Once upon a summer camp, in my early teen years, I responded to a preacher’s offer for prayer. Along with a dozen other tanned campers, I waited until it was my turn to be prayed for. I can’t tell you for sure what prayer might have been mumbled over me because, like most teens there, I had been to countless services and prayed for countless times.
This time, though, the moment before the prayer was unlike I’ve ever experienced. It was so impactful, I have remembered it in pretty awesome detail ever since.
Eyes closed, sensing all the remaining eyes on my back, I waited for whatever holy moment I needed.
A hand on my shoulder, “Keep writing.”
And it came out before I could stop it, “Whaaaaat?”
Preacher Guy looked me in the eyes and said it again, “God wants you to keep writing.”
World. ROCKED, you guys. How did this guy know I had brought my writing binder with me? How did he know I wanted to write but never felt the need to keep writing?!
Those very words have stuck with me, so close to my heart, for 15 years. Yet, I feel as if they would have rolled off my back and into oblivion but for two words, “God wants”.
God WANTS me to keep writing? As in, He LIKES it when it write? He wants MORE writing to come from me? In the same way I want more writing to come from my favorite author?
The Creator of all the authors over all time (you guys, C. .S Lewis, J. K. Rowling, Steinbeck), Who could enjoy and recall any story or inspirational essay wants ME to keep writing?
WHY?? I have no special words untold by another human. I’m not published or original with my ideas. There is nothing unique about my pencil or paper.
And it wasn’t until this very year, 2015, that I figured out exactly why He wants me to keep writing.
My writing is my altar.
In all the really big moments in the Bible, when God really showed Himself to whomever needed His help, there was always an instruction (or at the very least, a prompting in the heart of the recipient) to build an altar in rememberance of whatever happened.
Abram is promised to have as many descendants as the stars by way of his barren wife. Altar.
God rescued the Israelites by parting the Red Sea. Altar.
Noah survives a bumpy boat ride and a really dramatic flood. Altar.
The Bible is filled with examples of men who built altars to God after they had a significant event in their life. And why? To remember what God had done for them.
Otherwise they would forget. And when that happens, the slope into cynicism and bitterness becomes super slippery. I know, I’ve recently had to trudge back up that incline.
I’ve forgotten a lot of the amazing acts of God in my 30 years. I should have kept writing.
A few weeks ago, as I was sitting in church, I felt God reminding me of that day at summer camp.
“Keep writing.”
To remember what He has done for me. To remain in this place of gratitude and faith. It’s how I can protect my faith.
By building an altar. Something tangible I can return to when I feel the weight of life squeezing me, leaving no room for all the things I have learned.
So, with the help of the One I follow, this blog will be my altar. Come see the things Jesus has done for me.
This birth story can’t begin with a gush of fluids in the wee hours of a Wednesday morning.
It has to begin 18 months previous, when Bruce and I made the decision to actively try for a baby. This birth story has deep roots, deeper in time than just nine months and deeper in my heart than I could ever begin to type into frivolous words. God knew us even before the world began so our birth stories even go far beyond the day we emerged into this world. It’s a beautiful thought: how much God has planned and placed into action before the thought of a thought were even a seed in the conscious.
But, I digress. Let’s just call the beginning somewhere around April 2012. When Bruce felt sure God would not only give us a baby, but give us our hearts’ desperate desire: a baby girl.
Skipping through a lot of soul-sucking difficulties and just summing it up with one word, doubt, I will let you know the path of faith in what he felt God told him/us was not an easy one for me to walk. I am Sarah and, for a season, I was Sarai. Laughing at these supposed “promises” we had, even though the tangible evidence of fulfillment seemed as if a mirage.
Bruce had his vasectomy from 13 years previous reversed so we could get pregnant. And I began devouring every bit of information about fertility, my cycle, and conceiving I could find. Hoping informational osmosis were as potent as the recovering sperm of my husband and pregnancy would just find me.
Pregnancy, in fact, did not find me. For 18 months. Eighteen two-week-waits; eighteen roller-coaster rides of emotion- desperation, hope, confidence, doubt, reality, discouragement and, eventually, anger and bitterness; eighteen months of hiding Facebook announcements, suspending my doula training, and avoiding newborns like the plague. I sunk into serious denial about God’s faithfulness, about my worthiness, about anything I had ever based any faith on, ever.
Fast forward to my 38th week of pregnancy and a God-timed meeting with a wonderful woman who agreed to meet me and discuss home birth. What I thought would be a gab session, of tips and suggestions I’d already read in a dozen books, turned into one of the most soul-charging and faith-building encounters I think I’ve ever had. You never really know how the pains in your past are like sticky tar until you realize they are the exact hurts which need to be worked through to allow a rising from the ashes.
One thing I know God has spoken to me about my pregnancy with Hazel, about Hazel herself, and about who He is, is this: redemption.
