a pregnant pause

Wholly Strange and New by Bridget Pilloud (Trust 30 Prompt 15)

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Can you remember a moment in your life when you had life in yourself and it was wholly strange and new? Can you remember the moment when you stopped walking a path of someone else, and started cutting your own? Write about that moment. And if you haven’t experienced it yet, let the miracle play out in your mind’s eye and write about that moment in your future.

I was stymied for a bit here because it seemed like I've already answered this one, but it turns out that prompt authors are not using unique Emerson quotes. Onward, then ...

Honestly - the short answer is no. I'm not sure why - I mean, I've certainly accomplished some things that might not have been expected by other people, and I've done things that even surprised me, and yet they've always been accompanied with a certain sense of 'knowing.' Maybe I'm not understanding what it means 'to have life in me' that is 'wholly strange and new.'

The closest I can approximate is the feeling of being pregnant - the feeling of there being a being who is depending on you for it's life and safety, who lives in your body but is separate from you. But any other undertaking - school, moving, new jobs, writing - has always been connected to who I already know myself to be. 

I don't really get it. And so, I say selah ... in another post, on another day, I will learn what there is to learn that I'm not learning tonight.