Tag: Death to Life

Frankenstein’s Requiem: A Sermon on Romans 6:1-11

Introduction

I’d like to open with a quote from one of my favorite theologians, Eberhard Jüngle,

“That Jesus Christ was made sin for us by God means that the destruere et in nihilum redigere [to destroy/demolish/tear down and to reduce/drive back/render into nothing/ness] which is enacted in and with our sin is revealed in Jesus Christ, as he and he alone dies the accursed death which we live. Jesus’ death on the cross is grace, since it reveals that in the midst of life we are in death. He makes manifest the nothingness which the sinner celebrates under the illusory appearance of being. Or at least Jesus’ death on the cross reveals this when we allow it to speak for itself (that is, according to the law).” Eberhard Jüngel[1]

The best way for me to explain what Jüngel is saying is: apart from Christ we are the walking dead. I think Paul in Romans 6:1-11 is saying something similar (and lucky you, that’s the passage we’ll be looking at this morning). St. Paul writes, “Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, in this manner we also might walk in newness of life” (v.4; translation mine). If we are in Christ as the living, walking in the newness of life, then apart from Christ we are the dead, but yet we move and exist in this state, thus, we’re the walking dead. Yes, we’re essentially zombies apart from Christ.

Let me quote Jüngel once more here,

“For part of human actuality is our striving to realize ourselves and thus to determine our own being through our own achievements. Expressed in biblical terms, the whole of our life-context is qualified by the reality of sin, which does not just simply make the human person bad—that would be the moralistic understanding of sin!—but rather which exposes human persons to the illusion that they can make themselves good.”[2]

While I think the image of zombies is a good one, I have to confess: I think our state apart from Christ, apart from the event of justification is actually far worse than merely a zombie existence. It’s a sham existence. Let’s be clear, in no way shape or form are zombies giving any thought about making themselves good, and they are certainly not trying to strive to realize themselves through their own achievements. They are the dead, the barely animated, they just act from a primal, base, neurological response from the bottom of the brain-stem.

We, on the other hand, are worse off because we are actively trying to self-realize (striving to do so), to make ourselves good. A better image maybe be: we’re hack humans, random parts thrown and sewn together, products of the scientist Frankenstein gone mad who is locked in our minds, who is each of us. Apart from Christ and on our own, we stumble about, alone, turned inward, bent on our own justification.

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

Paul begins chapter 6 in the book of Romans by asking a question, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” (v.1b). In other words, should we desire to do evil in a way that causes grace to abound? And before anyone gets the chance to reply, Paul answers his own question, “By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (v.2). Very literally, the Greek here means: hell no; absolutely, positively not; in no way shape or form is this a plausible thought; never, ever, ever think this.

Paul has such a strong response to the question, because, as Martin Luther writes, “…this idea [desiring to do evil to make grace abound] is absolutely contrary to the work of grace”.[3] God’s grace given to us by the power of the Holy Spirit by faith (also a gift) doesn’t manifest itself in our lives as that which desires to do evil; rather its presence brings about the opposite. For Paul, that which participates in the realm of death has no business meddling in the realm of life.[4] And if we’re taking the Easter story seriously, which I believe we should, then those of us who are Christ’s own by faith and who have received God’s grace are the resurrected thus the living and the living aren’t dead.

It’s simple logic, but let it sit in.

Not only does Paul give a fixed “Ah, hell no!” to his question, he furthers the intensity of his response with a “how”, a “how” that is a densely packed argument that illuminates that the train of thought—that we should continue in desiring to do evil in order for grace to abound—doesn’t have an engine. Paul’s argument: that thing that you’ve died to and have been resurrected from you can never go back to because your resurrection in Christ has defeated it, returning is an impossibility.

Also, nothing we do makes grace abound; we weren’t the ones who caused it or brought it in the first place. Grace, divine grace, is strictly divine territory. When it comes to making grace abound, He got this.

But before I move on, I want to add that Paul isn’t arguing that now as Christians we are never sinning or are without sin, that would be a lie (1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”). “We,” according to St. Augustine, “…are in sin until the end of our life…‘Until our body is raised to life and death is swallowed up in victory, our evil desires will afflict us’.”[5] There is always the war that wages between that which we desire to do (the good) and that which we do do (the evil). The brilliant aspect of the divine deposit of faith and the Holy Spirit lies in the shift in our desires; in Christ, we now desire to do the good although we still do evil. Paul will drive this point home (in a number of places) but specifically in the very next chapter in the book of Romans, chapter 7, when he writes,

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. retched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vv.15, 21-24).

Jesus himself says, “‘…the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak’” (Mt 26:41b; also, Mk 14:38b). The desire to do good should not be brushed off, counted as nothing, for here in this desire of the spirit to do good by the Spirit is where good works are born.

And we can have assurance of this spiritual deposit because, as Paul says vv.3-4, returning to our text in Romans 6,

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Luther writes, “…the threefold dipping of Baptism signifies the three-day death period and the burial of Christ, into Christ Jesus, that is, by faith in Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death, that is through the merit and power of his death”.[6] This is why baptism is tantamount for Luther, this is why throughout his life he returns to his baptism (recalls it) in times of trial because in this simple act, what seems like a simple act, is the outward sign of an inward reality: we have died with Christ and in dying with Christ we are raised with Him; as He dies we die, and as he lives we live. In baptism, in this death,

“is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated from sin and the body is separated form corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God.…For to this kind of death alone belong in an absolute and perfect way the conditions of death, and in this death alone whatever dies perishes totally and into eternal nothingness, and nothing will ever return from this death because it truly dies an eternal death. This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity, as the apostle says here, ‘Christ will never die again’”[7]

This is Luther’s way of explaining the “destruere et in nihilum redigere” mentioned by Jüngle at the beginning of the sermon. What occurs in our baptism, what occurs by faith, what occurs by Christ’s advent and death and resurrection is the destruction, the demolishing, the tearing down and the reducing and driving back and rendering to nothing/nothingness all that belongs to the realm of death. All of our suffering, grief, sorrow, pain, fear, sin, condemnation, and death itself receives the divine verdict: no, no more. And over that verdict, in a louder voice do we receive our divine verdict: yes. In this yes to us and no to death we lose our (old) lives and thus receive our (new) lives, we find our lives in Christ by faith “‘…and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:38-39).

