Sharing My Birth Stories: A Podcast Interview & Sermon

I recently had two opportunities to share part of my birth stories. One was on the Christian Birth-Story Podcast “Birthing in God’s Presence” Episode 30 (You can listen to it here. Scroll to the bottom of this post for links to what I talked about.)  And the other was as part of our parish’s Good Friday service sermons: Reflections on the Seven Last Words of Christ (the text of my portion of the sermon is below).

Both reminded me of the great gift that birthing my children was, as well as the role of story telling and remembering God’s faithfulness in our lives. (You can read my fresh remembering of Jackson’s birth here and Lily’s birth here.) As I move away from my births, I realize that their stories come with me: they are pivotal moments and rites of passage in my life that I will draw on to encourage other people and make sense of how God is constantly bringing us into new life.

For the podcast, I wrestled and imagined for months about what I would say.  How I would sum up Lily’s birth? What about the role that praying for a good birth had in her story? Had I prayed enough? If I had prayed more would I have had a better birth? Faster? Easier? Is that a silly thing to wonder, considering how wonderful her birth and her being in our life is? And in the end, in reflecting on my story, I came to see a lot of grace and love and gentleness in God’s call for us to pray. It felt so fitting that 9 months after Lily’s birth, I was given the space to tell my story. I think every mom should get an hour to do that before her baby turns one.

For the sermon, I got to reflect on a piece of my birth stories that didn’t make the podcast. (Kierra, the host, did a great job editing my sometimes rambling story-telling into something more succinct and coherent!) At the end of last month our little Anglican parish closed its doors. I’m sure I’ll write more about that as I reflect on what our church home has meant to us these past five years in an upcoming post.

For our Good Friday  sermon, different people gave reflections of the seven last phrases of Christ. (This is a traditional Jesuit spiritual practice on Good Friday, and recently Fr. James Martin wrote a book that has brought the practice into wider use.  The seven phrases are: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) // “This day you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43) // “Woman, behold your son.” (John 19:26-27) // “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46)  // “I thirst.” (John 19:28)  // “It is finished.” (John 19:30)  // “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46))

I was given the third phrase: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” — John 19:26-27

On the night of November 25^th, 2015, I was about 24 hours into the labor of my first baby, entering into the phase of labor known as “transition.” For many women, this is the most difficult part of labor. You are not pushing; you are letting your body open up the last few centimeters before your baby can make his or her way into the world. Contractions are very intense. Often transition lasts about an hour, but it can be longer.

My transition that time around was much longer. My husband Evan held me, my sister-in-law and doula coached me, and I did my best to moan and breath and relax and stay afloat. It was one of the most difficult hours of my life, and as it dragged on, I remember feeling like I was beginning to drown.

And I felt Jesus say to me “I am the breath of life” when I would breath in on a new contraction, and then when I thought I could not possibly stay relaxed and manage, I heard him say “I receive your gift of pain, and it’s beautiful.” I’m not one that usually hears things from God in my spirit, and this honestly sounded strange.

After that moment, I never felt like I was drowning or that I couldn’t manage. Jesus was with me. He was with me in my suffering, and he was with me as my beautiful baby boy was born into the world four hours later.  I look back and think of Jackson’s birth as a time when I felt God’s presence so strongly. I was connected to the cross, to suffering to bring forth new life, in a way that I would never be at any other time.

Traditions surrounding Mary’s birth of Christ often remark that Mary’s birth was painless. And I believe that could be true; some women truly are so relaxed that they experience a pain-free child birth. But if Mary escaped pain at Christ’s birth, she did not escape it at his death. In Luke 2, as Simeon sang and prophesied over baby Jesus in the Temple that here was the Christ, the salvation of all nations, he ended by telling Mary that “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” At the cross, she experienced that piercing of her own soul at the death of Jesus.

And so here we have Mary and the Beloved Discipline John at the foot of the cross, in the middle of the crucifixion. In the middle of suffering and agony, Jesus says to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” Traditionally this is seen as the moment where Jesus not only gave his mother to John, but also gave her to the Church. That Mary became the mother to all the church. If that feels itchy to you as a Protestant, no worries. Here is what I want to say: in the middle of his Crucifixion, Jesus is putting people in families. He is caring for his Church and knitting it together as a family.

Many of us are in a season of suffering as a church. Little “s” suffering, but still suffering because our little parish is being laid to rest next week. It is very, very sad. But hear this: Jesus is with you, he cares about you, and he has a church family for you.

He has a new church family for you, new mothers and new brothers to love and to be loved, to journey together with. I truly and deeply believe that. That for each one of us, God has a new a church family. 

From the cross, he declares that he is with you and has a family for you. Do not be dismayed, beloved, for as Jesus says in John 16:

“Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy … I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Getting to share both my stories on the podcast and on Good Friday were such privileges for me. I have come to see that one of the wonderful things about having such long birth stories that encompass so many moments, both beautiful and difficult, is that I can deeply relate to (and encourage) many different experiences of birth. I see my stories as stories that God will use to minister to people (probably mostly younger women on the verge of motherhood) for the rest of my life.  Of course, I don’t think that is just limited to birth either; anytime we walk through something big and take time to see the little (and not so little) ways God meets us there, we can give a testimony that encourages and spurs on another on to faith and good works.

What are the experiences you’ve had that have become testimonies and encouragements to other people?  

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Here are links to the resources I talked about on the podcast: Birthing in God’s Presence” Episode 30 (You can listen to it here, but for some reason some of the links on that page aren’t working, so here they are below. )

Methyl Folate & Prenatal Vitamin

Kierra Blaser’s Top 8 Ways to Prevent Tearing During Childbirth