To Give to the Light

I vividly remember this last, long labor. The other two have dimmed in my memory, but not this one. Not this bone wrenching, spirit draining labor of many days. Seventy seven hours. I am not likely to forget a single one. The intermittent moments of hope and frustration. That one hour of complete and utter, Anne Shirley depths of despair. When I growled out the words, "Just get me to a hospital and give me a c-section" to my husband, 62 hours into the whole ordeal. His wonderful face aggravating me to no end when he looked at me with sympathy and pity. His kind, gentle response, "Sweetheart. You hate hospitals. You hate c-sections. This is not what you want. You are just exhausted, poor baby."

I wanted to kiss him.

I wanted to punch him in the eye.

I wanted him to find a way to get that baby out of me.

We were in my safe space. My place of peace and rest. My haven and veil of hope. My little garden, bordered by the white picket fence he built for me, divided by the brick pathway he laid out for me. Visible evidence of our love story surrounding us. Yet the harsh reality of enduring steady, strong contractions every 9 minutes for 60 plus hours at 6cm blurred the testimony and urged the impulse to take something apart.

I attacked the ground. Pulled weeds, ripped roots, dug out rocks. I split a fingernail and scratched up my knees. My stomach was huge, brushing the ground each time I bent over.

Sweat began to trickle down my face and back. I felt drenched. A large contraction tore through me at one point and I remember gritting my teeth and bearing down into the soil. The pain radiating out from my fingers and charging the ground around me.

I wanted heavy stones and rough ground. I wanted to walk one hundred miles. I needed to break myself free.

There comes a point in marathon labor when you start feeling trapped. Wedged in a place of no progress. Suspended in a very real nightmare that you could potentially remain pregnant and in labor, forever.

He stood there beside me. Working quietly, supporting me despite my best effort to force him into abandoning me. The blue sky above us, the raked and ravaged earth beneath us, the sleep deprived tension suspended between his body and my own traitorous one.

Yes, traitor.

I felt a very real anger with my own body. Mutiny. Sheer mutiny. Why was this body not working, doing what it was created to do?

I needed to rip something else out of the ground...

But I had pulled all the weeds and worked all the soil and the only task that remained was the planting. Not a conducive task for anger. It just doesn't work. Angry planting? No, it does not fit. Angry pulling, yes. There is a sense of defeat, failure, finality, something is no longer functioning or working and it must be ripped out to the last root.

But now all I could do was plant.

Dig burrows into the moist, warm earth. Create new space, delve and fashion a new stronghold, an exercise with no room for darkness. With each drop of tender young root into black soil, every unfurling leaf of newborn green, two important things began to happen...

The frustration began to leave my body and the contractions increased in strength and decreased in spacing.

I stumbled into the house some twenty minutes later. Out of breath and feeling dizzy.

The hours continued to pass, the labor intensified. My husband never left my side. Not when the pain threatened to split my back in half. Not when nausea wrenched through me for an entire half hour. He stayed with me, holding my hair. Quietly reading out loud the scripture I had selected weeks before. Dropping ancient words of grace on my body.

He created a safe space for me. Warming the water for our birthing tub. He brought out the cross he made for our wedding ceremony, the same cross we have used for all our sons baptisms, and placed it on our coffee table along with a few candles. He dimmed the lights. He entered the water with me and stayed by my side. He came up behind me as I gave birth to our son, our arms entwined together.

I remember the stillness of baby's birth. Half wonder and half exhaustion led me to a place of deep peace and quiet.

Baby emerged. Small, tiny boy. Slippery miracle of breath and tissue and blood and sinew.

All mine.

And his.

And His.

No wonder they say " dar a luz", to give to the light. You were blinding brilliance in the midst of darkness.

I have often wondered throughout this past year, over the memory of this very long labor. The imprint of suspended pain, the darkness of losing hope, the release of anger, the surrender of body, the deep deep peace and quiet. How much he taught me before he even drew breath.

My joy. My deep deep joy over you, small one. You were knit in my most secret place. A wonder to behold and be held. I love you to the depth and breadth of all I know love to be. And I rejoice at knowing that all of my love does not even come close to the love HE bears for you.

"May your father and mother rejoice! May the one who gave you birth be joyful!" Proverbs 23:25

Happy Birthday, sweet boy.