So, Paul Continues…

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. (Romans 6:5-8)

Through what Christ has done for us, by his advent and death and resurrection (and ascension) and our encounter with the living God, by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we escape death, and, to quote Luther again, this “…means to enter into a life which is without death.”[8] Though our body dies, for now, we live as those who walk in the newness of life because that which has been sentenced to death–not us–is dead (for good) because it has not been raised–like we are. We have been “spiritually” planted “with Him who was planted bodily” by a death like his which is signified by baptism.[9]

We’ve not been sentenced to death in Christ, but to life: we’ve been given life, and life abundant not only in the future, but, more importantly, in the here and now.[10] Because, our old selves have been “crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (v. 6); thus, we are no longer slaves to sin in that our old selves and the sinful nature no longer have dominion over us.

By the grace of God, we are free, in the truest sense of the word: free, liberated, loosed from that which has bound us, healed (albeit imperfectly now) of the “extremely deep infection of this inherited weakness and original poison, by which a man seeks his own advantage even in God Himself.”[11] By the grace of God, we are united together with Christ in his death and thus in his resurrection and life, and we are free from sin and its accompanying threats and condemnation. (vv.7-8).

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:9-11).

Now that death has no dominion over Christ (he will never die again), death ought not and does not have dominion over us.[12] According to Luther, “[Christ] is our life, and through faith He flows into us and remains in us by the rays of His grace. Therefore, just as Christ is eternal, so also the grace which flows out of Him is from His eternal nature.”[13] And this is what it means to be justified by faith apart from works: our eternal reception of God’s eternal grace.[14] The event of justification, that word of absolution heard (perpetually) by the hearer, parts space (like God did through Moses parting the sea) and stills time (like Jesus did the tumultuous stormy waves with one word) and the hearer is reborn (created out of nothing) into the present by the word of promise and sustained therein by the words of promise.

The past can no longer condemn you and your future is secured, rooted in the one that defeated future’s condemnation which is death. And this gift of the present, new life, and the word of promise by faith in Christ is given to you every day; this is what is actually given to you daily and, once for all (v.10); it will never be taken away from you (cf. Lk 10:38-42). “Answer me, O Lord, for your love is kind; in your great compassion, turn to me” writes the Psalmist (Psalm 69:18). And God has answered us; God in Christ has answered us once and for all.

Having the entirety of what Christ offers to us by his life, death, and resurrection by faith alone, we walk in the newness of life. And this newness of life is not particularly simply and merely for us ourselves alone. Justification unifies with others, with our neighbor—my justification doesn’t occur in a vacuum, isolated from other people. This unifying event of justification with our neighbor means that not only are we united to Christ but we are also no longer on our own, stumbling about, alone, turned inward, bent on our own justification. Justification is a social event, the tie that binds me and you to each other in an intimate way. Make no mistake, this is the vital and manifested aspect of walking in the newness of life.

Correspondingly, just as Jesus suffered as His people were being persecuted by Saul (Acts 9), so to do we suffer when our neighbor suffers. In that we are bound to our neighbor in the event of justification, their pain is our pain, their oppression our oppression, their injustice our injustice. “From now on…regard no one according to the flesh…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:16-17).  Not only is our relationship with God under a new heading, reconciled, so is our relationship with others. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not merely just for me, but for you and thus for me and for us and between us.

Being a new creation—remade by the work of God alone by faith alone—and walking in the newness of life means not only that which is of death has been sentenced to death and that which is of life shall live, but also that we have been given new eyes, new ears, a new heart, and new words to speak. In other words, to be a new creation walking in this gift of the newness of life is to have a radical and altered perspective that is rooted in the spirit and not in the flesh. There is (now) a radical discontinuity between who we were outside of Christ and who we are in Christ. When we used to see/think of only ourselves, we now see/think of/act and fight on behalf of others.

We are now no longer monstrous creations of the scientist Frankenstein. We are not thrown and sewn together, brought to life by the happenstance of nature’s electrical current. We are beautifully and wondrously remade by the intentional and consistent and life-giving word of God in Christ Jesus. We are, in every sense of the words, new creatures. Because, in light of being reconciled to God and our neighbor through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in light of the things of death (our old selves) being sentenced to death we have received our lives, our very new selves marked not by condemnation and slavery to sin but by divine grace and freedom and union with Christ and our neighbor.

And with this reality our voices can join with Jeremiah’s, “Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of the evildoers” (20:13).

[1] “The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification” Theological Essays. Translated by J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. (108)

[2] “On Becoming Truly Human: The Significance of the Reformation Distinction Between Person and Works for the Self-Understanding of Modern Humanity.” Theological Essays II. Translated by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast and J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995. (231)

[3] Luther’s Works: Lectures on Romans, vol 25 Hilton C. Oswald ed. St. Louis: Concordia, 1972. 50.

[4] Ibid, 50.

[5] Ibid, Augustine qtd in Luther 308-9.

[6] Ibid 50.

[7] Ibid 310

[8] Ibid 311

[9] Ibid 51

[10] Luther “…that is, in resemblance of His death, because we have been buried into a mystical death” thus, “we shall certainly be raised, to a spiritual resemblance with Him, in a resurrection like His, that is, we shall become like it” (51)

[11] Ibid 313

[12] Ibid 52

[13] Ibid 315

[14] Ibid “…this expression ‘once for all’ (semel) does not determine the number of acts of repentance, but rather it is a commendation of the eternal nature of grace, and it denies the possibility of some other kind of righteousness, so that the meaning is that whoever has been baptized o has repented has already so escaped sin and acquired righteousness that never again for eternity is it necessary to escape sin or to acquire another righteousness. But this single and only righteousness is sufficient forever” (315-6).

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Easter’s Present: Hope Springs Eternal

He is risen!

Hallelujah!

The Lord is risen indeed!

Hallelujah!

