Renewing your mind

    You hear all kinds of things about the power of positive thinking, and people sending happy thoughts your way these days. Although there is something to be said for the sheer positivity of these sayings, they still make me a little sad. Could it be because they are all fluff and no power? Sending happy thoughts and positive energy cannot be accomplished without a power source. In an earlier post, we talked about bringing God back into the parts of a woman's life that he created and fully intended to be a part of. How can this translate to the actual time when she will give birth? How can we face such a culturally colored and fear filled experience with trust in God? How can we take what has been called our curse, and transform it into the blessing God intends it to be? Can we feel, going into this moment that has been called every scary, negative, and trepidatious term in the book, that it can be beautiful for His glory? Is the answer happy thoughts and positive thinking? Well, yes and no. Only in as much as they acknowledge the creator and his beautiful intentions for this time, can they be infused with appropriate power.

    When we begin to see birth as not a trial to be endured, but as a transformation from woman to mother that is accomplished with such emotion and power that it can never be rivaled by any other experience, then we begin to change our perspective and take back what our culture and our fear have robbed from us. It is true that birth takes a tremendous amount of resources, both physical and emotional, but when we bank on our own power to accomplish it, and go into it with a negative mindset that we just have to "Get it over with" then we will likely find that it leaves us exhausted and, although joyful at the arrival of a new tiny one, missing something that could have been there. I think I happened on a key that might translate into wonderful things for the process.

    When reading another blog today, I was amazed at the author's insight when she started talking about how the joy of the Lord is our strength. (I'll post the link below so you can enjoy her post as well) I have always wondered about this, puzzling over how something I considered a consequence of happy circumstances could be a source of strength. That's when it hit me. Joy is no consequence, it is a choice we make when facing the battle of life that gives us the courage, motivation, and power to move forward.  All the wasted time I have spent waiting to find joy, I had but to pick it up and clothe myself in it, assured that it was purposeful and powerful. How can I have this assurance? Because I know I am loved by a perfect heavenly Father, who knows me completely, loves me unconditionally, and has my best interests at heart. Even the things this world and culture consider trials and pain are put in my life for a purpose, and have a new meaning in light of this revelation. I know I am loved, and I know that no matter what valley I am in, I can wear the joy that gives me strength to climb from the valley to the mountain.

    I can know, when it comes to labor, that God has a plan and purpose for me, and that each twinge he allows in my life is for my good. I can know that each moment is good, is doing great things for me and my baby, and is a truly positive and beautiful awakening to a new understanding of the power we can draw on from the Lord in our deepest and most dramatic moments. To get here, we must renew our minds, just as scripture admonishes, and here is where the happy thoughts and positive thinking come in. We must refute the lies of the culture that birth has to be some horrific, terrible, painful experience, and instead surround ourselves with the tons of positive stories available where women have depended on God's strength and have walked this journey before us, and come out the other side feeling like more than conquerors. We must daily clothe ourselves with joy as the hour approaches, greeting the signs of impending labor not with trepidation, but with excitement, truly trusting God's beautiful design, and with a mind completely renewed and ready to see Him work.

The promised link: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/10/when-you-feel-like-youre-battling-hard/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HolyExperience+%28Holy+Experience%29

The Way It Could Be (and Should Be?) Part 2

Last time I touched a little on personal responsibility, and now I want to expound a little on that and talk about the mindset that helps that to happen. One of the biggest tragedies in all of our culture’s wanderings is that we have begun to remove God from every sphere of our lives, realizing collectively that to acknowledge Him as real means to be beholden to Him, and to become a servant, which rubs our very nature the wrong way. We are not the first culture to be deluded into thinking we will somehow be better off without Him, and we will not be the last. What every culture fails to remember, however, is that in casting off His yoke, we take a far heavier yoke that gets more burdensome from generation to generation as our children reap what we have sewn. What does this have to do with women’s health in general and birth in specific? I think it is immeasurably important in understanding some of the disconnects that women make from taking responsibility for their own health and birth experiences. It has been falsely said of midwives that they sometimes sacrifice the safety of the situation for the “experience” that birth can be. While that is a slanderous and obviously false statement to anyone who understands the rigor of the training a midwife goes through, there is a reason people believe it to be true. It may be that some people even begin their search for a home birth midwife because they have heard of this experience and want to have one of their own. Over time, though, they come to understand that the midwife’s first concern, as it should be, is with the safety and well-being of the mama and the baby, and that the experience is just what happens when the whole woman is considered in the choices that are made concerning child birth. So, people who attack a positive childbirth experience as the wrong goal are missing the point that it is not the goal, but instead a side benefit of being careful to understand and respect how people are made, and consequently, what is the best way to care for them. Even the medical field has been forced to acknowledge that strong faith and prayer have a part in healing, and in the care of a woman by a Christian midwife, this component is not forgotten, but instead celebrated as a help in a natural and God breathed process.

