I spent the early days of this new year in that exceptional place
of both time and space that is early postpartum. I traveled from my home in
Virginia to my son’s home in Connecticut and helped to welcome twins to their
family of four, now six. It was bitter cold, with formidable wind and snow, and
I learned that Connecticut is, indeed, darker than Virginia. It’s lighter, too.
In the sweet, milk-drunk haze of those exceptional days I noticed the dark, but
I also notice the brilliant quality of precious light the short daylight hours
held.
We are still in the dark days of winter. Though the calendar
insists daylight is lengthening, it is only by mere moments. The days are short
and the darkness is long. Whether there are three feet of snow outside with
more predicted for tomorrow or the streets are paved with black ice, winter has
a way of teaching us to be still — to rest in the quiet hush of hiddenness, to
be blanketed inside while the insulation of snow outside serves to magnify
light in ways never before noticed.
Postpartum days are more of everything. They are some of the most
intense days of home-keeping that parents will ever experience. So much laundry
and such important meals. The time of teaching new babies to eat and of feeding
the mother who feeds them is quite literally essential to life. Relationships,
too, are more during postpartum. Everyone in the family has a new role, and the
old roles call for more attention.
Then there is rest. Rest should be more during postpartum. The
whole family needs much-coveted rest. In a snug home living the season after a
baby’s (or two babies’) birth — whether winter or summer — the family’s world
is tuned to the rhythm of work and rest. That new family, fresh from the
miraculous moment of birth, has much to teach us about how to live.
Every year, as people ponder January resolutions, they are
offered advice about work-life balance. Mention the notion to a family learning
life with twin newborns and you will get a bleary, incredulous stare. There is
no division of work and life in the home of babies. Life is work and that is
how it should be, every action ordered to sustaining and thriving in life
itself. A Saturday looks much like a Monday and toil is certainly not limited
to the hours between nine and five. New parents live in a tired state, pouring
out faithfully into daytime and nighttime hours in order to care and to provide
for children who are entirely dependent upon them for life itself. They go to
bed bone-weary, having held back nothing from service to the people they love. If
not work-life balance, then what about work-rest balance?
Rest is elusive, actual sleep even more so. But what can the
winter of scarce light and the postpartum season of scarce sleep teach us about
rest? In those dimly lit days when grownups stagger under the weight of
responsibility and true sleep seems elusive at best, we are even more aware of
our need to look to Christ for light and to ask Him to bear the burden of our
crosses. We seek rest in the small moments and we let our eyes travel from
clear winter skies to the ground below, where everything is fresh and quiet in
the extraordinary light. Rest in the
hard seasons is all about noticing the light.
Rest in the hard seasons means accepting that some work will go
undone, some problems will remain unsolved, some people will still want more
from you. Rest in the seasons where life-sustaining work is relentless means
reminding oneself all day long that the unfinished work is where God can and
will pour His grace. Rest is knowing that we must relinquish control, and
acknowledging that thinking we actually have control is erroneous anyway.
Cued by the winter, we rest when we acknowledge we have no power
over the duration of the daylight. The dark will come unbidden. With it, we
choose stillness (even if a baby nurses there in the circle of arms), and we
relinquish our busy thoughts to the God who calms storms. And if, wearied by
doing the good work of service to those we love, we nod off while praying, then
all the better. A parent knows few more satisfying moments than when a child
falls asleep in his or her arms. God wants those moments with us — He loves
those moments when we rest in His presence and bring our thoughts to Him.
Sometimes, they remain waking moments, gilded by His gentle light. Sometimes,
there is holy sleep, and we awaken knowing that we were held.
Foss, whose website is
takeupandread.org, is a freelance writer from Northern Virginia.