I have said it before and gotten a lot of complaints about it , but I'll say it again. I believe that it's important to experience labor and birth pains. They should not be avoided or eliminated. Women should try their best to embrace them, learn from them, and ultimately GROW as a result of them. Often women will joke about the pain and say something like "stick the epidural in right from the start or just knock me out and wake me up when it's over etc etc..." But although I can totally relate to the pain and the fear and the despair even that this event can bring about I think we women are really missing something big, HUGE even about the miracle of birth when we "numb" ourselves to it all.
There's a line from a movie (G I Jane) that states "Pain is good. Pain is your friend. It lets you know you're alive." These lines apply so well to us everyday non-GI folks as well. But our culture is so much about avoiding pain, avoiding discomfort, minimizing sacrifice. Frankly, those of us who believe strongly in a God who became man and then suffered and died for us really miss the opportunity we've been given to unite ourselves with Him when we separate pain from birth. Pain goes together with birth, new life, making it all the more beautiful. Can't we see how important the pain is? Why do we limit the beauty by denying ourselves a share in His suffering?
Over at ..perfectly clear..:A second time mom relates her recent birth story. She describes so well the despair the "Oh God why hast Thou forsaken me?" moment all mothers go through in the midst of laboring. She writes: "The hopelessness of being within moments of giving birth is like nothing else. I've been mulling those minutes over in my mind for days now--and that's the best word I can think of to describe them. Hopeless. They're dark, doubtful moments when you no longer trust yourself or anyone else, but are in complete submission to God and to the natural processes he built into mankind. It's really quite a glimpse of a world without redemption. Though somewhere, in the deep recesses of your mind, you know that soon, the pain will be gone. Soon, you'll meet your baby...soon, but not now. Now, you have just endured hours of painful, exhausting contractions. And the baby is still inside. There's no way out or around it, you just have to go through it--but suddenly you don't want to. At least I didn't. I was ready to close up shop. I remember thinking, in the foggy moments between very intense contractions, 'Why can't I just take a nap? Can't I finish this tomorrow?'
It was truly divine that, during these precise moments, our aforementioned friend, Renee, had stopped by to pick up Ambrose until after the birth. I'd had my doubts about laboring without any other womanly presence (my last birth was with a midwife), but figured I'd manage to find a way to get the baby out one way or another. As nice as it was to be with my sweet little family, there's something that starts to ring awfully hollow about the encouragement of your husband during an event so exclusively feminine as birthing."
How beautiful. How true. How I do envy her. My birth experiences have ALWAYS left me with a great sense of being drawn closer to Jesus. In those moments I feel closer to Him than at any other. Also I get a glimpse just a little glimpse of what Divine Love is like for us His creatures. He gives birth to us in pain and agony for love of us. He suffers in order to bring us into new life. We are born of his sacrifice and his pain. As mothers why should we ever choose to run from this great and glorious opportunity. It is a privilege to be a woman. Such an honor has only been given to us - the mothers of the world!!
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