Before my heart was ever hurt, before my desires deteriorated into doubt and doubt into bitterness, God had planned the most beautiful redemption story possible. The literal birth of my crying out and fulfillment of all He promised me. He is faithful even when I am not. He follows through with His gracious gifting even when I second-guess Him at every opportunity. And long before my heart began to crumble, He had a plan to restore it.
“God has plans to redeem your pain before you even experience it.”
Enter this gorgeous, healthy, prayed-for girl we named Hazel. This perfect embodiment of God’s goodness. And not only did He take my soul and fill it with new hope, He redeemed the pain of past experience and feelings of abandonment by giving me the most amazing birth I could have asked for.
On the morning of Thanksgiving Eve, I turn over in bed and feel a small gush come from me; nothing eventful, just something which catches my attention. I ignore it because, apparently, I still have 1,563 days left in my last month of pregnancy, but after waking up to get Malachi ready for school, I’m pretty sure I have begun to dribble amniotic fluid. I jostle Mal awake in his bed, my adrenaline kicking in, “Wake up, bud! Today is the day Hazel is going to be here!”
Teeth brushed, lunch made, towel shoved between legs, I’m ready to get the show on the road. I send Bruce a picture of the bloody show I passed with a simple text telling him to be on stand by. I call my midwife, describe everything I’m feeling- nothing, no cramps, no contractions- and am given a few instructions to get labor going: a nice long walk around and up the Mount Everest hill in our neighborhood, nipple stimulation, castor oil, orgasm.
I begin to feel a little pressured to get this baby out as soon as possible. Which is not what I wanted to be feeling! It’s the biggest reason I chose a home birth over a hospital birth- so things could be on my terms. So I call my birth assistant for her out-spoken opinion and am reminded of the 24 hours a hospital will give a woman after her waters prematurely rupture. My confidence is boosted after that conversation and I decide to enjoy the peace and excitement rather than turn it into worry and stress.
Bruce comes home early from work and we set to getting the rest of the house ready for labor and our new baby. White Christmas lights strung around the room so I can feel magical when I push new life into this world; thermostat raised to get the tub filled with warm water; after birth meal in the crock pot. We fill the next few hours with frantic waiting and trembling hands as we talk about all the things we are feeling and intend to hold against Hazel for the rest of her life.
Things like not waiting until Bruce is on salary pay to be born, waiting until the first snow fall to force me into walking around outside, kicking her bag of waters open instead of just hanging out inside her warm space. She has a lot to make up for, this girl.
Around 1:45pm I decide to take the castor oil- something I have always been warned against and have warned others against taking to induce labor. Silly me. The stuff is amazing! I mean, not in taste (I don’t find it all that appalling anyway) but in its effectiveness. After about two hours, I grab Bruce and some coconut oil to add nipple stimulation to the mix. Within half an hour, I begin having regular contractions and they are quickly increasing in intensity.
By 4:30 I announce my convincing argument for being in full-on, active labor. Any sort of still movement during a contraction makes me feel worse so I begin pacing and leaning against things around the basement to allow me to sway in place as the waves of each contraction sweep over me. Bruce calls our friends to come pick up Malachi and James so we can have the house to ourselves. Malachi comes to me during a particularly strong contraction and I am worried about how he sees me as I roll around on the exercise ball moaning and trying to go with the flow of the pain.
Image credit: Double Bubble Photography
My midwife calls to see how I am and decides to be on her way once she hears I have three contractions during our seven minute call.
Labor increases so, so quickly from here. I try different positions with each contraction as a trial-and-error way of finding out which is be best for my pain management. The error part of each contraction is not fun. Hanging on Bruce doesn’t work; leaning over the bathroom sink doesn’t work; hovering in a crawl stance on the stairs doesn’t work (even though I had imaged myself really appreciating that position). Nothing works. So I seek the comfort of the tub.
The weightlessness of the water is perfect for my ability to ride out the contractions which are now coming every minute and a half to two minutes- it has been pretty much this way since the nipple stimulation. The water feels good but doesn’t give relief to the pain with which I am trying to cope. I remember, with Malachi, the contractions wrapping around the largest part of my belly and going to my lower back. With Hazel, it’s almost as if someone has strapped an electric muscle stimulator, six inches across the area just above my pubic bone; the pressure I feel is incredible.
That trance-like state of active labor takes over and I can’t concentrate on anything but breathing through each minute of pressure and relaxing through each two minutes of relief. Even the verses I asked Bruce to read to me are too distracting and I have to ask him, in short half-words-half-hand-waves, to stop. I am aware of Bruce’s praying for me, but I don’t hear the music I had spent so much time arranging on “Hazel’s Day” playlist. I barely register when the midwife arrives with her student midwife. I don’t hear my birth assistant come downstairs; I don’t notice when our photographer arrives. All I think is, “If this is going to last ____ hours to get me fully dilated, I don’t know if I can do this.”
Each contraction is now forcing sounds from my throat I didn’t know I could make. I can’t find a comfortable position in the tub and all I really want is someone to apply counter pressure to my bottom- I’m pretty sure it will explode with the very next contraction, each contraction. Bruce asks me if I need anything and all I can think to respond is, “Yeah, I need you to take over and have this baby.” No such luck.