I’m not one to put more emphasis on one aspect of the liturgical calendar over and against another aspect. I know the importance of holding in tandem all the events of Christ: birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Though I do hold these events in tandem, each one solicits from me a different response. Christmas brings with it anticipation and expectation: the baby has been born, the great rescue plan is under way! Christ’s life solidifies that I can have that expectation and anticipation; he is the perfect one, his is the same mission pursuit as the One who sent him: to seek and save the lost, to heal up the brokenhearted, to set right what was wrong, to defend the defenseless (to mention a few). Good Friday thrusts me in to solemnity that leads to my own death as I witness Christ’s death because he so loved the world that he couldn’t leave the cries of the burdened and oppressed go unheard. Easter is the brilliant light in the darkness; Christ’s resurrection draws from me a deep sigh of relief: my hope finds its grounding and fulfillment. The ascension reminds me: God is with me, God is working in the world, perpetually making things and people new and overhauling the dead.

As a rational and logical person I hold these events of Christ’s activity toward and on behalf of the world in tandem, but as someone who has suffered violence at the hands and words of other humans, Easter pulls strongest: hope springs eternal.

As a sufferer, I need to be called out of myself in the midst of my suffering, I need to be called to look not down at myself (turned/turning inward) but up at Jesus, raise my face to see this very God who is merciful and unyielding in His love; who, by the life of His one and only Son, through the event of the incarnation and the cross, has declared “it will not always be so.” Darkness, depression, sorrow, suffering, grief, loss, and pain have been given their verdict: no; and we have been given ours: yes.

Suffering has a unique way of drawing us to the Suffering God who suffered for us on the cross, who was raised from the dead and has declared that the suffering of this life will not last forever, that it is not the final word, and that He has conquered it. Suffering draws us to this God who is not far off when we are at our worst, ugliest, decrepit, sick, infirm, maimed, even when we are angry at Him about our own suffering or the suffering of those close to us.

Suffering draws us to this God who has come close and breathes into our breathless lungs—lungs carried in bodies exhausted from the battle, pelted by the hail-storms of pain and loss, bones made brittle by unfulfilled pleas and petitions. It is this God who breathes into our lungs and re-creates us from the dead, gives us real and true life and new hearts, who causes us to love him and to love others and uses all those things intended for evil for good. Even in suffering, the Light cannot be overcome by darkness.

This is Easter: hope. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is our hope. Hope that is so vibrant and fertile that it is the sole reason so many of us who have suffered incredible pain still walk this very earth. Our hope is historical, it is current, and it turns our faces toward the future because the promises of God have been fulfilled, are being fulfilled, and will be fulfilled. The resurrection of Christ is the event that reverberates through the halls of time; it is the voice that echoes: “hold-fast; I am.”

The event of the resurrection of Christ gives the broken-down, the oppressed, the suffering, the down-trodden future hope that (in it’s most amazing and beautiful way) reaches back to the now and gives it life, life abundant. Future oriented hope in resurrection makes this current life vibrant technicolor rather than drab monochrome. We can walk through this life with our scars, because a new body, a new life waits, one free from the muscle memory of pain and fear. We can bear the pain of loss and sorrow deep in our bones and carry on in life because the future hope of resurrection and reunion reorients our gaze upward toward the one who defeated death once and for all. We can fight for and free the oppressed because our future oriented hope gives us the audacity and freedom to do so in the here and now, to live into thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Hear ye, beloved, these comfortable words:

“He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the LORD has spoken” (Is. 25:8).

And the Lord GOD has,

“When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor 15)

Today, Easter, hope springs eternal because Christ is risen from the dead.

Hallelujah!

He is risen indeed!

Hallelujah!

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Death to Life in Fertility to Birth

The following post is a conglomerate of four older posts that I did a few years back (the date of the introduction being early September, 2013). I’ve merged them here, as I feel they make a fine article to be taken as a whole. The introduction makes clear the goal and a quick glance into the method of my madness in terms of writing these posts. I want to be clear that while I do celebrate the event that is my ability as a woman to create, sustain, and nurture life in and from my body, I do not think that experiencing such an event defines womanhood; my theology leads me to believe that womanhood is made full in Christ (justified by faith in Christ) apart from any works I or my body may do. Enough with my caveats; I’ll let you read.

Introduction

“’Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.'”

Isaiah 49:15

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Matthew 10:39

It’s not surprising that the topic of life is first and foremost on my mind. At some time, in the next 3-4 weeks, I’ll give birth to our third child. It is an exciting event; a new life will exist in the world, creating her own ripple effect in the lives of her parents, her brothers, her grandparents, and those she will one day encounter. The whole event is, simply, miraculous; there is a lot of joy and celebration that should surround such an event.  From the moment of conception, through pregnancy, to the culmination in birth the common theme is new life, and not incorrectly so for it is in fact a new life in the world.

But what is less spoken of, but I believe to be inherent in the event, is the death involved in order for this new life to come forth. For, to be sure, there is a death, a real death to self from beginning to end. This death lies in the fact of the lack of control that is part of the fertility and child-bearing process. There is nothing guaranteed within the process. No matter how much a book may claim otherwise, encouraging that you can in fact plan when you will conceive based on some temperatures and fluids, the fact remains that not only are these very factors out of our control, but even if all the elements align perfectly, there is still some portion of control lacking in the acquisition of the final product: conception and implantation.  Conception and implantation have no guarantees attached to them, for the threat of miscarriage is very real in the first trimester and even in the second, not to mention tubal implantation. Graduating into post week 20, and you still aren’t guaranteed a successful outcome, as I’ve heard a number of stories about how everything was just fine and then…Even now, at nearly full term, there is no guarantee that everything will be fine; even now I have not complete and total control over what will happen.  And so it is, from the beginning to the end, I am radically changed through the event of death and not of life; in this event, at every turn, I am reminded of my place (at God’s mercy) and the futility of my capability.

