what have we found ourselves in?

Now that (unless God has some quite surprising other plans) my own childbearing season has come to an end, I've been thinking a lot about the plethora of spiritual parallels woven throughout the perinatal period. 

As Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." This line introduces a monologue that details the "stages" of life, starting in infancy and ending in "second childishness and mere oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 

But what if "all the world's a stage" with a divine Playwright and Casting Director? What if all our life stages and stories are merely shadows of Reality? What if what we're acting out is pointing to something else? What if there's evidence of Truth all around, infused into our daily lives? What if these analogies and metaphors and allegories are there to give us glimpses of the God who made it all?

Pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period are prime examples of this. And, unlike many other theatrical productions, this is one show in which women play the leading roles. Because, even with all the scientific and technological advances in all of human history, even if you identify as female, it just isn't possible to conceive and carry and give birth to a child without a female reproductive system. (Tangent, but a contestant on Dancing with the Stars a few seasons ago said, "My uterus is my superpower." My husband and I laughed about that and he's said it to me many times, throughout pregnancy especially.)

So what are the ways in which some of these spiritual parallels play out?

Expecting

When a woman is pregnant, what do we say? She's expecting. Even our words to describe this state are laden with hope. I love the Message paraphrase of Romans 8:18-28 when it says:

"That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good."

How beautiful is that? Pregnancy is a picture of waiting for the New Heavens and the New Earth. "We are enlarged in the waiting" as our hope grows as we get closer and closer to seeing God face to face. He "knows our pregnant condition"...how hard it is to wait, as we experience the proverbial morning sickness and round ligament pain and low-back aches and fatigue and feel so enormous that it takes a Herculean effort just to roll over in bed. As we get closer and closer to the end of the third trimester, we're just ready to be done, even if the giving birth process is scary is will require much of us. We know what we have to look forward to. We can't wait to meet the one we've loved since before we could see them.

Delivered 

Again, our choice of words in interesting...almost like we can't deny the connections here...the parallels between a bearing a child and how Jesus bears the weight of all our sin, between a child being born and being a "born again" believer, between delivering a baby and Jesus delivering us from a life of sin and death.

In John 16, Jesus himself compares the pain of childbirth to the sorrow inherent in life in this fallen world and the joy of the miraculous moment of seeing your baby for the first time being like seeing Jesus in Eternity. It'll all be worth it.

“When a woman gives birth, she has a hard time, there’s no getting around it. But when the baby is born, there is joy in the birth. This new life in the world wipes out memory of the pain. The sadness you have right now is similar to that pain, but the coming joy is also similar. When I see you again, you’ll be full of joy, and it will be a joy no one can rob from you" (John 16:21-23MSG).

There's also no getting around what a bloody business childbirth is. There's no way to bring a child into this world without shedding some blood, whether the baby is delivered through the birth canal or major abdominal surgery. We give of our own flesh and blood to give our children life. Isn't that strikingly similar to what Jesus does for us? Except that he literally loved us to death.

Dependent 

Postpartum/newborn season is one of those rare times, at least in the western world, in which we willing to admit our own human frailty and neediness. A woman who's just given birth needs help from doctors, nurses, family, and friends so that she can rest and heal and care for the needs of her baby. She needs help, and no one really expects her to do it entirely on her own. That's why there are postpartum wings of hospitals and standard 48-hour stays there (And in the Netherlands, where we had our second child, there's something called "kraamzorg" where a nurse comes to your house for about a week to help care for you and your baby, even cleaning bathrooms and helping with other things around the house! Why don't we do that in the U.S.??). It's why we organize meal trains and send baby gifts and offer to help how we can. 

Even more so, a baby is the epitome of dependence. An infant could not survive without a caregiver to keep him fed, clean, and soothed. When a baby is born, we literally claim him or her as a "dependent" on our taxes starting that year. 

Yet we fight the idea of dependence. America was built on independence, after all. We celebrate Independence Day every year! To be dependent is to be weak...something to be avoided at all costs. 

And yet...we are fighting against our very nature. God created us as dependent beings. We're meant to depend on God and have interdependence with each other. The try-hard, "I've got this" life we strive so desperately to lead (or at least look like we lead) is like a woman trying to run a marathon two weeks after giving birth or a baby piping up to say, "No thanks, mom, I'll get my own dinner." What if we trusted God to provide for us the way the baby that just came out bawling settles down immediately after being put on her mother's chest? Could we sleep as peacefully as a newborn in the arms of our Father?

So, as mothers, we get to play a beautiful role that tells a bigger Story than we probably realize most of the time.

But if all of life is a stage, what if we don't get cast in a certain role that we really, really want to play? What if the script isn't how we would have written it? 

I won't pretend to know why there are alternate plot lines than what would seem ideal. I don't know why many stories include disappointment or waiting or infertility or miscarriage or stillbirth or abortion or abandonment...stories we wouldn't write for ourselves if we held the pen. Certainly God can and does redeem stories like these, though they aren't mine to tell. 

I don't know why some of us don't get the roles the want, or sometimes we have to wait for our "big break" (I'm really trying to ride the theater theme as far as it'll take me :)), but I do know that our life is but a two-and-a-half-hour Broadway musical in an 80-year lifespan. Our life is but a breath in comparison to Eternity (Psalm 39:5, Psalm 144:4, James 4:14).

All I know is, there will be a day when there will be no more of the waiting for a child to be born or for a positive pregnancy test. No more pain and bloodshed of labor and delivery. No more crying out in hunger or the discomfort of a dirty diaper. No more pregnancy loss or longing for what others have. No more of the angst of abandonment. Our bodies and our hearts and our relationships and even our desires will no longer be the broken-down versions they are now...they will be perfect and whole. One day we'll see not merely in a mirror dimly but face to face the Reality to which all our stories were pointing (1 Cor. 13:12).

I love the song "What Have We Found Ourselves In?" by Jess Ray. I walked down the aisle (/my parents' front walk) to it at our (Covid) wedding. Her lyrics seem like a good way to wrap this post up:

"Maybe in one hundred years, one million laughs, one million tears

We will have a clearer view, this wasn't about me and you
See, this was written long before and carries on after we’re gone
This story that we found ourselves in

What have we found ourselves in?"

Happy Mother's Day 💜