Practicing Hope in a High-Risk Life
By Stephanie Duncan Smith
@stephduncansmith
If you were to look at a chart of Covid cases in my city in 2020, you would see the peak of all peaks in December, and the highest point would be my daughter’s birthday. We had never had a baby before, and after the loss of my first pregnancy and a couple of scares during this one, the joy of her arrival was coupled with the jagged exhale of relief.
I think I had held my breath for nine months. But she had made it—all ten tiny toes and one belly button rosette of her. She was here and safe and deeply loved, and that was all that mattered.
That joy for any parent is real and that relief is valid. But it would not be long before the realization set in that the world is not a safer place than the womb. And for all the emotional energy willed toward getting our children safely earthside, and for the immensity of a parent’s love, there is no safe zone once they’re here. Many of us will spend a lifetime grappling with this unsettling truth.
In the wake of our loss and especially in that tender first trimester, I was convinced that this new pregnancy was high-risk, and joined the hope of all parents who just want to get their children here safely. It seemed danger was everywhere: toxic aerosols in my hairspray, my face cream, all of which had to be purged in the spirit of precaution. Viral particles swarming unseen at the grocery store for a quick toilet paper pick-up. I scrutinized the herbal ingredients in my tea, skipped the cilantro on my pad Thai, just to be safe.
It wasn’t a high-risk pregnancy (my doctor kept assuring me), but it is—for all of us—a high-risk life.
We wait for the yes, the plus-sign, the call from the agency, with no way of knowing will this time be the one?
Then we wait for nine months, praying for health and safe passage. Or many more, praying that all the pieces align.
And then we wait for the contractions and fight toward the final push, birthing our children into a life that is profoundly sacred in a world that is profoundly unsafe. And there it is, as astonishing as birth itself—the paradox of a lifetime.
Every one of us is born into a world that is subject to deadly viruses, bullying classmates, wildfires and tornado watches, power-hungry despots, melting ice caps. And this is the world into which we bear our children; while we wish we had a better one to give, there is no other. The world where we cry our whole-hearted welcomes to newborns is the very world where first-graders don’t come home from school and doctors get it wrong and good people fall asleep at the wheel.
This pale blue dot we call our home is riddled through with risk factors and unfavorable odds. We speak of possibility as if it is a beautiful thing, but any given moment is ripe with the risk of things slipping south. How can a person live any given Thursday when everything is just the slightest jiggle of the switch away from the glorious or the undone? How can any of us hold such an existential toggle within our bodies at all times?
“Was this parenthood?” author Sinéad Gleeson writes in Constellations, “That every second of joy would be atomically split with fear?”
In so precarious a world, to love is to risk. To love is perhaps even a kind of recklessness, rendering us vulnerable to all the swarming variables of a world we cannot control. This isn’t, of course, a word exclusively for parents—to love anyone is to put our all on the line, saying yes to joy, but also yes to fear.
On this side of all-things-new, there are many hopes and much good will, but there is no safe zone. The enduring promise is love, but it has never been safety.
And yet, “Love takes the risk of birth,” which is how Madeleine L’Engle writes of the Incarnation. God could have opted to play it safe, to stay almighty and transcendent in his cosmos, but instead, he showed up in all the variables and vulnerability of our humanity.
He came first as an embryo, against all the odds of chromosomal abnormalities and complications all too common to first-century birth.
Then as an infant with ten tiny toes and a belly button rosette, against all the odds of a jealous king’s infanticide, the dangers of exile, the poverty of being born into an uprooted, marginalized family.
Then as a boy and growing adolescent, against all the odds of being “different,” rumors swirling about his origins.
And then, of course, as a man, targeted by the state, the subject of performance-art-level violence the world has never forgotten.
And as Advent reminds us he is coming still—here and now, in pandemics and pregnancy scares and political upheaval; and he will come again, in God’s time, to make all things new.
All relationships require risk, but you don’t have to take the risk, of course. You can opt out, play it safe. But the catch is you can’t opt out selectively. Not even God could do that.
You could opt out of the risk of living and loving and losing, but you’d have to opt out of beach days and belly laughs, salamander scouting and Saturday pancakes, looking at old wedding photos, the thrill of licking batter off the spoon.
My daughter is a full-out toddler now. The seconds are still atomically split, most days. It’s still a high-risk life. But there’s blueberry counting and jumping on the bed, too. There’s delight like I never could have dreamed.
I once read an article about an academic couple’s decision to start trying or not to try. After all, a child? In this world? They reasoned. Ultimately, it is a far larger question that drives their decision: “To decide to have children is, after all, to take a stance on one of the most fundamental questions a person can ask: Is human life, despite all the suffering and uncertainty it entails, worth living?”
It’s a high-risk life, to be sure, but I don’t have to deliberate about my answer. I say yes. God says yes. The toddler and her blueberries—who always speaks for herself—says yes.
I’m starting to think it takes some kind of courage to hope in such a risk-riddled world. But if the newborn God can offer his yes to such a high-risk life, then our yes, our practiced hope, is nothing less than holy. Then our yes to love, against all the fears and all the odds, is nothing less than sacred. Yes—what a beautiful word to unlock so great a gift.
Guest essay written by Stephanie Duncan Smith. Stephanie is an executive editor at Baker Books, and the writer behind SLANT LETTER, an email newsletter for writers looking to deepen their craft + practice soul care within the creative life. She has an M.A. in theology and believes reading and writing can be profound acts of spiritual formation. You can follow her on Instagram, for reflections on toddler motherhood, liturgical rhythms, the writing life, and bold lipstick.
Photo by Ashlee Gadd.