But though it is death, it is not death for death’s sake; but an event of death to bring forth life, to bring forth new life (an event of actuality that leads to possibility) and, typically, not only one new life, but two. I don’t mean to be callous in my math here but, yes, for the time being, I am excluding the man from the equation. While he participates in the beginning, the whole of the pregnancy is rather abstract for him, only becoming “more real” upon birth and at that moment the death he experiences–because of this new life–begins.  I say this as a woman who is married to a man who lovingly cooks for her during the first trimester when her stomach can’t handle it, understands as her expanding belly and increased number of pillows demands at least half of the bed, and cancels work trips and outings with friends because, “It’s just too close to the due date.” Not to mention a man who is as passionate about natural labor and childbirth as his wife is and knows his supporting role in labor; a man who held me, letting me hang my full weight from his arms during every late stage contraction as I tried for a VBAC with our second son, for 14 hours (roughly). So I don’t mean to say that the man isn’t part of the process, but for what I’m talking about here, life out of death as it relates to fertility, pregnancy, and the birth of the child, I’m focusing on her, the woman; because it is this journey, which is her journey and during which he plays a supporting role (albeit the primary supporting role). He stands apart from the event, looking on, watching, providing support when and where he can, but ultimately this event is between her and God. She will suffer death over and over again, which will bring forth this new life of her own and that of her child. He will be impacted but later, subsequent to her death and new life.

Plus, to be honest, I can’t speak from the man’s point of view. The only information I’ve been able to garner about the whole event from his perspective is from my husband. He’s willingly admitted the abstractness of the whole thing and we laugh when he asks, “Is there really a baby in there?” To which I like to respond, “No. A litter of Kittens.” About which we both admit that that scenario (though creepy, loaded with questions were it to happen, and perfect fodder for a B rated sci-fi movie) would be significantly easier than a real baby.  He’s also admitted a feeling of helplessness during our miscarriages. During our last miscarriage, as I lay on the bathroom floor in the fetal position, enduring 3 hours of transition contractions to pass the sack (etc), all he could do was lay with me unable to take my pain, to alleviate it, to stop my tears. I know it was no “easy” task to witness the woman he loves suffer excruciating pain and discomfort and sorrow and I’m sure there was a death in that for him; the line I’m desiring to draw is between the one who goes through the event and the one who witnesses the event.

While I’ve attempted to appease the allegations that could be brought forth against me for not including Him in my discussion of Her, I’m sure I’ve not exhausted all possible appeals. With that said, I want to get back to why I’ve started this post in the first place: the death and life in fertility to birth. I plan to look at three primary areas as they relate to the themes of death and life: pregnancy, labor and delivery, and infertility and loss. As a woman, I will be able to speak from experience of having gone through the bulk of these events–the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrowful.  As a theologian of the cross, I will see these events through the lens that God creates out of nothing (not just in the beginning but now); that these events participate in that death and (re)creation; and how, in the depths of the fear, the realization of the loss of control, and deep insecurity, Jesus Christ proves himself to be true and real and  present in that suffering with us, not to “test” us but to to whisper to us, “I know. Take my hand. Follow me” and to be our strength when we’ve got none left to walk on.

Pregnancy

 “To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children'” (Gen 3:16a,b)

When Martin Luther translates this verse from Hebrew into German, the first two parts of the verse read like this, “Und zur Frau sprach er: Ich will dir viel Mühsal schaffen, wenn du schwanger wirst; unter Mühen sollst du Kinder gebären.” Or, in English, “And to the woman he said: ‘I will create/make many toil/distress/difficulty when you are pregnant; under troubles/pains/toils you are supposed to give birth to children.'” The Hebrew supports Luther’s translation choices. The Hebrew word w’heronekh’ incorporates not only the idea of child-bearing, but, more specifically, the whole of the event from beginning to end:  including pregnancy and conception. If this were not so and if the word only referred to the act of child-bearing (the labor and delivery part, which is often the focus for many people), then the second of the first two statements to the woman would be redundant–the second being nearly unnecessary. In what God says to the woman as part of her curse to bear is that from beginning to end the event of bringing forth a child will be toilsome, hard, filled with sorrow, pain, difficulty, and distress; there is no part that goes unscathed by the curse. Bringing forth a child, in simple terms, will not be easy in any stretch of the imagination. Part of the battle ground between life and death will be her very body; as fast as she can rejoice, she will be able to weep.  All of it happening to her and in her and apart from her control–and there in lies her death, her pain, her toil–it’s not merely physical but also emotional and intellectual.

For this post, I’ll focus primarily on pregnancy (and not conception, I’ll save that for a later post), which makes sense because I’m 38.5 weeks pregnant. Pregnancy is, if you will, sort of on my mind. So what does death and life look like as a woman progresses through pregnancy? A perpetual (or what feels like a perpetual) loss of self, a handing over of one’s self to the event. Physically, this is somewhat more obvious. The pregnancy, and by this I really mean the growing life within the womb, takes over. A glass of milk is no longer merely some Vit D for the mom, it will go first to the child. Our bodies, literally, re-prioritize who is important; and the important person is the new life, the child. If we don’t ingest enough vitamins to cover both baby and mom, we, ourselves in our body, will suffer. Then there’s the ever present aversions (both smell and taste and touch) that pop up in an otherwise normally unaffected mother. With my second son I couldn’t tolerate the smell of Ham. Ham. It’s completely innocuous; it has no danger to it whatsoever, but I reacted to it like I would rotten eggs or rotten meat. There’s the nauseous hailing in “morning sickness”, which, by the way, is typically more of an all-day sickness that can fluctuate in correlation to, well, nothing really. It sort of does what it wants. Personally, I would be nauseous both full or hungry, both rested or tired. And speaking of rest, what’s that?? In the beginning, in those first few weeks, there is, typically, extreme exhaustion, no matter what you do. You could sleep all day and wake up and feel exhausted.  Physically, the woman is taken over. She is no longer in control of her body, and this is the beginning of the death of herself.

