Moments

Moments on their own are not stories. When you zoom out and find something that connects moments, that’s a story. And that takes time, a lot of work, or a good therapist (those dumb enough to tell stories for a living need lots of therapists).

I've got moments that aren't stories (or if they are, my therapists and I haven't found them yet).

A moment:

I was in my version of hell: the hospital. Yes, hell smells like the Subway in the cafeteria downstairs. We're in a dark room where a lady listening to CCM on the radio squirts jelly on my wife's tummy, then waves her magic wand around.

I felt excited by the idea of kids, but now I'm realizing how much time I'll have to spend in a hospital to have one. Or, I say that because it's easier to deflect my ear-splitting anxiety about being a dad with jokes about hating hospitals.

Then the lady finds the little dot she's looking for and types "BABY!!!" into her computer. I can see a little heartbeat. A heartbeat and my first experience of anxiety draining into neck-high joy, the defining experience of parenthood.

Another moment: A few weeks later, we're assigned the new nurse who squirts the jelly, waves the heartbeat wand, and can't find one. She waves it around for seconds, minutes, hours, ages. For the first time in my life, I feel my soul eject from my body: my happiness is now irreversibly out of my control. It lies with whatever happens to this kid.

Then the nurse chuckles and finds the waaawwaaawwaaawwaaa. "There it is! She was just hidin’ from me." I glare at her as she leaves.

When the door shuts, I ask my wife how she feels about murder.

And another: I told Rick, my pastor, about that moment with the nurse. Rick is one of those people who doesn’t seem to notice when he says something profound. He'll toss something out like a grenade and just walk away as if nothing happened, unaware that he's just eternally shifted someone's perspective.

"So then she finds the heartbeat, and I'm like, 'PHEW,'" I say. “I asked my wife if she was comfortable with murder.”

Rick sits there for a second. "Yeah, even before they're born, you're releasing your children. Because they're never really yours … Well, good seeing you."

He walked away, and I realized the story running through these moments.

And I didn’t even need a therapist.