The Chambered Nautilus

I should have given birth last week but I'm over it because I am one wall-loving mollusk.

The chambered nautilus is a mollusk that lives in and is attached to a spiral-shaped shell. It is the only mollusk with a fully developed protective shell. Octopi and squid are probably super jealous of it.

A newly hatched nautilus begins its life with only four chambers and is the size of a quarter. When one chamber becomes too small for the mollusk it builds a new, larger chamber and closes off the old. The succession of repeatedly larger chambers results in the spiral shape of the shell. By the time is it an adult has an average of 30 chambers and is 8" wide.

Because of the air trapped in its smaller, older chambers the mollusk is buoyant and can easily move about the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. The term “nautilus” is derived from the ancient Greek word for sailor.

The great poet Oliver Wendell Holmes loved the chambered nautilus so much that he wrote a poem about it and even had one engraved onto his personal bookplate; underneath the shellfish were the words "per ampliora ad altiora" which translates as "through breadth to depth."

This is the best stanza of the poem:

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home,

and knew the old no more.

The hard-working mollusk fascinates me. It silently manages continuous years of discomfort. It quietly absorbs what is desperately needed from the surrounding water and transforms it into a permanent safety feature. The wall prevents it from ever going back to that shrimpy, undersized life. It builds that wall to seal off the past and force itself to focus on the newer, bigger archway the future holds. My favorite part is that by closing off, and thus trapping, the painful past the mollusk gains the ability to float, and floating allows it to sail the shiny seas.

By moving on it is able to move.

I am, of course, the human mollusk. This last year's circumstances nearly squished the life out of me. I knew I had to move on but didn't know how to build the wall that would enable me to unpack in new digs with lofty ceilings. I could not figure out how to get over not being pregnant. I have held a grudge against my doctor. I have had my fake due date stamped in my brain for 42 weeks. I have been stuck between Could-have-been and What-if for months. I have tried to build a wall by traveling, mowing, organizing, spending money, and staying busy. Yet from my cramped, crouched, and narrow station it has been impossible to build anything of merit. WHY CAN'T I BUILD A WALL AND MOVE ON?!!

The secret was in the bookplate.

BREADTH AND DEPTH covers everything. Combine your length, height, width, and depth, your X and Y axis, your mind-bending Z axis, your infinity and beyond...and it's still bigger than all of that. BREADTH AND DEPTH is the fulness; the umbrella that shields the greatest expanse.

The fulness of the restored gospel and the doctrine that covers any pinpoint on the map of human experience is the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I do not have a single suffering, feeling, or pain that hasn't already been suffered, felt, and paid for by Jesus Christ. The reason I couldn't build a wall is because I wasn't relying on God's love, the Atonement, enough. I'm not the one that can build this wall.

I had to physically kneel down and pray to my Heavenly Father over the course of many months for the flowers of grace to appear. For that spellbinding power of His Son's sacrifice to either ease or erase the crushing weight of infertility. I have begged, over the course of a year, for eyes that can see the strength floating in the water around me. I have also been taught from on high that sometimes there are problems that cannot be solved, only endured. This is one of those problems.

I am living proof that the prayer that is always answered immediately is the prayer for strength.

I am also a witness with a wall finally installed behind me. Yes, I still remember what happened last year in the old chamber. Yes, I will carry it with me always. But Christ has lovingly sealed that pain-inflicting portion off for me so that it cannot hurt me anymore. I can vouch that the BREADTH AND DEPTH of the Atonement are woven into my wall, that I am increasingly buoyant, and that I have moved on.

I love the nautilus so much that Greg bought me one off of the internet for my birthday last year. I also found a fossil of a baby nautilus for $5 at the Dino Museum at Thanksgiving Point. They have tons of them and the fossils show the individual chambers (which is the whole point of buying one...so the chambers can remind you to move out of the old and on to the new).