But it doesn’t end with the completion of the first tri-mester; no. way. As the pregnancy progresses so will her weight, her hips will spread, her belly will expand, her breasts will enlarge, her feet will change, her ligaments (all of them) will loosen and the once graceful and deft will quickly become, shall we say, a bull in a china shop. On a confessional note, I bump into more walls, door frames, and banisters than I care to admit. My large belly has actually turned on and ignited gas burners on our stove. My husband got nervous one night, because he was certain I’d burn my belly reaching up over the stove to get something down from the cabinet above. At this stage in the game I can’t actually just sit up from a lying down position, but have to sort of do this roll thing and throw in a grunt or two. And that’s just what I’m willing to share.  Every month that progresses by, she will lose more and more of herself and who she was. Every turn through out the pregnancy changes her, for good–there’s truly no going back to what was.

While the physical symptoms present themselves in such tangible ways, there are yet more concerns for the pregnant woman that lie just under the surface of the physical in the emotional and intellectual. Fear.  I am not only losing control of my body as it seems to completely hand itself over to this process of growing this life, but I am in the midst of a deep, spiritual awareness that I’m not in control and that awareness brings with it fear.  Humanity in general does not like to be out of control; we’d rather be God than confess that we need Him.  This truth is ever present in the life of the pregnant woman. What do you mean there’s, technically, nothing I can do to guarantee a successful result?! Fear (and anxiety, it’s sister) is the tantamount emotional and intellectual response to the realization that one is not in control. And fear is the exact emotion she will feel (some of us more and some of us less) during the entire pregnancy, for there is no definite to lay hold of; confidence is pure illusion.

For me, fear rears it’s head frequently. I remember remarking to a friend when I was pregnant with my first that I wish I had a window that I could look through to see if everything was okay with my baby. I want there to be something that I can do to ensure a good result: I won’t drink coffee or alcohol, I’ll avoid noxious odors and certain foods with old-wives tales linking them with miscarriage (from any culture), I’ll happily stop running and other activities that could result in loss or damage to the baby. But still, even if I do all of those things, there’s no guarantee. Even currently being 38weeks (almost 39) pregnant, I still have that lingering concern about whether or not everything is okay, and I have it everyday. Throughout the first trimester, I was concerned about miscarriage; then through the second trimester, concerned about late term miscarriage, still birth, the results of tests; and, now, as I approach the end of the third trimester, my concern lie in her movements throughout the day, what the outcome of labor and delivery will be, is she really healthy (mentally and physically), and will we be okay through the c-section/recovery. As I go through my day without taking hold of the concrete answers I desire, and made aware of my inability to do anything, I am thrust to my knees (sometimes very literally) at the foot of the Cross, asking for help to make it one more day, to take one more step through what seems to be a thick fog. Each breath accompanied by honest confessions of fear and weakness and heartfelt pleas for His mercy.  The more I progress through this pregnancy I made more and more aware that while the end will hopefully result in the bringing forth a new life into this world, there is something between here and there and that something is death.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

From conception to birth, the woman is thrown to the foot of the Creator’s throne, dependent on His will, His mercy, and His strength through her weakness. Everyday for nine months, she will make this journey; everyday she will hand herself over to the death of herself; everyday she will be much more different than the day before; everyday she will join her voice with Mary’s, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Everyday she will die, only to be raised up anew.

Labor and Delivery

O Lord, in distress they sought you;
they poured out a whispered prayer
when your discipline was upon them.
 Like a pregnant woman
who writhes and cries out in her pangs
when she is near to giving birth,
so were we because of you, O Lord;
     we were pregnant, we writhed,
but we have given birth to wind.
We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth,
and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.
 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the earth will give birth to the dead. (Isaiah 26:17-19)

Femininity is often defined in terms more associated with a church mouse than that of a living, breathing, human being. Meek and mild are the boundary markers for interpretations on what is feminine: soft, smooth, gentile, maternal, quiet, proper, etc. It will be no surprise to you then that I would disagree with any definition of femininity that is based on such words/terms. In defining femininity, we must consider the very thing that biologically defines a woman: birthing. Thus, redefine femininity. Rather than meek and mild, it is strength, fortitude, and even fierceness that defines femininity. A woman in labor is completely feminine. A woman in labor is confronting death to bring forth life; no small task. And she confronts death alone. No person (apart from the Holy Spirit) takes her hand and guides her through it. It is here where the ferocity that is woman comes to the fore; she will (speaking in terms of an un-medicated labor and delivery) moan, grunt, even growl at death, bring it, Death! She’ll stare it down. My life for this one! A proper definition of femininity must incorporate this imagery.

Labor and delivery is earthy and visceral. I’ve yet to meet a husband, having witnessed his wife giving birth, who has not walked away completely changed in his opinion of what this woman can do and even is. Many male comedians have joked–in truth to a great degree–that if God came down and changed the roles (men now being child-bearers) that the human race would cease to exist. Men who have stood by, next to, or even those who have have held their wife during labor (my husband), and witnessed this process are forever changed in their own way–at the least his view of her is radically altered. Thus, in the process of creating a definition of femininity that incorporates the imagery of the woman in labor, the definition of masculinity is redefined. Chivalry become less about protecting her from danger and more about protecting her space to enter into this danger. His inherent ability and desire to protect (a generalization I’m willing to make having seen this “protector” spirit in my young sons) will be turned outward, toward the world, keeping the world at bay; in his presence she is safe, he becomes the source of comfort and soothing–he becomes the homestead–while she enters into this event and while she works and battles. He is not holding her, but holding everyone back. In light of modern birthing techniques, the husband often loses his role in this process, being relegated to the side and designated unhelpful or useless–a problem that needs a correction. Husbands are crucial to the process and the event this woman, his wife, will go through, for he is her first source of comfort, the one who knows her intimately, and his presence can represent to her that she is free to enter into this battle, to face death.

So, let us speak in terms of the theme of these posts, and let us look on the death and life in labor and delivery.

From the onset of labor to the completion of pushing, the woman submits to the event happening to them. The woman gives herself up (has to) to bring this other life into the world.  A woman who is laboring (naturally) will often look almost lifeless during the highpoint of contractions–slumped and limp held up only by the strength of her husband’s arms or still, inexpressive,  curled up on her side. Even delivery (pushing), the most primal of the process and invoking the totality of the activity of the woman–activity surfacing beyond all reason, in spite of all exhaustion–in itself, represents her total submission to the event–she has to push. She is face to face with death (her death), she will give the whole of herself to the process and afterwards is forever different.  She does not choose when labor begins, but it seizes her, and she can do nothing but die to herself to bring this child into the world. When you see her child, you see the death she went through in labor and delivery to move this child from her body in to the world. It is impossible to go through this process, this event and remain the same.  There is a new woman at the end of the event and not merely a new title to add to the others.

