If God gives you a break...

I had been in labor for 9 hours. I was 8 1/2. But...I had started at 5. 3 1/2 cm in 9 hours. And before that 4 weeks of complete bed rest in a one room house with a 2 year old while my husband was on vicarage. Oh yea, and the bed rest started Holy Week.  Sounds like the start to some cheesy seminary horror movie the sem wives would watch. ha.

Anyways, labor had finally started but suddenly, 9 hours in...it stopped. Completely. I looked around in confusion. 5 minutes before contractions had been just a couple minutes apart and I hadn't been able to think straight from exhaustion and lack of food in the previous 12 hours. But suddenly I felt hyper aware and labor felt as far away as the day the test first turned positive. No one else in the room seemed concerned. Finally someone said to me, "Honey, when God gives you a break, you don't ask why, you just enjoy it!" I was encouraged to get up and walk around, eat, and check out my surroundings. I left the room and was eating a bowl of yogurt. My labor team, which consisted of my husband, a doula, my midwife's daughter, and my midwife, all visited and laughed. I joined in and still secretly panicked. What if this baby never came out?! But I tried to relax, enjoy the moment, and eat.

I've been turning this experience over in my head the past week or so. For the past 66 days I have thought each and every day of how I "should still be pregnant". I have calculated how far along I would be, imagined the kicks I would be feeling, even looked at previous pregnancy photos to imagine how I would look. I should still be pregnant. Except....I shouldn't. Because I'm not.

We like to play God. We like to be entitled. To have rights. Certain unalienable rights.

But what about when you don't?

None.

Oh, except death.

Listen up quiverfullers, women perpetually parturitioning, etc...I have a confession to make. I'm one of those women that doesn't just do it because I believe it is in line with God's Word to be open to the blessings of my one flesh union as He creates them in me. I actually WANT it. A big family. Tons of kids. Oh sure there have been days, weeks, and even seasons of my life since that first little bundle joined us years ago that I have had doubts...but deep underneath I have dreamed of having 7, no 10, no 12, how many years of fertility to I have left again? I'm not kidding. My friends in high school used to tease me about being a masochist. That makes me chuckle now. I don't know, I guess I've always thrived on chaos. And 4 little boys definitely do that.

I don't know why I have not had children closer together. I don't know why I have any at all. I don't know why two of them are in heaven instead of here with me. But I do know, finally,  that I do not have any control whatsoever over my body giving me babies when I want them or being able to keep them alive.

I may never have kids again. I could be gone tomorrow. My entire family could. But I have learned something in reliving my second born's birth... I am NOT supposed to be pregnant right now. I can stop saying "I SHOULD still be pregnant." Because I'm not. And I shouldn't be.

I refuse to live my worth in what I think I want to be, what I think I should be, what I think will give me value, what I think will make me important, what I think will make people admire me or like me or be proud of me. Because I do not have any more control over the latter than I do over getting pregnant and as for the formers...No one who chases their worth in things of this world...EVEN if those things are blessings from God Himself, no one will ever be fulfilled. Indeed they, indeed I, am guilty of idolatry.

My value is in Christ. My worth is in Him. My worth is seen in His death on the cross. His only expectation of me is to Love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. And even better is, He gives me the strength to do it.

If you're wondering how that birth story ended, well let's just say he's just as stubborn today as he was 5 years ago, but so is his mama. :)