Raphael's Birth

If you are just coming to my blog, before you read this post, please read this one.

The post below is a reposting of Heather Hendrick's telling of the birth of little Raphael. See the original here.

Grace: God is the Writer of Our Stories

photo credit: Joanna Howard

"If it were up to me, I'd write this story differently."



That phrase, and shades of it have been spoken in my soul many times as I've walked this road God has paved for me.



Ingratitude. Distrust. Looking past the lush mountain God has given and fixing my eyes tight on the speck of dirt in the distance...what it seems He is withholding. I want to push His hand. Force it. Rush Him. Demand my way.

2:30 a.m. Mama Emmanuel is in labor. Come. This is her fifth baby. Her uterus has been around the block a time or two. It knows what to do.



The birth team hurries to the maternity center. Mama Emmanuel is in pain. She is almost dilated enough to push. Any time now. Coffee brewing.



"Maybe...maybe you don't want to change the story because you don't know what a different ending holds."



10 hours later the baby is still tucked safely inside his mother. 12 hours later we sit waiting, confused. This labor unlike any other I've seen before. The baby's heartbeat is healthy and strong. Every few minutes we check. Baby's heart....the sound of horses galloping. Mom's body has been ready for hours. We've all been ready for hours. Why won't this baby descend? Fifth baby. This does not make sense. We watch Cookie and Beth, wise midwives and women, seek God for guidance. Wisdom whispers, "Wait."

Farmers and ranchers are rarely nonspiritual. You can't work this land, hold the earth in your hands, and not make spiritual connections. Seeds. Harvest. Weeds. Shepherding. Life. Death. "Farmers, we think we control so much. Do so much right to make a crop. And when you are farming,...you are faced with it every day. You control so little. Really. It's God who decides it all. Not us." Seasons can't be rushed. Man can't figure out how to empty the sky or how to close it up. The farmer can labor until he falls over, but he can't control the frost. God's hand is infinitely stronger than our own.

In the same way, you can't consistently be around natural labor and birth without seeing our own human stories wrapped up in all that struggle, gasping, pain, and ultimately joy indescribable. You can't see the struggle, frustration, exhausting labor, and exhilarating release and not think profound thoughts about life, this world, and the God that created all of it. A labor and birth is like an entire life's story you watch in one day.



In real life and during a birth, it is tempting to want to rush the struggle, skip the pain, speed it up already...take the pen in our hands. In Haiti, where health care is limited, being impatient and rash seems riskier. Haiti is notorious for shaking us, forcing us to come face to face with our faith...or our lack of it.



"There is a reason I am not writing the story, and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don't. Maybe...it's accepting there are things we simply don't understand. But He does."



I've never seen a baby born with such fast force. He was not pushed out. He was launched. One minute it seemed as though Mama Emmanuel wasn't even in hard labor. The next thing we know, the midwives' hands are full of new life. A baby boy born with a chord wrapped tightly around his neck two times. The mystery. All revealed in a matter of startling moments. A baby that could have hung himself..if he had descended...if he had done what we wanted. If the midwives had rushed it, intervened, taken matters into their own hands. While we were frustrated with a labor that seemed to have stalled for hours, with a mother that seemed to have forgotten how to push, annoyed that nothing made any sense, aware of how limited our options are if things did not progress, the One that knit that little life together was faithfully holding him. Holding the midwives. Holding all of it.

In that moment I was reminded that it is by God's grace that His grip on that pen is strong. Though we snatch for it, in frustration we grab and demand to write the next chapter or rip out the last two...His hand is strong. Grace keeps the pen out of our hands. He writes our stories at just the right pace.



You have never seen a more weepy room of women. Tired, humbled midwives. Tired, relieved mother. All of us. Incredibly thankful.



God seems to get bigger and bigger and we feel smaller and smaller with every birth.

"There is a reason I am not writing the story, and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don't. Maybe...it's accepting there are things we simply don't understand. But He does."



You can read more about Mama Emmanuel's life and how her story and faith is forever growing ours:



Mama Emmanuel



Saturday Labor



God sparing her son today is only one chapter among many that continually turn our hearts toward heaven.



All words in italic belong to Ann Voskamp and are found in her beautiful book, "One Thousand Gifts.

Haiti blogs

As many of you know, I regularly read posts written by missionaries in Haiti. I am going to repost one now written by Tara Livesay at livesayhaiti.blogspot.com. This post makes me cry at the hardships the women over there endure, and it makes me rejoice at the grace God has shown them.

Mama Emmanuel

There are many people we have been blessed to meet and learn from in Haiti. Their lives have challenged us, changed us, inspired us.