But let me not forget those of us who endure a different labor and delivery process; for those of us who endure Cesarian sections (a major surgery to extract the baby from the very lowest part of the abdomen) also go through the death into new life process. Having had three C-Sections, the imagery of being laid out on an operating table in a cruciform position does not escape my attention. My arms are stretched out to the side, and strapped (albeit loosely) down. My legs pulled straight on a narrow (and I mean NARROW) table. It is in this position, cruciform, that I will give birth. I don’t want to make a too-big of a deal about this nor draw a one-to-one comparison between her and Jesus’ death. But the imagery is there. During our last (and final) delivery, I walked (without Daniel) to the OR; everything about this small trek to have our daughter felt like dead woman walking. Each step down the cold hallway, barely covered by my gown, led me toward my confrontation with death. Without the lead-up that is the transition between early stage labor to a stage referred to as “transition”, you feel catapulted to deaths door in the event of a c-section.  As she is laid out, strapped, prepped, and as the curtain is raised–separating her from the gruesome scene below–she will close her eyes, breathe out, and say, “My life, for this one.” She will never be the same when the last suture is in place, and she will bare the scar of this confrontation, it will be the symbol of her new, of her different self, forever marked.

Labor Pains

I am sick today,
sick in my body,
eyes wide open, silent,
I lie on the bed of childbirth.

Why do I, so used to the nearness of death,
to pain and blood and screaming,
now uncontrollably tremble with dread?

A nice young doctor tried to comfort me,
and talked about the joy of giving birth.
Since I know better than he about this matter,
what good purpose can his prattle serve?

Knowledge is not reality.
Experience belongs to the past.
Let those who lack immediacy be silent.
Let observers be content to observe.

I am all alone,
totally, utterly, entirely on my own,
gnawing my lips, holding my body rigid,
waiting on inexorable fate.

There is only one truth.
I shall give birth to a child,
truth driving outward from my inwardness.
Neither good nor bad; real, no sham about it.

With the first labor pains,
suddenly the sun goes pale.
The indifferent world goes strangely calm.
I am alone.
It is alone I am.

Akiko Yosano
Infertility and Loss

And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” … [Hannah] was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” (1 Sam 1:8-11)

Affliction; this is the word Hannah uses to describe her childless state, her barren state, as she prays to God (actually, it’s more like pleading and begging). Hannah is afflicted with grief and sorrow. She is distressed and she weeps bitterly. She can’t eat, she laments (the deeper connotation of the word translated as “weep”), and she is not merely “sad” as a “feeling of blueness” as we would casually say, “I’m sad today.” It would be better to render the question from her husband, “why is your heart sad?,” as “why is your heart broken?”  Anyone reading who has suffered a broken heart knows that this feeling breaks through the floor of sadness into a realm that effects both the mind and the body in painful ways. A broken heart is described as such because the heart actually feels broken; there’s an ache or a piercing pain that seems to ricochet through the fleshiness of the heart muscle–it’s not merely metaphorical.  Hanna experiences this depth of broken-heartedness.

Over what?

A longing and a desire gone unmet.

Hannah is barren; she is without a child.  Hannah isn’t over-reacting about her childless state. The way the story is told seems more like a snapshot of her life at this one moment of her distress over being barren rather than a wholistic picture of what Hannah has been suffering–Hannah’s story practically opens the book of 1 Samuel. In v. 5 there is the mention that the Lord had closed her womb. And then from there, we jump right into her peaking distress and broken heart. In this way–the way the story is told–we miss out on the beauty that is the climactic point of Hannah’s distress and weeping. She is wholly consumed by hope deferred; hope deferred doesn’t merely occur because hope has been deferred once…but over and over and over again. Hannah has been pushed to the brink of the cliff that leads to despair, to death.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Prov. 13:12)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick and this sickness steals life from the victim. Hannah has spent who knows how long longing and yearning for a child. Think of the numerous months coming and going, each one delivering it’s “no” and “not this time” to Hannah’s heart–hope sprung, hope dashed.  And the deferral of her hope has made her sick: she can’t eat, she can’t stop weeping bitterly, she is inconsolable.  This is a picture of a woman who is not well, who is suffering intimately with the brokenness of a very fallen world. When hope has been deferred for so long and dashed against the rocks so many times, one begins to long for not-hope. The deferral of hope can make one so sick that they wish for hope to take flight and to vanish, never again to alight on the heart–for, to the suffering soul, to live a life vanquished of hope seems better than to have hope yet once again only to have it dashed…yet once again.

And so it is with those of us who have suffered with infertility or loss or both. In both infertility and loss there is a hope, a real, tangible, hope that blossoms and the real hope that is shattered into what seems like shards upon shards. And each time this hope is dashed, there is a death. And it is this death that leaves the woman a different creation the next day. Out of all the experiences surrounding fertility and birth, it is those who suffer from infertility and loss who get the one two punch of Gen 3–the curse rears it’s head both in the inability to get or to stay pregnant (pain increased) and the all to alert awareness that death still marches about the earth creating casualties, leaving scars. These are the women who will enter into the battle that wages to bring forth life (my life for this one), who will face death, and who will exit the battlefield marred.

And yet, out of this real encounter with death, with “no,” with “not this time,” there is life: for she is a new creation out of this death–never to be the same again. For it is she who has suffered death that knows what life is; it is she who has not born new life who understands–on a deep and visceral level–just how miraculous new life is; it is she who has wept bitterly and cried out for relief who knows from Whom joy and comfort come; it is she who knows the failure of the very thing she was uniquely gifted to do who finds her very person not in the sum of her working or not-working parts, but in the totality of The One who has born the brokenness of the world (and of her body) in His body and who has dealt death a death-dealing blow. And while she has not brought forth new life quantified in onsies and diapers, she is the epitome of new life, for it is she who declares even in this darkness: life.

