Like A Weaned Child Is My Soul

 O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD

from this time forth and forevermore.

-Psalm 131

I am sitting here with this Psalm, and suddenly I am getting this flashback of all what it has been like to breastfeed three kids. You see someone breastfeed, just flip that baby under the cover and look it’s that easy—but it’s not. I start thinking about all the engorgement, the disabling pain in those first few weeks, then the slight discomfort every time a feed is delayed or skipped. The times it’s been hard to get them to latch, and I’m desperately jiggling them into every position I can muster and mashing my nipple into their mouths. The times it’s been hard to get them to wake up enough to feed, and I’m ticking their feet, rubbing their backs, pressing cold baby wipes against their faces.

I remember pumping, desperately trying to relax enough to get a let down, in that resident clinic room, hearing the charts go “plop, plop, plop” into the box outside the door and knowing patients are right outside waiting and complaining, hearing someone bang on the door, staring at the pile of charts on the table still waiting to be dictated, and just sitting there with the pump going. I remember pumping in bathrooms and showers, in the upstairs locker room at a grocery store, fumbling with tangled tubes, searching for outlets, trying not to waste a drop of milk while positioning bottles on edges of sinks and seats. I remember walking to that pumping room across the hospital with the hospital-grade machine in attempts to revive a dying milk supply.

I don’t have anything against formula; the older two were both on formula by various points. But I think about all what it has been and is like, and I would do it all again, if only for those times afterwards, when they latch off and just lie there and hang out with me afterwards. They have spoken, my body has adjusted and answered; it is a rhythm, a dance, a language we alone share. And afterwards, they are incredibly still. Their bodies just melt and curl into mine. At nights Elijah drifts to sleep this way, his closed eyes mashed into my chest and his limp arms tangling with mine. In the mornings he leans back and stares at me, smiles and shows off his three chins and does his gargly-speech. There is usually some farting and pooping too. I think, if he could, he would live his whole life right here, like this.

I often feel like I have to get stuff. I have to understand it, to figure it out, to analyze and parse. If I don’t, I get anxious, or frustrated. But today I am thinking about how humility is a gift. To know how far above me God is. To not need to know anything else, except that he is here with me. And he has fed me. And he loves me. And I can be completely vulnerable and completely safe. I’ve always thought, it’s a shame Elijah won’t remember these moments. But I will, and I think God has given them to me so I can understand a bit of what it is like to be with him.