By Sarah D. Park

I recently went on a cross country trip to visit some friends while 16 weeks pregnant. It was a part of a flurry of decisions I made earlier in my pregnancy when I was determined to do and see as much as possible before I physically could not anymore.

I had planned for my diminished capacity, but despite my efforts, I flew back home and was hit with a week-long head cold, something I haven’t caught in years. With pregnancy came new notions of how much and how long my body needs to recover and it will only continue to change. Normally, such a setback would’ve discouraged me, making me wonder what I should’ve done differently, as if I had failed myself somehow. But I was pregnant and this was a good and life-creating change I was navigating. And that changed my response to the situation.

Instead of accepting it as a sign of weakness or poor judgment, the very positive reason of being pregnant helped me understand it as a natural moment to be grateful for – that my body had taken the time to show me what I needed now. As I lay day in and day out on the couch, I did not judge myself; there was nothing else to do but hydrate and allow my body to recover in its own timing. Recovery became a chance to wonder at the work I did not have to do. It was a witnessing of the work God was doing in me, in the rest between labored breaths down to the function of my runny nose. All while creating a human being!

With the pregnancy itself, there is also an element of wonder that happens when I am still. I am learning that when I move around, my body’s movement will lull the baby to sleep and I’m more likely to miss the baby’s movements because I’m busy. It is when I am lying down, stopped and attuned to my body, that the baby feels freedom to move.

I enjoy how Sarah Jobe puts it in “Creating with God”: “The joy of feeling my child move within me required my stillness. Those times of lying still were not born of the necessity of exhaustion. I rested to deepen my communion with my child. I rested because resting allowed me to feel her presence within me. Times of stillness let our minds and spirits catch up with where our bodies are taking us.”

The next time you need to recover, may it be a time to turn your attention away from the work of creating and toward wondering at how you were created. I hope it will be a time of gentleness and kindness toward your ever evolving self and seasons.

Sarah D. Park is a freelance writer whose work focuses on the cultivation of cross-racial dialogue with a Christian faith orientation. She is also a story producer for Inheritance Magazine and manages communications for several organizations. She currently calls the Bay Area her home but is an Angeleno through and through.