How are you feeling?

It's a funny thing. Most of the time when I meet someone I know at the store or church or on a field trip, she asks, "How are you?" And, unless she is someone I know well, she expects a reply of "Fine, thanks, how are you?"

But when I am pregnant, the question becomes, "How are you feeling?" And mere acquaintances expect more than the usual answer. They want to know if I'm tired or nauseous or worried or elated. It used to annoy me when the question was asked by someone I didn't know well. I tend to be introverted, and it felt like a violation of privacy somehow. I never felt this way when friends or family asked, just people who really didn't know me or whom I didn't know well.

Now, in my 7th pregnancy, I am finally seeing the light. People want to connect with a pregnant woman. They feel the mystery of the new life growing within her. They want to say something, anything (and later in pregnancy, the anything can be horrifying!!). They want to connect with the mystery.

Who can blame them? It amazes me every time, this cooperation with God in His creation. When my sister wrote to extend her congratulations, she said, "No matter how many times it happens, it's an amazing, incomprehensible miracle every time!"

She put the feelings of my heart into words.