Finding clarity in the blur

It is 3 a.m. I’m cradling my son, waiting, hushing, swaying, praying him back to sleep for the 14th time in five hours. Defeated, I surrender. It’s time to sleep-train.

It took three stressful, tear-filled nights. My husband and I sang our son the Shema, kissed his head, and lovingly placed him in the crib. The moment we closed his door, my son’s protest began. I sat outside his door, baby monitor gripped tightly in my clammy hands. Hearing him cry while restraining myself from going to him was one of the more difficult parenting moments. His tears–and mine–continued.

Like most new moms, crying is not foreign to me. Those first few months are a sleepy blur of forgotten cups of once-hot coffee, 3-second-showers, endless diaper blowouts, and spilled breastmilk. In those moments, I cling to the words of Psalm 130: Out of the depths I call to you, O Lord. God, hear my cry. And from these depths of sadness, helplessness, or overwhelming exhaustion, I occasionally ask myself “where is God?”

It is difficult to feel God’s presence when we cannot see Her. And perhaps it is even more difficult to be in relationship with God when we believe She is present in our lives but chooses not to help or intervene. Sometimes I wonder if God is “sleep-training” all of us, lovingly pressed against our bedroom doors, crying alongside us as we cry? Is She gripping our baby monitor tightly and praying we find the strength to calm and recenter ourselves? I imagine She is exhausted, disheveled even, from a hard day’s work of raising children who constantly demand so much. Maybe God feels worn thin, trying to assure us that She is always present while we complain that we cannot see Her.

Of course, this theology doesn’t fit neatly into our lives all the time. Going through the strife that life sometimes hands us and imagining that God is just watching from afar on Her monitor can feel cruel. Occasionally, we may even feel that we’ve lost our connection to Her. But even if we periodically entertain such thoughts, we can still appreciate that Her relationship with us is constant, whether She’s watching the monitor or not. As Jacob realized as he awoke from his slumber and recognized the presence of the Divine, “Surely! God is in this place and I did not know it” (Genesis 28:16).

Now, seven months later, my son has been a champion sleeper for months. The time seems to accelerate into an expeditious blur. And now, while my son sits in his highchair smearing applesauce all over his face, I am lost in premature thought about who this little person will become. Who and what will be his great loves? What will he do to make this world a better place? And how much of his life will I have the privilege of witnessing?

Nothing reminds us of our own mortality quite like becoming a parent. Once that newborn is placed in our anxious, loving arms, we unknowingly consent to the days and years simultaneously moving slowly–and fast. As novelist J.R. Moehringer aptly observed, “time is a thief.” So, I know in my heart, I cannot cling to the baby monitor forever. There will come a time where, if I did my job right, he may be monitoring me. “Did you take your pills, Eema?” “Do you need me to pick up something from the store for you?”

Inevitably, I will eventually be on the other side of a very different door. A more impenetrable door. And though I will no longer be able to see him, I can only hope that he will continue to feel that same sense of safety, love, and presence that he felt when I was just a few steps from his crib.

So now when I feel “in the depths,” I like to imagine God watching, waiting, hushing, swaying, praying that I calm and steady myself. She is rooting for me–and for all of us–from the other side of the door. And even though we cannot see Her, She is there, watching from Her Divine monitor.

Rabbi Anna Calamaro is beginning her role as Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Hakafa in Glencoe this summer, after recently becoming ordained through the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. She is also the founder of TzimTzum Doula, where she brings ancient Jewish ritual into modern birth, pregnancy, and postpartum doula support. She and her husband Yaakov live in Wilmette with their now sleep-trained son, Solomon.