clarity

Lucas crawled yesterday on all fours! He has been wiping up the dog hair on our floors with his belly doing his stealthy army crawl but yesterday he took four steps on his knees twice! David and he were playing in the grassy front lawn and he did it!

In all the emotional turmoil of deciding what to do with our lives - which precipitated my last few blog posts and a healthy lesson in contentment and trust - we have finally come to a few decisions. When we were in Austria, one of Grant's professors said he would pray that David's next step would be clear, that he should look for someone to approach him about it. He has been wanting to find work that would enable me to stay home. I think my flimsy spirit and lack of contentment has made him  even more unsure of his work and our future here... I need to interject a little song of praise for him in dealing with my ever unsatisfied heart. How oppressive it must be to be responsible for serving a person who wants it all - to live in sitka, travel to see family across the nations, to have both a blossoming career & be a full time stay-at-home mom, full-time providing AND help with the laundry (or just doing all of it like he does), a lovely house with a yard, chopping the budget AND eating organic fruits and dairy, AND stopping for treats whenever is convenient, fresh king salmon on the grill, european vacations, massages! ... I mean really Shelley....

Anyway, he was approached by an acquaintance walking her dog passed our house and she said he should apply for a position for wilderness therapy and counseling troubled youth. It had the feeling of supernatural provision - manna. Similarly, a friend of mine prayed for me to find clarity about what work I should pursue. I decided to go back to flying a few days a month and not work at the clinic, which was not at all a clear decision- more like muddied puddles on a midwest dirt road. But as I was reflecting on the word 'clarity' - I felt immediately that something was made clear to me last week - Alaskan mountain-lake-water clear, (see previous blogpost for visual).

My good friend asked me to be her birth companion. We had been talking about birth plans and I gave her all the hippy-dippy books which inspired me. I felt nervous, and honored, and excited. I love the labor process almost as much as I love birth - at least I love reading about it and learning about it. Most of the labors that I've been involved in as a nurse have been managed labors, full of titrated drips and monitors, and buttons. Except for my birth, I had never seen a first time mom give birth without intervention. But when you read about natural childbirth, it's earthy, and real. Sweaty and sticky. Even in the words on the page there is a sense that something powerful and beautiful, something very human is transpiring. It is the process of a mother meeting her child for the first time, bringing a wholly loved being to her chest, to her breast, to her embrace. I'm not talking about the moment the baby is placed on the mothers chest. I'm talking about the entire labor from the first contraction to the last push - the breathing, the rhythm, the sweat and moans. It's the process of intangible love becoming tangible. The world expanding, the heart growing. So yes, in theory, I was a supporter of natural childbirth.

But then my friend went into labor. Her husband call me twice and I knew it had come. I rushed over to her house, going over in my mind the chapter I read on dealing with pain naturally - afraid of being unhelpful and naive.  I was unsure of what my role of birth companion would look like and how to reconcile being in this new role at the hospital where I'm a staff nurse. But from the moment I got there, I knew it was not so much something you practice for or learn - it was not about being a good birth companion at all. It was always only about the mother's body laboring to create a space for this baby in this world. It's as if all the energy in the room, all the molecules of love and anticipation of this new life are being channeled and concentrated slowly and rhythmically through the birth canal of the mother. These things that are so much a part of being human on a visceral level - breath, touch, rhythm, moaning, laughter and pain - these things of course must be a part of bringing about new life. And it was her husband and my role to support her in them. Breath with her, move with her, let her relax through our touch. Then, as the precious one descends closer to meeting the world of air and breath, the energy concentrates. Everything becomes hypersensitive - noise, light, touch, smell. This is the point when the clothes come off, all the energy you have given her through massage and closeness now is in her hands- she alone must channel all this energy of new life. The air is so thick you can almost touch it, as if to impress on those present that nothing is as important as this moment. The weight of a new life feels like it will split you in two, that you cannot bear it. But it is in bearing it that the emerging new life is so beautiful, so meaningful and whole. She delivered a little girl - a new life enwrapped in love and blessedness, only heightened by the heaviness of labor.

I went home at 4 am without a yawn, filled with my own personal dose of the energy of Ruthann's new life, so happy to witness the beauty of her mother's sacrifice of love for it. And it became clear that I want to head down a path of midwifery and nurse practitioning. A few days later I got an email that I was accepted into the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Frontier University. And I'm so thankful for that prayer for clarity, and God's lovely answer...

I'm heading for bed. goodnight.