The Incubation Period
So I accidentally tripped into a phrase that has stuck with me ever since I spoke at the women’s gathering a few weeks ago.
I was right in the middle of describing the moment we received news in the NICU that Charlie had brain damage and it still, to this day, is one of the hardest things for me to speak of without rendering myself incoherent. That chapter in UNBOUND was gut-wrenching–really. It felt like I was slowing pulling my guts out hand-over-hand as I typed. But to relive it is also to see it again and again in the lights the shine from the place I am in now, which Charlie happy and thriving at age six.
I think the Christian tendency is to skim over the hard things, to tap them lightly with our fingernails once they’ve passed, tuck our hair behind our ears and smile gracefully in the face of all that is tragic. Maybe it’s a southern thing. Maybe it’s an invincibility shield. Whatever it is I didn’t want to do it with these women in this place that was supposed to be honest and open. So I described the moment in the hospital room that felt like the floor had bottomed out and I told about the anger at God, the bitterness like something acidic in my throat that you can’t swallow away. I told about the hurt and the rational and irrational responses I had to all of it and then I said,
“I think God grants you an incubation period for your faith.”
And this is the idea that has stuck with me since. To incubate is “to develop slowly without outward or perceptible signs.” This is the perfect definition of my relationship with God in the years of infertility and then the early years with Charlie. There were ZERO outward signs, or inward for that matter, that God was doing any work in me. Life dumped buckets and buckets of sorrow and setback and there I sat dripping and gasping from it. For years. The wisdom and the window into God’s strategy with me did not come until later.
That’s the thing about incubating, you can’t hurry it along. It’s like cooking a roast – low and slow is the only way to do it. And if I’m really being precise here, it’s also a bit of an inoculation period as well. Because once you’ve survived the hardest point in your life thus far and come out on the other side still trusting in the God who made you, you’re a little less susceptible to the fears and mistrust you once felt towards Him. You soul has developed a thicker skin and a memory.
Don’t mistake my point here though. I am by no means saying sit with a smile and keep your mouth shut when things are hard. You don’t have to Pollyanna your way through it. That was not Jesus’s way nor should it be ours. My point is, be graceful with yourself when things are hard. Don’t add a layer of guilt for not getting your emotions “in check” and being the “good Christian.” A good Christian is an honest one who gets angry or hurt or confused and fights to understand. A good Christian is simply a human being unwilling to completely cut the cord with God even when things seem impossibly dark. But it’s not all sunshine-y all the time. There is space to incubate. To tuck in and wait and let yourself wonder what in the world God is doing. And then, eventually, in this life or thereafter, we will see and we will say, “so that’s where you were going with all this.”
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A big thank you from Jamie on The Mom Gene!