                What then, is the responsibility of the individual woman in recognizing this and applying it to her own life? First, we must understand that the Creator of the process has an interest in being a part of every phase of pregnancy and childbirth, and any medical decisions we may make in other areas of our health. The spiritual lessons that can be learned from pregnancy and labor are extensive and the fact that these are missed by many women who never think to include God in the process at all is a tragedy. It is for this reason that many women feel compelled to entrust their care entirely to a qualified surgeon when surgery should only rarely be considered in the realm of childbirth. They recognize at their core the need to trust someone outside themselves, and turn the doctor into a sort of savior, who they begin to trust without question. God never enters the conversation, and instead, you will hear women say things without pause or careful consideration that indicate that they believe that it is indeed their doctor who has provided a favorable outcome, even in cases where massive interventions have actually almost caused tragedy. We are wired to trust somebody, and when we remove God, the caregiver becomes the next obvious choice, and it becomes imperative that you choose the one that appears the most educated, or who gets the most chatter from friends and relatives. We rarely stop to consider why all that “life-saving” from near tragic experiences may have occurred in the first place, instead believing that for some reason most women encounter bad circumstances from which they must be rescued to successfully go home with a healthy baby. The inverse is actually the truth. Women are designed by God to miraculously sustain healthy pregnancies, endure labor, and deliver vigorous infants. Praise the Lord that in the circumstances where intervention is necessary, it is available at the hands of skilled surgeons, but in the vast majority of cases, no intervention is necessary.

            Another layer is added to the mix when we consider the relationship a woman has with her God. When she has been in prayer for her child throughout her pregnancy, and when she is tuned into the Holy Spirit and listening to the Lord throughout her labor, and walking in the truth that she is loved and never alone, she does indeed have an experience that cannot be matched, even in the times when things may not go like she has planned.  Even in the times when she ends up in the hospital facing a surgery, she can be at perfect peace, because she knows that God has brought her where she needs to be for this time in her life for her good and the good of her child for whom she has prayed. As women, only we can choose this level of intimacy and trust with our Lord, and make decisions that reflect that our trust is in no one but Him, knowing that He is working on our behalf for our good. These women walk away with birth stories that begin with, “Let me tell you how God worked in my circumstances.” No experience on earth can top that.

For an example of what birth looks like when God and family and their place in it are honored, check out this link: http://birthwithoutfearblog.com/2012/06/21/home-water-birth-baby-born-in-the-caul/

The Way Things Could Be (and Should Be?) Part 1

As I’m sitting at my computer musing about all the subjects I could write about that would enlighten women, I keep coming back to one theme in my mind. In order to combat any problem, any ignorance, any error, there must first be knowledge that there is indeed an error. That is what women in the United States need to know. There has been a grievous mistake made, and we must first recognize that fact to be able to combat it with truth. That thought, understandably, opens up a whole spectrum of misgivings. “What if women have gone so far in the wrong direction, that they can no longer see the truth for what it is, because there is security in staying the same, even when the same is the enemy?”

I let my mind play over all the things I have come to know in the past years, all the statistics and studies and research that have strengthened my position, and I conclude that those are good for doing just that. They strengthen and solidify, but the cold hard numbers are not usually the path a woman follows to change. Make no mistake, she wants them, and she expects to use them to back an opinion, but from my experience, at first an opinion is born, much like a baby, from the depths of feeling. If this is true, I can conclude that the masses of women who make the decisions they make about birth do so based on a genuine belief that they are doing the best thing for their baby, or a genuine fear that childbirth and all its discomfort is too big for them to understand or tackle without the huge medical community they have come to trust to take care of them. I can throw the “Did you know…” quotes around all day long, but in the end all that will matter is that I am asking them to step out on a limb and turn their back on all they have been taught is “normal” while they are in the midst of great change and uncertainty.

I must begin, then, with pointing to the cracks in the foundation of our belief system about birth. I must begin at the beginning, where the error began to grow and be nurtured in our country, and I must show examples of other places that have not been swayed by the lies that form our western understanding of the amazingly complex and yet so simple process of childbirth. This I cannot hope to do in one post.

First, I must begin with the mom who will not take responsibility for her health and that of her child. Why start here? Does this not seem like an attack on my audience? On the contrary, pointing out every flaw of our current system will leave you no better off if you first do not begin to realize that you are ultimately responsible for making decisions for yourself and your child. No one is better qualified to consider and decide the path you will choose than you are. I have been speaking with women about childbirth a lot recently, and a couple of times, I have encountered an attitude that frightens me. There is a tendency among women to surrender complete control to a system that will handle them like they are ill and in need of treatment and intervention, when in fact, they are not even sick. I hear statements like these:

“I don’t handle pain well, so I want every drug they will give me so I don’t have to feel 
anything.”

“I don’t want the surprise of not knowing when I am actually in labor, so I am asking my doctor to induce me so I can know when this baby is coming.”