 

Posted on by laurenlarkin 1

Death to Life in Fertility to Birth: Infertility and Loss

And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” … [Hannah] was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” (1 Sam 1:8-11)

Affliction; this is the word Hannah uses to describe her childless state, her barren state, as she prays to God (actually, it’s more like pleading and begging). Hannah is afflicted with grief and sorrow. She is distressed and she weeps bitterly. She can’t eat, she laments (the deeper connotation of the word translated as “weep”), and she is not merely “sad” as a “feeling of blueness” as we would casually say, “I’m sad today.” It would be better to render the question from her husband, “why is your heart sad?,” as “why is your heart broken?”  Anyone reading who has suffered a broken heart knows that this feeling breaks through the floor of sadness into a realm that effects both the mind and the body in painful ways. A broken heart is described as such because the heart actually feels broken; there’s an ache or a piercing pain that seems to ricochet through the fleshiness of the heart muscle–it’s not merely metaphorical.  Hanna experiences this depth of broken-heartedness.

Over what?

A longing and a desire gone unmet.

Hannah is barren; she is without a child.  Hannah isn’t over-reacting about her childless state. The way the story is told seems more like a snapshot of her life at this one moment of her distress over being barren rather than a wholistic picture of what Hannah has been suffering–Hannah’s story practically opens the book of 1 Samuel. In v. 5 there is the mention that the Lord had closed her womb. And then from there, we jump right into her peaking distress and broken heart. In this way–the way the story is told–we miss out on the beauty that is the climactic point of Hannah’s distress and weeping. She is wholly consumed by hope deferred; hope deferred doesn’t merely occur because hope has been deferred once…but over and over and over again. Hannah has been pushed to the brink of the cliff that leads to despair, to death.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Prov. 13:12)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick and this sickness steals life from the victim. Hannah has spent who knows how long longing and yearning for a child. Think of the numerous months coming and going, each one delivering it’s “no” and “not this time” to Hannah’s heart–hope sprung, hope dashed.  And the deferral of her hope has made her sick: she can’t eat, she can’t stop weeping bitterly, she is inconsolable.  This is a picture of a woman who is not well, who is suffering intimately with the brokenness of a very fallen world. When hope has been deferred for so long and dashed against the rocks so many times, one begins to long for not-hope. The deferral of hope can make one so sick that they wish for hope to take flight and to vanish, never again to alight on the heart–for, to the suffering soul, to live a life vanquished of hope seems better than to have hope yet once again only to have it dashed…yet once again.

And so it is with those of us who have suffered with infertility or loss or both. In both infertility and loss there is a hope, a real, tangible, hope that blossoms and the real hope that is shattered into what seems like shards upon shards. And each time this hope is dashed, there is a death. And it is this death that leaves the woman a different creation the next day. Out of all the experiences surrounding fertility and birth, it is those who suffer from infertility and loss who get the one two punch of Gen 3–the curse rears it’s head both in the inability to get or to stay pregnant (pain increased) and the all to alert awareness that death still marches about the earth creating casualties, leaving scars. These are the women who will enter into the battle that wages to bring forth life (my life for this one), who will face death, and who will exit the battlefield marred.

And yet, out of this real encounter with death, with “no,” with “not this time,” there is life: for she is a new creation out of this death–never to be the same again. For it is she who has suffered death that knows what life is; it is she who has not born new life who understands–on a deep and visceral level–just how miraculous new life is; it is she who has wept bitterly and cried out for relief who knows from Whom joy and comfort come; it is she who knows the failure of the very thing she was uniquely gifted to do who finds her very person not in the sum of her working or not-working parts, but in the totality of The One who has born the brokenness of the world (and of her body) in His body and who has dealt death a death-dealing blow. And while she has not brought forth new life quantified in onsies and diapers, she is the epitome of new life, for it is she who declares even in this darkness: life.

 

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

The Death and Life in Fertility to Birth: Labor and Delivery

O Lord, in distress they sought you;
they poured out a whispered prayer
when your discipline was upon them.
 Like a pregnant woman
who writhes and cries out in her pangs
when she is near to giving birth,
so were we because of you, O Lord;
     we were pregnant, we writhed,
but we have given birth to wind.
We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth,
and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.
 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the earth will give birth to the dead. (Isaiah 26:17-19)

Femininity is often defined in terms more associated with a church mouse than that of a living, breathing, human being. Meek and mild are the boundary markers for interpretations on what is feminine: soft, smooth, gentile, maternal, quiet, proper, etc. It will be no surprise to you then that I would disagree with any definition of femininity that is based on such words/terms. In defining femininity, we must consider the very thing that biologically defines a woman: birthing. Thus, redefine femininity. Rather than meek and mild, it is strength, fortitude, and even fierceness that defines femininity. A woman in labor is completely feminine. A woman in labor is confronting death to bring forth life; no small task. And she confronts death alone. No person (apart from the Holy Spirit) takes her hand and guides her through it. It is here where the ferocity that is woman comes to the fore; she will (speaking in terms of an un-medicated labor and delivery) moan, grunt, even growl at death, bring it, Death! She’ll stare it down. My life for this one! A proper definition of femininity must incorporate this imagery.

Labor and delivery is earthy and visceral. I’ve yet to meet a husband, having witnessed his wife giving birth, who has not walked away completely changed in his opinion of what this woman can do and even is. Many male comedians have joked–in truth to a great degree–that if God came down and changed the roles (men now being child-bearers) that the human race would cease to exist. Men who have stood by, next to, or even those who have have held their wife during labor (my husband), and witnessed this process are forever changed in their own way–at the least his view of her is radically altered. Thus, in the process of creating a definition of femininity that incorporates the imagery of the woman in labor, the definition of masculinity is redefined. Chivalry become less about protecting her from danger and more about protecting her space to enter into this danger. His inherent ability and desire to protect (a generalization I’m willing to make having seen this “protector” spirit in my young sons) will be turned outward, toward the world, keeping the world at bay; in his presence she is safe, he becomes the source of comfort and soothing–he becomes the homestead–while she enters into this event and while she works and battles. He is not holding her, but holding everyone back. In light of modern birthing techniques, the husband often loses his role in this process, being relegated to the side and designated unhelpful or useless–a problem that needs a correction. Husbands are crucial to the process and the event this woman, his wife, will go through, for he is her first source of comfort, the one who knows her intimately, and his presence can represent to her that she is free to enter into this battle, to face death.

