I found this entry in my devotional journal. It is dated August 16, two days before labor.

I am spent. I don’t know how to roll with the punches or take things as they come. My hands just want to fling upwards in futility, and my eyes want to shift upwards with more than mock frustration. Why does my pregnancy have to have all these burps, these unexpected protrusions into my glorious vision? As soon as I say this, I wonder what right I have to expect “normal.” I guess it’s on the basis of my longstanding life in the realm of the status quo, not too many deviations from sanity, a gentle existence, really. But how can I call this normal when most of the world eats, sleeps and dies in war and abject poverty? Who am I to shake a fist toward heaven and complain of mistreatment? And yet, this is exactly what I want to do. My mind doesn’t know how to encompass me and the world at the same time. It’s battling to save itself, not the masses.