Not my Own by Terry CrossI analyzed this poem with my students one year as we were looking at “shape” poems. They deconstructed all sorts of good things out of it, then one young man piped up, “Did you see, the “I” is broken?”

I gaped. It was true, but I had never seen it. It made perfect sense, doesn’t it, given the topic?  A poignant moment for me since I was the author! Written in the trenches of middle motherhood, that land of schedules and to-do lists, this poem gave expression to my angst. It was a time of much mental gymnastics as well as much spiritual stretching. But there it was,  right in front of us—the Romans 8:28. All things worked for the good. I praise God for how he sanctified--and continues to sanctify--me through the process called parenthood.

In Genesis, the Bible says that the woman will be saved through childbirth. Does that allude to the fact that one day a Child would be born to save us? Or does that mean that through the labor of childbirth and raising children, women would grow in godliness because they would get down to the serious business of crying out to God for help? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. The “I” is broken. And we are saved.