On Sunday I read this reflection as part of a service focused on soul care in our church. In light of International Women’s Day, I thought I’d share it here, in this space, too. This reflection was birthed out of my own life’s journey to discover God in a more feminine way. These words are my own feminine attempt to put form around the topics of power and pain. These words come from my own imagination’s attempt to find more spaciousness in my understanding of who God is and how God comes to us in and through this life, especially and specifically through the metaphor of giving birth.

Cheers to all the women in this world wrestling to reimagine how a feminine kind of power can make this world a far more spacious place. Cheers to all the brave souls seeking to say “yes” to new life in all its forms, risk and all. And cheers to all the men in our lives, giving us the space and the freedom to do just that.

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Most of you are likely familiar with the phase of transition in birth.  It is the point of no return in the birth process.  It’s the point at which you can no longer get an epidural and you essentially give in to the primal event that is about to unfold whether or not you want it to.

In birth, transition is often where your strength tends to run out and you surrender into the process.  It is violent if I can use that word.  Primal.  Puking, screaming, contractions are non stop, you can hardly breathe.  It is anything but tame, it is the wildness of God washing over a body.  And the pain is so great you might wish you could stop breathing.

Transition is the point where you realize foundational change is going to happen whether you like it or not. It is its own kind of death in that way, because you know the old way of life is no more and at the same time, the pain is often too great to be able to imagine the hope of what is yet to come.  You are just locked into the chaos and the intensity of what is happening within you.  All you can think about is whether or not you will actually make it to that next breath.

In these moments of transition, it is often the midwife that comes alongside you, witnessing your pain, and reminds you to keep breathing. The midwife commits to companioning with you through this process, they are a guide, a companion in these vital moments.

I think it  is really easy to forget that the wildness of transition is part of bringing new life into the world, literally, metaphorically.  I know at least with myself, I want to experience the revelation of being filled with new life and then I want that new life, that new thing actualized. I want to hold it in my hands. If left up to me, I’d like to skip all the inbetween.  The non stop nausea.  The non stop neurotic anxiety that tells me life is fragile.  I don’t want to deal with the insanity that comes with risking.  That comes with surrender. Opening one’s self to life, whether literal or metaphorical, comes with no guarantees.  Pregnancy is a  thin kind of place between life and death.  You have no control over the outcome.  And I want to skip all this.

I often think transition is perhaps what Jesus felt when he was in the wilderness.  The temptations that came before him took him to a place of no return.  And my own conviction is he did not restrict, he did not use his own strength to resist these temptations but rather surrendered into the process, feeling the weight of each temptation, breathing through each one, and yet refusing to cling, to grasp on, to resist. He just let each temptation pass. Allowing them to run through his body.  He breathed through them, he surrendered into them, realizing it was not willpower that would ultimately resist the temptations, but the divine breath of Love filling his lungs with air.

And my own imagination tends to view God as a midwife coming to Jesus in the wilderness in these moments.  Assured of God’s presence, Jesus, I think, leans in, finds his breath, and perhaps repeats the same breath prayer of Mary, his mother: Let it be so, Lord.  Let it be so.  Let this pain wash over my body so that new life can come into this world through me and through this pain.  Help me to breathe, Lord.  Help me to breathe.

Evan said this beautiful line in our meeting this week, that when a mother gets to hold her baby for the first time, and feel that new breath, alongside her own breath, these are two pure miracles and they absolutely are…but also, those breaths are never guaranteed.  We do not talk about loss of breath enough, in all its forms.  We don’t talk about how hard it can be to create new breath. We don’t talk about the pain, the ache, the insanity of it all.  If you have experienced loss of breath, of any kind, I grieve with you today.  And I come beside you offering my own breath of belief if you find your heart has lost its hope for new life.

It is okay to be in despair.  May God meet you exactly where you are.  And in time, may you find your breath to believe in new life, in new breath again.  Amen.