One particular contraction scares the holy hell out of me. The pressure and pain together scare me. There is this power which intricately intertwines our bodies and labor- it’s unearthly and it doesn’t take orders from anyone; it works on its own. That contraction makes me think something is changing in my body or I might not be strong enough for this home birth crap. I ask my midwife to check me because not knowing how dilated I am is causing more anxiety than peace and she exclaims, “Oh, her head is right there! This baby is coming soon!”
Image credit: Double Bubble Photography
And this I know, the room bursts into a frenzy of action.
At this point, I am whimpering through contractions, not practicing the peace I had amped myself up for over the past 9 months. I have no choice except to go with whatever my body is doing but I am consciously thinking, “I need to find a way to escape my body now. I need to escape this pain.”
Okay, just for a second, I want to address the term “pain”. I keep saying that word and I do not think you think it means what I’m saying it means. There are different pains- this pain is not like the I AM DYING PLEASE PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY pain. It’s a pain through a completely different lens so even though it didhurt, I wasn’t suffering and I don’t want you to be scared when you read this birth story. Keep in mind: different kind of pain.
{From here on to when I pull her out of the water, things are a little blurry for me. You can read Bruce’s side of things in his blogand it will fill in some gaps I have.}
My biggest, hugest, most overwhelming fear for the past nine months has been tearing again. I tore with Malachi from the episiotomy they gave me and ended up needing a blood transfusion because of how much of my own I lost. The trauma to my body and specifically perineum doesn’t stop there, but it’s not for this story. Suffice it to say, I am still worried, despite all the reassurances from my support, it will happen again.
I had planned on not pushing Hazel out; I want my body to do the work for me while I just breathe and zone. Ohhhh, such naive plans. My body knows what to do and at one point, though try as I might, I cannot not not push. This force so strong, so beyond me and my finite mental capacity, just took over and began to birth her. I cry out, “I’m pushing! I don’t want to push! I can’t help it! MY BODY IS PUSHING HER OUT.” And from then on I have only one job, to go with the flow of my body.
Image credit: Double Bubble Photography
Just before this, I’m asked if I want Bruce to be in the water with me. Ironically, it’s something I had given him a hard time about as we planned for a water birth but I need him so much. He climbs into the tub with me, clothes and all and I lean back against his chest and absorb the strength I need from him to get past this moment.
I put my hand down to my perineum to make sure it isn’t tearing because I can definitely feel the “ring of fire” they tell you about and I feel her head begin to crown. And through the pain, the only thing I can say is, “She has so much hair! Babe, feel it! I can feel her hair!”
Such incredible joy and anticipation propels me past the hard work- if only to see and feel and smell and nuzzle so much more than just her little tuft of hair announcing her way into the world. And maybe a small moment of weakness, “I’m so scared she’s a boy!”
Through no effort on my part, and yet, all the strength I’ve ever been able to muster for one task, I push her out. First, her head. Then, one shoulder at a time. And the midwives keep telling me, “Relax your legs, open them wide so she can come out.” I just need to say, following those instructions were almost as difficult as the pushing! Relax?! There is a human coming out of my body, splitting my soul and my heart and rocking my world and I need to relax?! But I guess I eventually do it because a few seconds later I see this little, squirming body underneath the surface of the water and I am involuntarily reaching out to her, my soul pouring out into the water, grasping her and bursting into a thousand rays of light as she emerges.
“Oh, thank you Jesus, I am not pregnant any more!”
Hazel doesn’t cry. I do. We’re both looking up, both in wonder. I’m thanking God for not letting me explode, even though my heart is exploding and she is looking up to see the pinpoint lights strung around the room.
“Babe,” I hear Bruce sobbing behind me, “She looking at you. Look! She’s looking at you!”
Image credit: Double Bubble Photography
There is such peace in the moment after Hazel is in our arms. I hear a lot of voices, I feel a lot of different sensations, I am aware of movement, but I can only see this beautiful creature in my arms, staring at me as if to say, “Hi, Mama. I’m here; we’re done now. That was fun, wasn’t it?”
At 6:52pm on November 26th 2014, all 8 pounds, 4 ounces and 20″ of my dreams are resting in my arms and I feel more contentment than I ever have as Bruce and I stare at what we created together . I have never, ever felt this much safety and wholeness, that I can recall.
The midwives give me a few minutes to recoup and then we are being heaved out of the water to check over my body and make sure Hazel is thriving.
I DID NOT TEAR. Not one little fissure, not one stitch needed. This, this is the part of my whole birth experience I continue to roll around in my mind. I am dumbfounded that such a small prayer, small yet so important to me, has been heard and answered by the grace of God.
So, if you ask me what my second birth experience culminates to you, I will give you this one word: redemption.
God chose this birth, before it was even known, to redeem my hurt and my fear. He chose this man to be my husband so we could make this little girl and I would be able to trace back His plan for redemption before I even needed redeeming.
