Laura Booz: On my first day as a client advocate at the pregnancy resource clinic, I opened the large training manual and saw an image that seared itself into my memory forever.
It was a timeline that combined a baby’s development in utero with the mother’s progression through pregnancy. A single horizontal line stretched across the page. The baby’s developmental markers were recorded below the line, while the mother’s were recorded above the line.
The timeline started with ovulation and intercourse, and then the baby’s timeline took off. Full of events! Fertilization, blastocyst development, implantation, musculoskeletal somitogenesis, then the three main divisions of the brain. Then the pairing of the heart tubes, followed by the development of the spinal cord and the development of the brain and the face. Then the heart began to beat, then the thyroid began to thicken, and the optic ventricle began to appear.
Hi there. …
Laura Booz: On my first day as a client advocate at the pregnancy resource clinic, I opened the large training manual and saw an image that seared itself into my memory forever.
It was a timeline that combined a baby’s development in utero with the mother’s progression through pregnancy. A single horizontal line stretched across the page. The baby’s developmental markers were recorded below the line, while the mother’s were recorded above the line.
The timeline started with ovulation and intercourse, and then the baby’s timeline took off. Full of events! Fertilization, blastocyst development, implantation, musculoskeletal somitogenesis, then the three main divisions of the brain. Then the pairing of the heart tubes, followed by the development of the spinal cord and the development of the brain and the face. Then the heart began to beat, then the thyroid began to thicken, and the optic ventricle began to appear.
Hi there. You’re listening to Expect Something Beautiful with Laura Booz. Your expectations really matter, and what you expect to matter will shape your entire story.
Interestingly, while all of this is going on in the baby’s life, there was nothing recorded on the mother’s timeline. Not one thing.
About two inches into the timeline, several weeks into the pregnancy, after so much had gone on in the baby’s life, there was a little tick mark with the inscription, “Mother suspects pregnancy.”
I vividly remember my shock when I read that inscription, “Mother suspects pregnancy?” Really? Her child has been going through massive amounts of development and the mother just suspects pregnancy?
It made me realize that for each and every one of us, we have a time period in our lives when we are just inches away from our own mother’s heart. Living off the same blood and yet she doesn’t even know we are there.
According to that timeline, even when we are most intimately connected with another human, we are still quite alone.
But of course, that timeline didn’t communicate the full story. Psalm 139 adds a layer to that timeline. The psalmist describes our neonatal development this way,
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them! (vv. 15–17 ESV)
As it turns out, every neonatal developmental timeline represents two beings in the womb—the human who is being created and the God who is creating her. Even in the womb God is with us, making us, knowing us, thinking vast precious thoughts about us. You and I have never been alone. We have never been unknown, not for one moment.
In fact, according to Psalm 139, God’s timeline in our lives began far before our own tick mark. Scientists say that in order to create you, 100 million sperm competed to reach one egg. The one who reached there first determined who you are. It determined your gender, your size, your coloring, your personality, your intelligence, your everything. It determined that it would be you over 99,999,999 other possibilities.
But Scripture says the race was rigged. Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us before the foundation of the world. Only one sperm was ever going to make it, the other millions never had a chance. It was always only going to be you.
Even if you know a few details, none of us can truly grasp the circumstances that came together in order for us to exist. They are far too complex to comprehend.
Ours is a story beyond us. Even once we arrive and we get our bearings, we find ourselves on a planet in the middle of a vast universe at a distinct moment in time, with very little influence even over our own heartbeat.
In one sense, we are at a distinct disadvantage because the details of our lives are so far beyond our control. We lack sovereignty, which can feel quite unnerving in a sense, though, if we can embrace this reality, we will find peace. If we can get to know the Author of this story, and His purpose for creating us, we will get to know what life is about.
It will change the way we think about ourselves. It will change our relationships and dreams, the way we work and worship. It will change the way we bring forth new life, and the way we face death when we consider the way God, our Maker, started things so intimately, so personally, so privately, one on one with each of us.
It makes me wonder what type of relationship He wants to have with us today, now that we’re all grown up? Of course, He has created us for relationships with one another. He tells us to meet with each other, to love our families and neighbors, to serve one another, to pray for our enemies, to love our neighbor as ourselves.
But, what about our relationship with Him? Have you ever thought that maybe He wants to continue dwelling with you in secret?
Maybe His intention of meeting with you one on one in the womb was just the beginning of an entire lifetime into eternity of the two of you meeting together.
I hear echoes of this in Matthew 6 when Jesus says, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret” (v. 6).
Do you hear your heavenly Father’s desire to talk with you? To hear from you? It’s as if He is beckoning each one of us back into that womb of sorts. A place where we can be together, just the two of us, in private, where we can be knit together and we can share everything that’s on our heart and mind.
I believe that when we go to a room or a meadow or a park, a place where we can shut the door, either literally or figuratively, we are enjoying the best and greatest relationship possible with our Maker, our God, who has known us since before we were the size of a period at the end of this sentence. And for a time, we secure ourselves against interruption.
We create a healthy boundary between ourselves and all of the distractions and other presences, and we shut ourselves in alone with God—where just like at our beginning, He alone sees and hears, just as He did in our mother’s womb. When we are praying to Him in secret, we are not alone. We are not talking to thin air but to the almighty God who knows us better than we know ourselves, who has been with us all along, and who will see us through to eternity.
Expect Something Beautiful is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.
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