Awaiting Death

There is something strange about knowing that you are about to die.  I don't have a terminal disease or anything.  Quite the opposite - I am nine months pregnant and about to give birth.  It could be tonight.  

My midwife is also a nurse in the maternity ward at the hospital, and she told me the story of a fellow nurse who had given birth naturally without pain medication.  That nurse had told her, "I thought I was going to die."  My midwife replied, "Yeah, I know - all women think that in labor.  They all think, 'I can't do this,' and 'I am going to die.'"  The nurse said, "No, really.  I really thought I was going to die."  To which the midwife replied, "All women really think they are going to die." 

The other night I had a pain in my gut that I remembered from when I gave birth to my first child.  "Oh no," I thought, "It's about to start."  It turned out to be nothing and quickly went away.  But in that moment the dread of what was coming seized me.  I am going to do this without pain medication.  "I'm such an idiot," I thought to myself.  "Who in their right mind would do this?"  And I had to get back in touch with the reasons I have chosen this path.  

I think we are suppose to die in childbirth.  I think there is something about the pain that really kills a part of us.  Biologically and hormonally, the brain is reworked.  All defenses are stripped away by the pain and there is nothing left to do but choose to embrace suffering to the point of death for the sake of another's creation.  I think this a gift from God.  I think it is a wise way of remaking a person into his image.  After all, embracing suffering to the point of death for another's sake is exactly what he did for us.  And it is exactly what he calls all of us - both men and women, clergy and laity - to do for the world.  

The God I know in Christ is not a monster who thrusts punishments at people vindictively.  "Eve, you sinned and so now - ha ha ha - I'm going to have women suffer in childbirth!!!"  No, the consequences from God found in Scripture tend to ultimately reach toward the goal of redemption, of creating new life well.  God is on the side of life, not destruction.  He is on the side of being in relationship with us, not of pushing us further away.  Of making us back into his image, not of contorting us further.  God's decision for pain in childbirth when sin enters the world is for good, not for evil.

There is an African proverb that two births take place at the birth of a child - the birth of the baby and the birth of the mother.  To be born as a mother, I can no longer live the life I lived before the baby entered the world.  In that sense, I really have to die.  And so I await this death.  It will happen any day.  I am a little scared, a little overwhelmed.  But then I look at Jesus.  His arms are opened wide, to the point of death for me.  He has walked this path, he knows the way through, and he will be with me.  I am so glad he loves me, and I pray that I will become one who models this great act of love well.  God help me.

(Note:  There is no escaping this.  I have spoken with many women who had C-sections, and they all say the same thing - recovery was horribly painful.  Apparently, because the uterus has to contract to recover from the pregnancy, women experience the contractions following the surgery, and beg for more and more pain medication.  One lady who had the C-section commented, "You either go through the pain during labor or afterwards.  It's not like you can get away from it."  I didn't have a C-section with my first child, but I did use an epidural and had an enormous episiotomy.  I remember the weeks following the birth as difficult and painful as I recovered. In contrast, women who give birth without pain medication have very little recovery time - like, a couple of hours until they feel like themselves again.  I think my friend was right - even in our high tech society, there is no escaping the pain of childbirth.   

Out of the Waters: Adoption as Giving Birth

I had never really noticed how much creation imagery there is in the beginning of the book of Exodus.  It is especially apparent when you read it in the Hebrew.  The book begins with a description of how "fruitful" the sons of Israel were.  It says, "The sons of Israel were fruitful, they swarmed, they multiplied, they became very much exceedingly numerous, and the land was filled with them" (1:7).  This echoes Genesis 1, where, when God creates humans, he tells them to "be fruitful and multiply" and to "fill the earth."  I am reminded of my cousin who has five kids and wants to buy a six acre property to fill it with her children and, one day, grandchildren.  But even more than her, this family was bursting at the seams, obeying God's call to continue the process of creating new life.

After I gave birth to my daughter, I remember thinking that I could never adopt a child, because I needed those maternal hormones released at birth and through nursing in order to care for this child round the clock.  I read Exodus chapter 2, and I greatly empathized with the mother there.  She conceived, she gave birth to a son, and "she saw that he was good."  Again, this echoes Genesis 1, where, after creating each of the things God created, "he saw that they were good."  When I saw my daughter, the overflowing sense of how wonderful, how beautiful, how precious she was took over every piece of my being.  I very powerfully "saw that she was good," and I was set to protect her.  In Exodus 2, this mother, though, was faced with the promise of immanent death for her child.  Because, even thought is God's good desire for continued creation, there are forces in the world that desire to kill, to demolish, to enslave and make life bitter for the good creations, as seen in this story through Pharaoh (Exodus 1:8-22).  And so this mother placed her new, good, beloved creation into a basket made with the materials of her slavery and placed him in the waters.  In the ancient world in which this story was written, waters often symbolize chaos and death.  The Bible begins in Genesis 1 in an uncreated universe in which there is nothing but waters, nothing but chaos.  But God's spirit hovers above this uncreated, watery, chaotic void, and speaks order, presence, creation into existence.  So in this story, the forces of destruction call for the drowning of all sons in the river (Exodus 1:22), the uncreating of them, the return to chaotic nothingness.  

In our world, there are mothers and children who experience this everyday.  Out of the water of the womb comes a new, created, good life, but there are forces in the world which make it impossible for the mother to nourish that life.  But she cannot bear to surrender this little creation to those forces.  And so, though she must depart from him and place him back in the waters, she puts him in a basket with hope, because she, his mother, cannot bring herself to drown him.

The story doesn't end there.  A rich woman from another culture, a safe woman, Pharaoh's daughter of all people, finds the basket, opens it, and when she sees the child, "she is filled with compassion."  She draws the baby up out of the waters, out of the river of death, and he becomes her son.  Twice now he has been drawn out of the waters.  First out of the waters of his mother's womb and into existence.  And now out of the no less real waters of death and into the safe arms of his adopted mother.  Her compassion gives him new life.  And with this life, God delivers all of his family in the remainder of the book.

So now I see adoption differently.  And I see creation differently.  God's call to "fill the earth" with new little creations is not just a call at the beginning of Genesis to populate the planet.  It is also a call to work against the forces of the watery chaos that seek to destroy the good creations that which God makes.  It is a call to obey that impulse of deep compassion, like Pharaoh's daughter, that God puts inside of us when we a baby, a child, a teenager, a young adult, a co-worker, an elderly widow within the waters of death, to draw them out of the waters and, in so doing, give birth to new life.