In our first years in Haiti, when we lived in a rural village, there were a handful of people that impacted us greatly.

After the earthquake there were stories that moved us, wrecked us, inspired us, destroyed us, redeemed our hope, and healed our hearts.

Those faces and stories stay with us everywhere we go. We carry the lessons we learned from these beautiful souls close in our hearts.

One of those stories is that of "Mama Emmanuel".

The woman pictured here has impacted more lives than she can comprehend. The internet is not a part of her life and words like blogging, facebook, and twitter are not a part of her vernacular. She has no idea how many people know parts of her story. Trying to explain to her that since the earthquake thousands and thousands of people have heard and read about her just makes her laugh nervously. She may think we are kidding. She is unaware of the lives she has touched.

I was in Beth's office one day looking for a midwifery book when I found an envelope with words people have written about her. As I sat alone in a sunlit room I read two different accounts from medical personnel that came to serve post earthquake. As the gravity of her story hit me for the dozenth time, tears rolled down my face. The words written by people that came to help the wounded heal, but instead found healing themselves, reminded me of the parts of the story I'd forgotten and I want to share them with you tonight.

"You may remember Emmanuel's mother. Two weeks ago, when her son had his last in a series of painful plastic surgeries to reconstruct his face, she stood up in the center of our hospital and sang a chilling acappella Hallelujah, praising God for the gift of her child's life.


Today, she peered down, for the second time, into her family's grave.


She asked us to bring her here. For closure. She did not know what to expect. Would the house be gone? An empty lot, where her life had once been? Or would it be hauntingly unchanged, the moment of her loss frozen in time.


We worried for her. What does a mother do when she encounters such a challenge? Which would leave a more gaping hole in her soul - an empty space where her house and children had once been, or an untouched pile of rubble with the bodies of her babies still trapped within? Would she stand and stare at the base of the rubble? Would she fall on it and wail? Would she start to claw and dig at it? Or would her soul just melt away?


She quietly climbed the untouched rubble pile, peering down into the hole from which three months ago she had plucked her little Emmanuel and beneath which her other children's bodies lay entombed. Then she wandered away silently, over the rubble, searching intently, she later revealed, for a precious memento - a sacred book of hymns that she had carried with her throughout her life. She did not find it.


Nor did she see - or perhaps, she just did not acknowledge the small brown arm of a child that was still visible, pinned under a concrete slab, in the depths of the rubble below her feet.


Tonight, as I left the hospital, she sat with her Emmanuel on a small cot in the corner of the courtyard, staring silently into the distance. I placed my hand on her shoulder in comfort. She stared up at me, with a depth of sorrow in her eyes, despite her ever present smile. I leaned down to hug her from behind and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. She lifted a hand to hold my cheek to hers for a moment. Such depths of sorrow. Invisible, searing, devastating sorrow. Just below the surface of a smile.


How does she survive?"
(Written by Barbie - a PA from Alaska)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"In the midst of their pain and continuing suffering there was the presence of a love and caring for one another that I had only glimpsed on my first busy trip. (to Haiti post earthquake as a medical volunteer)


This loving touch brought a peace that covered the hospital environment. This could only have been God's Holy Spirit. What affected me the most about my second trip was this woman named Marie Rose who had lost her children and home in the earthquake. She was caring for her broken three year old son, Emmanuel, in the makeshift hospital. Every night her beautiful singing voice led the worship service for all the patients and caregivers in song, followed by Bible readings. I never understood a word of her Creole, but I understood every word of her heart. With all that she had endured, was enduring, I saw her faith enabling her to do all this, shining from her to all who were around her. The example of her faith gave me a new understanding of what we each should aspire to be."

(Written by Cliff a PT from Oregon)

Prenatal visit today

Mama E. is anxiously waiting to deliver. She is temporarily living in the post-partum room at the Heartline Maternity Center. She and four year old Emmanuel spend their days chatting with the cooks and teen moms, taking short walks, and waiting on the first contraction.

Every single birth is important to us. We grow to love and know the women we work with as their babies develop inside them. We care deeply about each one. They all matter.

Mama Emmanuel holds a piece of every person's heart that has ever met and interacted with her.

The birth of this baby represents so much more than the average birth.

This is a very special delivery.

Out of darkness, light.

Out of sorrow, joy.

Out of weeping, laughter.

Out of death, life.

Cliff giving Beth a photo of Emmanuel and Marie Rose

____________

Thankfully, Mama Emmanuel gave birth to a precious baby boy, who she named Raphael, which means 'Healing God'.

Next I will post about the birth of Mama Emmanuel's Raphael.