Storks and Watermelon Seeds or Tears and Rainbows?

The thickest parts of life bring an onslaught of conflicting emotions and drives. Here's the goal: not living with just body and mind... but with spirit and heart... with my whole self; trying not to leave out even just the smallest part of me that God made (because why am I here if it's not to live with purpose?). It's not easy to trust wholly in my unseen God because the physical world tells me He does not always make sense. He, who I believe made this world with all of it's beauty and splendor... also allows its' darkness and nonsensical happenings. But, the beauty wins. It does, if I focus on it long enough to become grateful for what I see, and also remember that 100 years is so very short compared to eternity. Through tears of sorrow, the beauty shines... and sometimes the combination of the two results in a rainbow.


Often, even the beauty makes no sense. And why should it? God tells people who read about him that He and man don't think alike. We have different minds than our maker. For example, look at my own favored topic of birth. What in the world makes sense about a person carrying a separate life within the space called a womb? To have another person... growing deep inside, underneath veins and capillaries, adipose tissue, muscle, in a sack of waters, and then coming out of the most secret place we women call our own. The very parts of our bodies that we share intimately with our mates are the same parts from which our young emerge to take their first, glorious, air-filled breath. Couldn't be anyone but God thinking up the real deal. If we had it our way, we'd have birds dropping babies on our doorsteps (hence the stork). Or, we'd eat watermelon seeds and they'd somehow grow to be babies. Those are the stories we've come up with to delay telling our children the beautiful, strange, messy truth.

He certainly wanted us to see something important when He made it all the way it is. It's more than world peace, people needing each other, and keeping life, neat, clean and orderly. There's a mystery in it that we just don't fully comprehend. What makes sense about being born at all... knowing intrinsically we are meant to live... we are meant for life, only to absurdly die anytime at all... young, middle-aged, or old and wrinkled?! Maybe the guy in Ecclesiastes had it right. Is everything meaningless?


The exquisitely confusing, sometimes stunning way life plays out compels us to either go deep in thought and push our minds to the very edges in order to find the buried sacred truths that lie in our hearts and which peek at us through life experiences... or, conversely, to stay on the surface and make up stories about storks and watermelon seeds.

Being born

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Over the last week, I was greatly honored to be part of the birth journeys of 3 babies and mothers. Here are some thoughts on the journeys of those babes.

Who would be born if they had a choice? Inside the womb is a soft, faraway, mother's voice. Warm waters surrounding the body completely, scented of the person who carries you. Food and oxygen sources connected to the belly, channeling in all that is needed for life to develop for this short pregnant and growing season. The sound of a rhythmically beating heart above. Whimsical, high-pitched digestive noises. How does breathing sound from within? Varying rhythms of air coming in, out, in, out. Strange and musical. Mysterious. Filtered sunlight beaming in, warming up the joint... preparing, perhaps, little eyes for light outside the womb.

We are born into bright lights... cold rooms (compared to the warm womb) ... naked. Exposed. So very vulnerable. Hardly able to express much except through cries and whimpers. A great, new journey begins. How does air feel on untouched skin for the first time? To open your mouth and not get a gulp full of fluid, but strange, thin atmosphere instead. All that is new, accosting the senses. The touch of someone else's skin against you, for the very first time. Is that touch gentle or rough? Is it a hand which has touched and held thousands of babies... or the trembling hands not used to the delicately tiny size of a newborn? Wet tears, rolling down a newly dried cheek. Something other than a thumb or finger touching the sensitive mouth and the lips... a hand stroking your head.

After the masterpiece is finished, it must be introduced to the world. At birth, we are unveiled; uncovered. Taken almost completely out of our elements... to learn a strange, new, mostly unfamiliar one. Will the unveiling be beheld through loving eyes and protective hands? We are never gauranteed this at birth or at any change in life. Sometimes others care deeply. Sometimes no one but the Father sees the pain of our exposure and changes; our grief. Sometimes people don't hear our cries and see our tears for what they are. Some of us learn to stop crying and others learn to cry more.

