Before I write this I want to specify that a healing birth after having a difficult one doesn’t always happen. Often women are left scared, and forever changed from the one birth that left them traumatized. I was there for four years. I was hurt, wounded and angry. Sure that I would never view birth the same. My heart longed for just one more positive experience to end that note on.
For me, that happened. For you, I pray it happens. But, if it doesn’t , please know there are ways Jesus can heal you heart, other than birth. There IS hope for you. Your pain doesn’t have to stay.
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As soon as I knew my labor was real, unlike the three other false labors I had experienced, I literally prayed for the pain to come.
Some would look at me like I was insane, asking the pain to overtake my body. I understood that I lived and flowed through the new covenant with Jesus, the one where it was his will to take the pain of labor away. I knew women that had experienced a pain free birth, and I believed their stories. I also knew deep down in my wounded heart that I needed to feel the pain this time.
There is something about agonizing pain that makes the ending of the pain beautiful. This deep breath after holding it underwater. A gasp of oxygen.
With each wave of pain I welcomed it, not to accept punishment, but to FEEL my body do something I had longed for. Something I prayed into, long before Luca was conceived.
Each pain I felt, I grew closer to Jesus, allowing my body to lay at the foot of his feet and to soak in his presence. Each tear that formed in my eyes, everytime I looked at my husband and cried out for him to pray over me, I felt Him. I felt his joy over this life I was bringing into the world in the way I wanted.
The pain was unbearable, so much so that I shook with each contraction, and yet I loved them all the same. Each pain brought me closer to my promised baby.
When you are in such great pain, you cannot think of anything else.
I couldn’t think of anything else but meeting my son. I imagined how Jesus must have felt on the cross that day, thinking of only us, his children. I imagined how he literally welcomed the blood, the pain and the tears as a sign of his love for you, for me.
The pain was something I needed to experience for myself, in my walk with him. The pain did something in my spirit that a perfect, pain free birth couldn’t have done. I laid my pain at his feet, my every whim and move HAD to succumb to his presence. I was weak, but he was strong.
I needed Him, I needed to need Him.
After pushing him away for so long after my traumatic birth, I know that he allowed me to experience a long, painful labor , all the while holding me in his arms. I needed to be weak as a child needing her Daddy to fix it.
He allowed my pain to kill my pride. He didn’t WANT me to be in pain, that is not his perfect plan, but he allowed it.
I will tell you that I have never felt closer to him. I have never lifted my head to the heavens, begging for him to comfort me more that I did that night, and into the morning hours. I needed my Dad. He met me.
Just when I thought I would pass out from exhaustion, he lifted me up, to keep pushing until my son was earthside.
After two hours of pushing, with no progress, I lost all my couth. Every ounce of dignity I had went out the window and I screamed out to my husband:
” PRAY FOR ME RIGHT NOW. I CANNOT DO THIS!”
The room fell silent as everyone began to pray out loud. I had nothing left in my physical body to give. I was depleted. Done. No strength left in any bone of my body.
Right then I decided I would put aside MY strength, and allow HIS to overcome my physical body. It’s just a body right? It doesn’t define my very soul, and who he has created me to be! It’s my shell, the one that long ago I had given to him to reign.
I stood up and Luca started to descend, just as everyone had prayed.
I was unaware of his birth position being dangerous, I could only focus on one thing, to get him out.
With the incredible knowledge and fast thinking of my midwife, he finally arrived.
Seeing his face and instantly connecting his soul to mine forever was immensely emotional for me. All I could do was breathe in his presence and allow my body to relax. I hadn’t done this alone.
It took my Heavenly Father and a relentless team of loving people to bring him into my arms.
When I was so very weak and helpless, they were strong. It is completely possible to draw strength from other people cheering you on. That’s exactly what I did.
Absorbing their passionate desire to see me succeed was intoxicating.
This wave of love overcame me as I held my longed for son for the first time, teaching him to breathe on his own. Awakening his senses to the love that surrounded him in me, and especially in my arms.
Though I knew of other people in the room, I could only see his face. Our eyes meeting for the first time in the physical, a rush of love filing my senses. Nothing else in my life mattered, my pain was whisked away in the moment of his birth.
Suddenly I wasn’t wounded and alone, but a proud Mother embracing her gift.
I was still intoxicated as I climbed into my own bed, in my own home.
This cloud of joy and overwhelming passion for this tiny human overcame me as I welcomed our three other children to meet their prayer over sibling.
I have never felt more loved by Jesus than I did that day. Every ounce of me was filled with his strength. My body that was once so hard towards the world, so blistered and bandaged, hiding my weakness , was opened up.
My wounds for the world to see were healed in my weakness, only because he needed me to reveal them to him.
My body was infected with grief, yet he healed me that day.
Jesus is a gentle Father. He respects us to the point of allowing ourselves to harden to his presence. It’s only when he admit that we are weak that he swoops on to help us.
He respects our grief that he feels with us. It’s never his will for us to hurt, but it’s always his will for us to heal.
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