Weakness at 34 Weeks

By Rhianon Rae

Photo by Kym van der Plas

There comes a stage in pregnancy—the waddle stage I like to call it—where women who have been there before may just ask you: ‘how are you going?’ They give you a smile, they look you in the eye, and if it happens then you feel seen. And loved.  

They know that you are probably not feeling at your all-time best. Probably you get tired just by standing up and existing for a period of time. Probably your pelvic floor is not as functional as it could be. Probably picking up your toddler is becoming problematic. Possibly you are turning the corner towards the home stretch and starting to think that maybe birth is not so bad because at the end the baby is on the outside at last!  

Well, that’s what I’m thinking at least. 

I am 34 weeks pregnant as I write this, carrying baby number 4. I am thankful that there are women, particularly in my church community, who ask me these questions with compassionate eyes. I am thankful that I do not experience many of the very difficult pregnancy symptoms that friends of mine have. I am thankful that I can fall pregnant at all. Yet I am tired. I am weary. I feel weak. How do I process that? 

It has caused me to think again about weakness; weakness and women in particular. Perhaps it seems offensive but as I’ve thought about it the experience of being a woman almost inevitably includes physical weakness. (These reflections owe a lot to  Rachel Jones’ excellent book A Brief Theology of Periods—I highly recommend it!) 

Once a month, we have periods and we feel, to a greater and lesser extent, weak. If God gives us the gift of children, in the experience of pregnancy and birth and recovery, we feel weak. We get to give life, yet it comes with a physical toll. And then at some point we stop having periods and we get the whole body experience of the menopause instead! Physical weakness at various points is simply part of our life in this body, on this earth. 

As women we also seem to feel keenly the weariness of emotional burdens we carry; for friends, for family, for our sisters and brothers in Christ as we seek to love them well. The Apostle Paul was certainly not a woman (*conspiracy theory alert*), but he spoke of facing daily ‘the pressure of my concern for all the churches’. He lists emotional and spiritual burdens for others as one of many things that demonstrate his weakness.  

So what to make of all this weakness? Am I just being depressing? 

Hopefully not!

I am so encouraged that time and again in the story of the Bible, weakness in our human selves is turned upside down into the place where God displays strength. There is refreshment here for people like me who feel weak or are in a season of weakness, and who don’t find hope and strength in the feel-good ‘you got this’ messages pinging through our social media feeds. There is encouragement too for people like me to resist the pull of a very different kind of message, one that tells me it’s fine to use this season to justify general grumpiness and excessive chocolate consumption…

It is in weakness that I realise I do not ‘got this’. That at this stage of pregnancy I cannot do all the things. Yet in the moments of weakness, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. I want to be able to do the good things that I have planned. Sometimes I just want to make dinner!  

In these moments I have a choice. I can pretend that I am not weak and try to keep going. There are times when I need to keep going. But to do this in a way that denies my weakness only ends in frustration. Eventually if I try to stand too long my leg muscles will actually give way – which is not helpful for anyone! Or I can acknowledge my weakness but give in to frustration. Snapping at the children instead of showing patience. Giving up in defeat rather than reassessing.  

But there are better ways I can respond.

Recently I was on a holiday with friends and we as a group decided to go on a bushwalk up to Castle Rock, surveying the fabulous southwest coastline. My husband and kids trekked up the path, and in any other circumstance I would have joyfully joined them. But this time, I sat myself down on the very convenient bench by the ocean and surveyed the fabulous coastline from there. I watched the distant whales breeching in the distance. And very oddly for me, I did not feel the familiar sting of FOMO. I just felt relieved to sit down!  

In weakness I am learning that I can rest. 

I can rest because God helps the weak. Again and again in the Bible God lifts up the poor, the childless Hannah, the kicked-out Hagar, the youngest child David. He stoops down to those who are crushed and broken and can’t see past the mountain of laundry or the pre-baby jobs list. He is so, so much bigger than me. And he cares about me in my weakness. I can say with David: 

Yes my soul, find rest in God;

My hope comes from him. 

Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

He is my fortress, I shall not be shaken.

I can rest because being weak is not something I have to resist. God uses weakness to show his power. God can use my 34 week pregnant self to show that it’s not me who is great but Him. I don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything to prove that I can still do it! When my lovely 4 year old asks me if I would like to crawl through her blanket fort tunnel to visit the babies in the room on the other side – I can say no! I am weaker, and that is ok. And maybe God will give me an opportunity to point out to my kids that while Mum is weaker now, God is always strong.

Often in this season I do not feel like rejoicing. As I stare bleary eyed at my toddler who has come to ‘sleep’ next to me in the morning, my joy does not always runneth over. But I pray that God can help me to rejoice because he is teaching me to see my limited capacities and his limitless ones. C.S Lewis wrote that pain is God’s megaphone to the world; I reckon weakness is similar. When I am weak, it’s like putting on fresh prescription glasses and seeing the world as it truly is. In weakness God can break down my inbuilt belief that I on my own can be the good Mum, the good wife, the ministry maestro and whatever else I aspire to. The reality is that I am weak, yet I get to be part of God’s plans and purposes in this world. 

And I can rejoice that this weakness is temporary. There is an eternal weight of glory that these momentary troubles are achieving for us.

So maybe the next time someone asks me, with compassion in their eyes, ‘how are you going?’, I’ll let them know I am feeling weak. And that is okay.

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Rhianon Rae - Regular Contributor

Rhianon is married to Sam and spends much of her time loving and looking after their three (soon to be four) children. In God’s kindness, she first heard the gospel from her parents, and has since trained in Christian ministry with UWA Christian Union and Trinity Theological College. In this season, she enjoys leading a Bible study, coffee dates with friends, watching cricket, and dreaming of the day she can play netball again.