn’t a faint wish, but it’s an exercise of the will, the choice to place my trust that God has my final good in mind.
Pondering the early parenthood of Mary and Joseph — traveling in late pregnancy, a birth in a stable, and learning how to parent in a foreign land without the support of their family or friends — has helped me accept that God’s plans for pregnancy and parenthood aren’t always comfortable.
Thus, hope isn’t the wish that all will be easy. It’s the acknowledgement that my story is in God’s hands. And that he’s got a pretty good story in mind.
In pregnancy, hope is knowing that the morning sickness, the difficulty sleeping, the sacrifice of nine months without sushi (my favorite food!) — it’s all bringing my baby closer to his anticipated due date and closer to my arms.
Hope in pregnancy is realizing that as I carry my baby, the Lord is carrying me. It’s the assurance that God is looking right at me. That God is in the in-between with me.
That thought alone has brought me to tears many times in prayer during this pregnancy.
These past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time watching my baby kick and somersault in my tight belly. When I feel the little guy kick, I like to put my hand on my stomach, hoping that he’ll know I’m here with him, that I notice him.
And I’ve come to realize that if I am constantly watching my baby’s movements — ever present to him, paying attention to him — how much more is God paying attention to the movements of my heart? He is looking right at me. I am not in his peripheral vision.
Comically — and providentially, I think — my sweet baby boy is due on Jan. 7, the first day after the conclusion of this Jubilee Year of Hope, which ends Jan. 6. His much-anticipated arrival will be a graduation gift of sorts from the “school of hope.”
The Lord’s timing is not accidental. God picked a good year for me to be pregnant.
Castlen is a reporter for The Record and a member of St. Louis Bertrand Church.
A Time to Speak — Expecting in the Jubilee Year of Hope
During this Jubilee Year, I’ve been grappling with hope. I spent the first few months of the year contemplating, “What does the virtue even mean?” I was never quite satisfied with the dictionary definitions I found.
My pondering continued as I received a positive pregnancy test in the spring, felt the little one’s first flutterings in late summer, and dreamed about the future as my stomach grew larger and larger with each passing week.
As the Jubilee Year comes to a close, I think I’m finally beginning to break ground.
Hope, I’ve realized, is the place we live in the in-between. It’s a lot like pregnancy.
Pregnancy, like Advent, is a season of the in-between. It’s knowing that you’re a mother — you became one at the moment of your child’s conception — but you don’t yet have the child in your arms. You have a child, yet they are still being stitched together in your womb. Hope, like pregnancy, longs for what will be realized, but what has not yet come.
This is the definition I’ve come to: Hope is the expectation of good gifts from God.
For me, pregnancy has been a school of hope, a training ground for this virtue.
Between the unshakeable nausea and hormone shifts, the fractured sleep and pelvic pain, I feel like I’ve been pregnant for forever. I’ve needed hope — the expectation that there’s purpose to the pain, the reminder that the crucifixion is trumped by the resurrection.
I’ve learned that hope isn’t a fluffy, feel-good virtue or an escape from reality. It doesn’t dismiss suffering or promise a life without it. It isn’t a faint wish, but it’s an exercise of the will, the choice to place my trust that God has my final good in mind.
Pondering the early parenthood of Mary and Joseph — traveling in late pregnancy, a birth in a stable, and learning how to parent in a foreign land without the support of their family or friends — has helped me accept that God’s plans for pregnancy and parenthood aren’t always comfortable.
Thus, hope isn’t the wish that all will be easy. It’s the acknowledgement that my story is in God’s hands. And that he’s got a pretty good story in mind.
In pregnancy, hope is knowing that the morning sickness, the difficulty sleeping, the sacrifice of nine months without sushi (my favorite food!) — it’s all bringing my baby closer to his anticipated due date and closer to my arms.
Hope in pregnancy is realizing that as I carry my baby, the Lord is carrying me. It’s the assurance that God is looking right at me. That God is in the in-between with me.
That thought alone has brought me to tears many times in prayer during this pregnancy.
These past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time watching my baby kick and somersault in my tight belly. When I feel the little guy kick, I like to put my hand on my stomach, hoping that he’ll know I’m here with him, that I notice him.
And I’ve come to realize that if I am constantly watching my baby’s movements — ever present to him, paying attention to him — how much more is God paying attention to the movements of my heart? He is looking right at me. I am not in his peripheral vision.
Comically — and providentially, I think — my sweet baby boy is due on Jan. 7, the first day after the conclusion of this Jubilee Year of Hope, which ends Jan. 6. His much-anticipated arrival will be a graduation gift of sorts from the “school of hope.”
The Lord’s timing is not accidental. God picked a good year for me to be pregnant.
Castlen is a reporter for The Record and a member of St. Louis Bertrand Church.
Catechists from around the archdiocese, including those who lead Faith Clubs, honored