                I remember feeling this same way. In my late teens, I begin to consider that fact that someday I would want children. I begin to think about the process, and draw from the knowledge I had on the subject to make decisions about what childbirth would look like for me. My pictures all came from our culture. I had mental images of women screaming at their bewildered husbands, and I had been privy to a few conversations about birth women had had in my presence. I knew two things about myself and the way the culture had taught me to view birth. I did not like, nor did I desire to experience pain, and breastfeeding was weird, hippie, and gross, and I didn’t want to be any of those things. In my childish mind, I formed a plan. I would have every drug available to man to ease or eliminate my pain, and I would never consider breastfeeding, because in my mind, everything about giving a baby a bottle was beautiful and normal. I was basing some very important decisions on some very shaky and untrue presumptions sold to me by sitcoms and companies trying to sell an image to sell a product. By God’s grace, when I found out I was pregnant with my first child, I realized the great responsibility I had to consider the choices I made in light of the fact that they would now affect someone else and not just me.  

                Every woman has this same responsibility. The decisions you make about childbirth need to be made with the weight of your responsibility for your health and that of the child you are carrying. Every drug and intervention you allow will have some impact on you and that child. If your attitude is to allow others to make those decisions for you, then you are doing yourself and your baby a great disservice. I think for many women, knowing where to start is the block that keeps them from knowing how to make these decisions. There are few places to learn and be able to understand about all of these interventions, and knowing who to believe or which route to take can be daunting. Thankfully, there is a growing culture of information available to women to help them make informed decisions, so that next time you sign an informed consent to be treated, you will understand what you are signing and why. My goal in later posts will be to make some of that information available to you, along with good sources, studies, and stories that will help you to begin to see pregnancy and childbirth for what they really are, not a curse of pain and trouble, but a blessing of stretching and growing and character development like no other.

Start out with this thought provoking link I found some time ago.
http://erinmidwife.com/2011/03/31/if-i-were-at-home-i-would-have-died/

Women Serving Women

Welcome to the first post in our Blessing God’s Way blog. We hope you will follow this blog and share with friends so a wider community can get to know the purpose of this ministry. I thought it appropriate to use this first post to share a little about that purpose and our heart, so that you might become more familiar with who we are.  Blessing God’s Way is based in Strasburg, Virginia, and is dedicated to ministering to and educating women in all cycles of their lives, which we like to break down into three distinct parts: maidenhood, maternity, and mentoring. We offer classes, seminars, and midwifery services under that umbrella. For this post, I’ll focus on the education aspect of the ministry, so you can get a feel for why we believe this is crucially important in this day and age.

The Bible says in Psalm 139:14 that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. God carefully designed and orchestrated the workings of the human body to accomplish certain things to his glory, and yet on the subjects of menstruation and childbirth, the Christian community is mostly silent, and willing to let the culture fill in the blanks we are leaving in our own understanding by not seeking out God’s truth. We have gone so far in that direction, that some may even be surprised to hear God has an opinion at all about those things. It is our desire to help educate girls and women about the proper working of their body, so that they can recognize dangers many consider cultural norms, which in fact may be a very bad idea from a health and wellness standpoint. By teaching someone to recognize and walk in the truth, we hope to empower them to make positive choices that will be a blessing not only to them, but to generations of women who come after them.  How do we accomplish that?

We recognize first of all that God has given the training of the children to their parents to accomplish, and that for this reason, the best teacher and mentor for a young girl is her own mother. Unfortunately, many women with girls who are ready to talk about the changes in their body and menstruation find themselves woefully unprepared to even have a simple talk without floods of embarrassment or tons of blank spaces in their own understanding. Our desire is to reach these women, and come alongside them by offering a well-thought-out course in a casual and comfortable atmosphere where they are given the tools, alongside their young daughter, to have a beneficial discussion about this new phase of her life. This course is titled “Maidens By His Design” and we have seen an outpouring of women who are so thankful for the education they have received and in turn been able to pass on to their daughters. For women who prefer to go through the material themselves at home with their daughters in a completely private setting, we also make available a mother/daughter kit for them to use.

As women move from childhood into adulthood, there is no sudden magical revelation about how the body works to conceive, grow, and deliver a baby. Yet, our culture approaches this subject as if there is that revelation, or as if it is entirely unimportant that a woman have an understanding of this cycle in her life. American women move through the system for the most part, having chosen a caregiver from friends recommendation or advertising, having five to ten minute appointments with that caregiver during which they are given little or no information about the “whys” of the care they are receiving, and then toward the end, expected to make few decisions for themselves about their labor and delivery, because, in fact, they do not have the information and education to make informed decisions, nor have they been encouraged to seek out that information during the course of their pregnancy. Our heart is to offer these women unimpeded access to the “whys” they are missing in their care, and spark in them the interest to be able to make good decisions for themselves and their baby. We offer childbirth classes and midwifery care to that end, because we do believe that in the fully medicalized culture of the United States, a woman deserves a full range of choices and education, so that she can be her own best caregiver, becoming responsible for her own body and her own choices, and reaching the end of pregnancy completely prepared for the hard work of labor that lies ahead. Instead of surrendering herself to the care of others with little or no understanding of the ins and outs of her care, she can and should be at the center of the process, driving the decision making and educating herself about the nuances of how God designed her body to accomplish this task. This builds a trust in God that will serve her far more than any tool or intervention when she finds herself in the midst of the hard work of labor.

We hope to help remove the scales from the eyes of many generations of women who desire to see God’s truth touch all corners of their lives. We hope you’ll join us on the journey!