Perfectly Human

The doctor’s cheery voice gave way to a clipped monotone. He left the room and returned with a female technician. I assumed he was simply inexperienced at doing ultra­sounds and bristled with irritation as the woman redid everything he had just done. Then the woman put her hand on my arm and said the words that every expectant mother hopes she will never hear: “I am so sorry, there is something wrong with the baby. We need to fetch the consultant.”

“But there can’t be,” I responded immediately. “I saw the face. The baby looks fine to me.” She shook her head and squeezed my arm. I went cold all over.

The consultant sat down beside me. Using the cursor and his finger for reinforcement, he highlighted different points of the tiny person inside me and murmured incomprehensible numbers. “I have to tell you, Mrs. Williams, this baby will not live. It has thanatophoric dysplasia, a lethal skeletal deformity that will certainly result in death shortly after birth. The chest is too small to sustain the proper development of the lungs.” A pause. “I suggest you come back with your partner in the morning and we will talk further about what you want to do.” A few minutes later I found myself in a side room with a second consultant. Only now did I understand what was meant by the phrase “what you want to do.” I listened while the doctor suggested dates for a termination.

“It’s the kindest thing to do, isn’t it?” I said to Paul that night after our two older daughters were in bed. Once I would have been quick to register my opposition to abortion. Now I was shocked to find that the only thing I wanted was to get the fetus out of my body as quickly as possible. We knew that a stark ethical principle was not enough to carry us through the rest of the pregnancy without hope; it was not enough to enable us to cope with the chance of watching our baby die in pain. Paul suggested we pray.

I can only say we both felt God speak a message to our hearts as clearly as if he had been talking with us in person: Here is a sick and dying child. Will you love this child for me? The question reframed everything. It was no longer primarily a question of abstract ethical principle but rather the gentle imperative of love. Before we finished praying, the chasm between the principle and the choice had been filled. As I lay down in my bed that night I realized the decision had been made.

We named our third daughter Cerian, Welsh for “loved one.” Cerian’s life ended in the hour before she was born. At that moment the presence of God came powerfully into the hospital room. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced, before or since. Weighty, intimate, holy, the room was full of God. Everything inside me stilled; I hardly dared breathe. His presence was urgent and immediate and I knew with certainty that God had come in his love to take a tiny deformed baby home to be with him. There would be no painful bone crushing for Cerian, only the peaceful wonder of God’s enfolding presence.

When I first found out about Cerian’s deformity and made the choice to carry her to term, it felt like the destruction of my plans and hopes. It went against what I wanted. It limited me. But it was in this place of limitation that God showed me more of his love. Up until this point, the clamor of my desires and wishes had made me like a closed system centered in on myself, on my needs, flaws, and attributes. My life, even at times my religion, had revolved around achievement, reputation, and winning respect and approval from others. I had busied myself with perfect home, perfect children, perfect job, all the things I wanted. I knew I had lost something deep and precious, but I didn’t know what it was. And the more I felt the lack of it, the harder I tried to find it through effort. During the nine months I carried Cerian, God came close to me again unexpectedly, wild and beautiful, good and gracious. I touched his presence as I carried Cerian and as a result I realized that underneath all my other longings lay an aching desire for God himself and for his love. Cerian shamed my strength, and in her weakness and vulnerability, she showed me a way of intimacy. The beauty and completeness of her personhood nullified the value system to which I had subscribed for so long.

Over the years I have reflected deeply on the weeks and months I spent with Cerian. That period of time felt like an age when I was in the midst of it, but in the scheme of things it was so short. I cannot help but think how easily I might have missed the beauty and the privilege of that time with her. This time of limitation and vulnerability was also a time of profound humanity during which I discovered my need of God, but also my need of others, and their need of me. For nine months every human being has the one chance he or she will ever have of being received first and foremost as a person – before anything else is known about them. At a time when so many young people struggle intensely with their physicality, with their male or female bodies, with their identities as sexual beings, with the health and appearance of their body, the nine months of pregnancy may be the only opportunity we will have as parents to receive our child simply as a person of equal, inviolable worth whether the child turns out to be healthy or sick, male or female, attractive or plain. Why are we choosing to rob ourselves of this extraordinary and unique gift?

And yet this idea of humanness defined by choice, into which we are all baptized, does not line up with our messy, complicated, everyday humanness. It has nothing to say when aging creeps into our bones, wrinkles our skin, reduces our eyesight and limits our energy. It has no dignity to give us when we become dependent on others, and no dignity to give to those who care for others. It has no time beyond the moment and no validity beyond experience. It does not prepare us for the powerlessness that comes to all of us when our choices fail, when the scope of choice narrows, when our choices are overlooked, violated, or curtailed by others. We find ourselves trapped in the contradictions of the world we have created for ourselves.

Against this backdrop, the quiet beauty of Cerian’s life goes on challenging me: What does it really mean to be human? Cerian didn’t have any choices, and yet she was perfectly human.

The overriding memory of my time with Cerian, the one I will carry with me for the rest of my life, was the glimpse I had, during the moments of her death, of the love and glory of God. That memory causes all the other recollections, good and bad, to pale in comparison. God the creator came in his love to take a vulnerable human being home to be with him. This encounter changed my life. Quite simply, it showed me that there is another way to be in the world.

Sarah C. Williams studied as an historian at the University of Oxford, where she subsequently taught British and European political and cultural history. After seventeen years at Oxford, in 2005 she moved with her family to Vancouver, Canada, where she taught history at Regent College. The daughter of popular British author, Jennifer Rees Larcombe, Williams is the author of Perfectly Human, a spiritual autobiography in which she reflects on contemporary debates surrounding identity and personhood. Williams currently resides with her husband, Paul, in the Cotswolds, outside of Oxford, where she continues her research, writing, and teaching.

Photograph © Aditya Romansa, used with permission