The Quotidian Mysteries

pp. 85-86

“We are asked to make our most serious and intimate commitments with very little idea of how long they will last, or what will be required of us. The ordinary demands of a pregnancy, for example, require a woman to find the strength to give birth to a child who, even if it is healthy, will need daily nurturing for years, who will most likely devalue and rebel against that nurture in adolescence, and who will eventually leave home for schooling, work, and a marriage of her own. At the deepest level, a pregnant woman must find the courage to give birth to a creature who will one day die, as she herself must die. And there are no promises, other than the love of God, to tell us that this human round is anything but futile” .