22
Not Real Babies

May 2011.

Fourteen months after the fire.

Six months after my husband and bandmates quit Addison Road and got desk jobs.

Five months into my glitter binges and days of absolute complete nothingness—my water broke in a parking garage.

I was on a band trip, about to play a really important show. The guys were unloading gear from the van, but I could feel the baby heavy inside of me, and my water broke.

Ryan was frustrated. “Really, Jenny? We traveled all this way for a show and your water breaks before we get a chance to play? Can’t you just hold it in, Jen?” The other guys in the band were indifferent. They kept unloading gear like nothing had even happened. Like they didn’t notice I was standing in a puddle of water about to give birth.

I was confused. Didn’t they see what was happening? Didn’t they understand? I was finally going into labor. The baby was coming. The baby was coming.

In that moment, something happened in my heart that I had never experienced. I felt like I was in my own world. One laced with more beauty, excitement, hope, and anticipation than I had ever known before. I felt myself glowing. There was a deep joy oozing out of me that I had never known. I could feel it in my fingertips and my toes and deep in my belly. It almost felt like I was floating, watching a bright light burst into color. No one else existed—just that sweet baby and me. I had never wanted to give birth so badly in my life.

Hours later at the hospital I was pushing, sweating, moaning. In so much pain that I was biting Ryan’s arm.

And then I woke up.

Covered in sweat. Heart pounding. Body sore. As if I had been actually pushing. Ryan lying next to me, sound asleep. Annie down the hall. The clock ticking in the living room. The hum of the air conditioner gently purring. The birds outside my window. I woke up in the stillness of my apartment at dawn, deeply aware that there was nothing in my belly.

I wasn’t in labor. I wasn’t even pregnant. And the worst part was that the dream ended before I delivered the baby. I didn’t even get to find out if I was having a boy or a girl.

Tears began to stream down my face. I felt such loss, such deep, deep sorrow. What a cruel trick. Why did I have to wake up mid-labor? Couldn’t I just have the baby? I tried closing my eyes and going back into the dream. But it was impossible. I only heard the clock. I lay there broken and desperately wanting to know if it was a boy or a girl. Couldn’t I have that much? Blue or pink, football or ballet? Why let a girl dream that kind of dream and not get to see the end?

Ryan woke up to my whimpers.

“What’s wrong, baby? Are you okay?”

“I just almost had a baby. I mean, like, really almost had the baby in my dreams. I’m covered in sweat and my stomach hurts from pushing. And you didn’t want my water to break yet and the guys didn’t care. And I was in the hospital biting you and screaming in pain.” And then the tears really came. “I-I-I didn’t even get to have the baby. I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.” I was sobbing. I am the kind of girl who dreams a lot and remembers those dreams, but never had a dream so deeply affected me. My heart was crushed and I lay there curled up in a little ball at 6:00 a.m., mourning the baby I didn’t give birth to in my dreams. This is how every man wants to be woken up in the morning.

“Well, baby, just go back to sleep and have the baby.”

He was startled and confused, but trying to wrap his mind around the wake-up call at hand. I told him I had already tried. I tried so hard. But one can’t just time-machine herself back into an important dream. Tears poured out as my soul grieved what I saw but could not yet have. Ryan rolled over and touched my hair. “But Jen, we don’t even want to have another baby.”

“I know, I didn’t think I wanted another baby. But what if we are supposed to? I mean, what if the dream was a sign? I don’t know. It really seemed like I was having a baby . . .” My voice trailed off as I thought about how happy I felt. It was a happy I had never actually known in real life, a supernatural glowing.

“Ryan, I was so happy in the dream. Something was beaming deep inside of me. There was this deep, deep joy. I can’t explain it. But I’ve never felt anything like it before in my life. It made me want to have a million babies. I knew that what was happening was holy. Waking up and it not being real, not even knowing if I had the baby, whether it was a boy or girl . . . I don’t know. I feel heartbroken. I wanted to see it.”

“It was just a dream, Jen. It’s okay. We don’t need to decide whether we should have another baby at 6:00 a.m. after a bad dream. You should get up. Have coffee and read before Annie wakes up. Clear your head a little.”

This sounded like a good idea. But all I could think about was the fact that coffee was really bad for the baby.

The dream was my first indication that something was shifting inside of me. I just didn’t know the who, what, when, or where of it yet. In retrospect, the dream was much like the Old Testament story of God calling out to the boy Samuel in his sleep. “Samuel!” God says to the sleeping boy. Samuel wakes up and runs to his priest, Eli, in what I imagine to be a middle-of-the-night stupor. “Here I am! Did you call me?” But Eli denies calling him and sends Samuel back to bed. This happens two more times before the priest finally realizes that it is God who is coming to Samuel in his sleep, God who is calling out the boy’s name. Eli instructs Samuel to go back to bed and answer in this way if the Lord comes again: “Your servant is listening.”1

This passage always comforts me, because what I observe here is that even the preacher on duty responsible for sleeping near the ark of the covenant had no clue that it was God speaking until the third time He spoke. I feel way less pressure to properly interpret God showing up in my dreams knowing that the ark-of-the-covenant-preacher-man took three strikes to get it right!

As we are waiting for new life to unfurl, God is often preparing the way for us long before we understand what is happening or realize that His voice and holy presence are at work. Pastor Pete Wilson says, “God is working in your situation right now, even if you can’t see it.”

God is at work, and yet we often confuse the first signs of that work for someone else’s voice, like Samuel and Eli did in the middle of the night. Like I did those early mornings with tears streaming down my face, wrestling with a dream I thought was insinuating that I should have another real-live-pooping-crying-baby. A baby I wasn’t ready to have. Wondering if I needed to take Gas-X before bed. Or maybe go see a therapist. Not yet knowing that the dream was God’s voice speaking to me, not knowing that He was working in my situation, I settled on a spiritual therapist to help me figure out my life. And as it turned out, I was pregnant after all.