Our births are only the first of many unveilings, exposures, and major changes which we will inevitably be faced with as humans for the rest of our lives.

Realizing that this major first change in life must be so significant to a person (how could it not be?), even though it is not normally remembered, makes me want to go back to when my daughters were born and touch them more; feed them more just for the sake of comfort; smile more; talk more; encourage more; whisper more wisdom into their little lives...

But, alas, I can only do those things today, with the people I have in my life now. I blinked twice, it seemed, and my babies are gone... have given way to a pre-teen and a young lady. Their lives move on... even when I'm not looking intently. That is why my focus is so important... focus, and being present emotionally and available for the little callings God puts in my life every day. It is in this way that I have learned honor my God's purpose in their lives, my life, and the lives of those around me.

Breathe

It is written in the Christian Bible that all of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth... to put it simply, life is hard. I'm in the peak of a long contraction in my own life. Tyring to trust God for my sustenance, but not knowing what form it's coming in. Sometimes God asks for such big things from us. Feels a little like transition actually. I'm trying not freak out, tyring to trust God. Sometimes all I can focus on is the pain and fear it's causing me... instead of excitement in the new road ahead.


I teach women that in order to have a baby with less pain (and no medication) that they need to realize and release their tension and fears. Fear builds tension, which increases pain, which makes you more afraid. It's all a big cycle that keeps building... it closes the body up instead of opening it. The things that break the fear/tension/pain cycle are relaxation, calm and focused breathing, trust in the one you're with, focusing on the prize ahead, keeping a grateful, positive attitude, laughter. Laughter during labor actually has the ability to further open a dilating cervix!! So does puking (I'd rather laugh). I say that genuine laughter and joy opens up and releases things in the spirit as well (so too, the expression of crying). What mirrors the physical and spiritual are. A friend was praying for me recently and asked that God make me able to laugh at the days ahead just like that proverbial woman does. So, God, give me joy. Give me laughter. Open me up to the depth and beauty of this transition you have me in right now. Cover over my deepest of fears.





All of those positive responses to labor and life build up the supply of endorphins and blessedly aid the heart and body in staying calm and feeling less pain.





So, here's to relaxing in this moment.... enjoying the ride. Throwing my hands up in the air and letting the waves of life hit me. Where will they take me? Closer to the shore? Out into the deep? Hmmm. Closer to the hands that created me, for sure.

Breathe.

Waiting

Waiting... watching what happens and waiting for God to see where he will bring me. I'm starting life as a doula. I have my first 4 clients now under the title of "doula" and am excited and nervous to see where this takes me. A doula is a woman who supports other women in childbearing. I am a birth doula (in training). So, under my care, women who choose to hire me shall recieve informational, physical, christian based spiritual (if desired), and emotional support from me as they journey through their pregnancies. All of my support skills are especially meant to be drawn upon continuously throughout labor, birth, and the early post-partum period.


I have been compelled towards all things birth since childhood. Pregnant bellies have always been a beautiful and intriguing thing. Such a secret time is pregnancy. A tiny person taking shape from within. The intrigue doesn't end there. The female body was created so lavishly to nourish. To support life within and without. On the day of birth, a (sometimes) pulsating cord is cut, making into separate and interdependant beings a mother and her child forever... and yet the nourishing continues. So very much strength and provision has been given to women. Indeed, we possess much as we are able to cut loose the cord which fed, but then draw our babies to our chests and continue the nourishing on yet another level. Pulling close... so close, the being who is now tied to you for life. Perhaps that cord cutting is not a symbol of independance so much as a physical reminder of the spiritual idea that our lives... no matter what the circumstances, are tied forevermore. Even if mother and child shall part ways after that severing of cord from placenta, from uterine home, from abdomen, underneath the very heart of her... there must remain some secret internal connection to the one who contained and continuously fed you for so long. Perhaps the severing of the cord and the (almost) instant need for nourishment directly from another person, serves to remind us that as we graduate from level to level of dependancy and interdependancy all through life, we will always surely recieve another; different, form of sustenance.

photograph by joeannenah

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