Neither of my grandchildren were born in a conventional fashion. “Difficult” labor and delivery has kind of been a family tradition for my branch of the Britton family tree. When my mother delivered me it was only after more than a day of labor, followed by an emergency caesarean. My first son was born following a twenty-six hour labor and ended with an emergency caesarean. Our first grandson was delivered naturally, but he was also induced due to critically high blood pressure in his mother, resulting in a six week premature birth. He had to spend two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, and due to COVID protocols, we were unable to see him in person until he was discharged from the hospital. Most recently, our granddaughter was born, but not without extreme duress on the part of her mother. Three days after induced labor produced no baby, she was sent home, only to return two days later, beginning 24 hours of hard labor that ended in, you guessed it, a caesarean. As if to add insult to injury, her mamma endured all of this while having the flu and then had to make two more trips to the hospital for two more surgical procedures postpartum. Today I listened as the labor and delivery doctor described this as the most difficult one she had personally witnessed. I have witnessed enough births to be able to say without hesitation, in labor and delivery, our mothers straddle the border of death in order to drag us into the land of the living. There is a reason that delivering a child is referred to as labor, or if you prefer the old King James Version term, travail. Bottom line, creating, sustaining, and delivering a human life is so incredibly hard only God and women can do it. William Makepeace Thackeray said, “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”
We didn’t have to wait two weeks to meet our granddaughter like we did with our grandson, but we did have to wait two days. Since mamma and baby were in flu protocol, no one was allowed into the room with them for a few days. Generously, the OB nurse offered to escort us outside the hospital so that we could see her through the window. As the five of us were walking back into the hospital, I stopped and looked back to snap this picture. There are two images in this picture, each of which represents polar extremes on the spectrum of life and death.
On the right is the hospital window for the room that was housing this brand new life, just twenty-four hours old, that we were all there to celebrate, but on the left was the helicopter pad where my father, in the midst of a heart attack, was loaded up and flown to Murfreesboro just two months earlier. Fred R. Barnard taught us all that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll only share a few more with you here.
I paused to take this picture because I wanted a reminder of the frailty, brevity, tragedy, and beauty of life. At once it can be both magical and horrible, or as Michael Franti says it, “Life is amazing, then it sucks, then it’s amazing again.” In October, I left my office, rushed to this very hospital and stood in the cramped ER exam room five, along with my mother, sons, father, and half a dozen doctors and nurses. They were working diligently to ensure that dad would survive the med-flight so that he could have the life-saving surgery an hour later. I’ve been in similar rooms with other people and their family more times than I can remember, so I’ve learned to maintain my composure and think clearly in these moments. I always considered it an occupational necessity to remain calm so I could minister to the people in the midst of their crisis, but on this day it was my family in crisis. As they prepared to wheel dad out of the room and to the helicopter pad, I remember looking at him and thinking, “This could be the last time I ever see my father.” Sitting here now I realize it sounds morbid to write this, but if you put yourself in that room it is a perfectly reasonable thing to think. On a day where we feared, if not expected, death would come to our family, we were graciously given the gift of life. Now, two months later, a mere thirty feet from the helicopter pad that played a part in saving my father’s life, we were standing outside the window, already in love with the new life we had been expecting, that we feared was going to be stripped from us. Sitting here tonight, I am grateful in both cases our fears were alleviated and our joy was made fully.
The night before my granddaughter was born I spent a good bit of time in the chapel, praying a mixture of Scriptures from Isaiah, John, and Psalms.
“Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the Lord. “Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God…Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices.
“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”
“Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
If this picture says anything it says the border between life and death is narrow and near, and we all walk it like a tightrope.
No comments:
Post a Comment