If walls could talk, mine would undoubtedly have stories to add to this record of days. They would tell of the roller coaster ups and downs between fretting and joy. They would share of my indecision in moments, my complete decisiveness in others. They would communicate constant changes in movement–the slow, paced, calculated roll out of bed at all hours, the stretching and pacing and rushing and resting, the quick flitting-about when I get focused on a project or idea and am determined to make it happen.

They would say I am up way too late and thinking about way too much.

And then they would say that this is me, not just pregnancy, but magnified by these nine months in ways both hard and good.

They would be so very honest.

I could kiss these walls. The same ones that have kept out cold and kept in comfort for the past eight years of our lives. The walls that have welcomed us home, welcomed two babies, made space and room for each of us as we’ve grown, celebrated, mourned, waited…

I have a habit of paying better attention to the windows a lot of days–to what’s happening beyond them, to what they have to tell about our little plot in the world, about neighbors passing by, about life moving on the other side of the glass. When looking at others is easier, the windows make for very good friends.

But the walls? They hold in our guts. They know all that we are made of and all that we dream of and all that we fear, and they’re what really ride the highs and lows right along with us. Load-bearing, I think we might say.

They are consistent and forgiving and marked and aging, and I am so grateful.

A few weeks from now, the walls and I will have new stories–ones no one else will ever read or hear, save for the few anecdotal moments that make their way to the page, the photos that find their place on instagram. Those will likely be the quiet ones. The peaceful minutes or hours snuggling with baby and captured so I never forget the sweetness that comes with life, fresh from God.

The loud ones though? The ones where our babe is inconsolable–or I am, when there are tears flowing or kids screaming or big conversations happening in the wee hours, when life offers slivers of time for connection over sleep? Those, these walls will keep. And someday, if we should move on from here and from the space I have loved and called home for the better balance of a decade so far? Someday these walls will still store my secrets and my delights, the painful moments and the bittersweet.

Like God and no one else, they will have witnessed every part of who I am and will love me steadfastly anyway. I am better for being within them; they have been so good to me.

in and out of each day with gratitude, on beautiful, borrowed time,

mm