So, let us speak in terms of the theme of these posts, and let us look on the death and life in labor and delivery.

From the onset of labor to the completion of pushing, the woman submits to the event happening to them. The woman gives herself up (has to) to bring this other life into the world.  A woman who is laboring (naturally) will often look almost lifeless during the highpoint of contractions–slumped and limp held up only by the strength of her husband’s arms or still, inexpressive,  curled up on her side. Even delivery (pushing), the most primal of the process and invoking the totality of the activity of the woman–activity surfacing beyond all reason, in spite of all exhaustion–in itself, represents her total submission to the event–she has to push. She is face to face with death (her death), she will give the whole of herself to the process and afterwards is forever different.  She does not choose when labor begins, but it seizes her, and she can do nothing but die to herself to bring this child into the world. When you see her child, you see the death she went through in labor and delivery to move this child from her body in to the world. It is impossible to go through this process, this event and remain the same.  There is a new woman at the end of the event and not merely a new title to add to the others.

But let me not forget those of us who endure a different labor and delivery process; for those of us who endure Cesarian sections (a major surgery to extract the baby from the very lowest part of the abdomen) also go through the death into new life process. Having had three C-Sections, the imagery of being laid out on an operating table in a cruciform position does not escape my attention. My arms are stretched out to the side, and strapped (albeit loosely) down. My legs pulled straight on a narrow (and I mean NARROW) table. It is in this position, cruciform, that I will give birth. I don’t want to make a too-big of a deal about this nor draw a one-to-one comparison between her and Jesus’ death. But the imagery is there. During our last (and final) delivery, I walked (without Daniel) to the OR; everything about this small trek to have our daughter felt like dead woman walking. Each step down the cold hallway, barely covered by my gown, led me toward my confrontation with death. Without the lead-up that is the transition between early stage labor to a stage referred to as “transition”, you feel catapulted to deaths door in the event of a c-section.  As she is laid out, strapped, prepped, and as the curtain is raised–separating her from the gruesome scene below–she will close her eyes, breathe out, and say, “My life, for this one.” She will never be the same when the last suture is in place, and she will bare the scar of this confrontation, it will be the symbol of her new, of her different self, forever marked.

Labor Pains

I am sick today,
sick in my body,
eyes wide open, silent,
I lie on the bed of childbirth.

Why do I, so used to the nearness of death,
to pain and blood and screaming,
now uncontrollably tremble with dread?

A nice young doctor tried to comfort me,
and talked about the joy of giving birth.
Since I know better than he about this matter,
what good purpose can his prattle serve?

Knowledge is not reality.
Experience belongs to the past.
Let those who lack immediacy be silent.
Let observers be content to observe.

I am all alone,
totally, utterly, entirely on my own,
gnawing my lips, holding my body rigid,
waiting on inexorable fate.

There is only one truth.
I shall give birth to a child,
truth driving outward from my inwardness.
Neither good nor bad; real, no sham about it.

With the first labor pains,
suddenly the sun goes pale.
The indifferent world goes strangely calm.
I am alone.
It is alone I am.

Akiko Yosano
Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

The Death and Life in Fertility to Birth: Pregnancy

“To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children'” (Gen 3:16a,b)

When Martin Luther translates this verse from Hebrew into German, the first two parts of the verse read like this, “Und zur Frau sprach er: Ich will dir viel Mühsal schaffen, wenn du schwanger wirst; unter Mühen sollst du Kinder gebären.” Or, in English, “And to the woman he said: ‘I will create/make many toil/distress/difficulty when you are pregnant; under troubles/pains/toils you are supposed to give birth to children.'” The Hebrew supports Luther’s translation choices. The Hebrew word w’heronekh’ incorporates not only the idea of child-bearing, but, more specifically, the whole of the event from beginning to end:  including pregnancy and conception. If this were not so and if the word only referred to the act of child-bearing (the labor and delivery part, which is often the focus for many people), then the second of the first two statements to the woman would be redundant–the second being nearly unnecessary. In what God says to the woman as part of her curse to bear is that from beginning to end the event of bringing forth a child will be toilsome, hard, filled with sorrow, pain, difficulty, and distress; there is no part that goes unscathed by the curse. Bringing forth a child, in simple terms, will not be easy in any stretch of the imagination. Part of the battle ground between life and death will be her very body; as fast as she can rejoice, she will be able to weep.  All of it happening to her and in her and apart from her control–and there in lies her death, her pain, her toil–it’s not merely physical but also emotional and intellectual.

For this post, I’ll focus primarily on pregnancy (and not conception, I’ll save that for a later post), which makes sense because I’m 38.5 weeks pregnant. Pregnancy is, if you will, sort of on my mind. So what does death and life look like as a woman progresses through pregnancy? A perpetual (or what feels like a perpetual) loss of self, a handing over of one’s self to the event. Physically, this is somewhat more obvious. The pregnancy, and by this I really mean the growing life within the womb, takes over. A glass of milk is no longer merely some Vit D for the mom, it will go first to the child. Our bodies, literally, re-prioritize who is important; and the important person is the new life, the child. If we don’t ingest enough vitamins to cover both baby and mom, we, ourselves in our body, will suffer. Then there’s the ever present aversions (both smell and taste and touch) that pop up in an otherwise normally unaffected mother. With my second son I couldn’t tolerate the smell of Ham. Ham. It’s completely innocuous; it has no danger to it whatsoever, but I reacted to it like I would rotten eggs or rotten meat. There’s the nauseous hailing in “morning sickness”, which, by the way, is typically more of an all-day sickness that can fluctuate in correlation to, well, nothing really. It sort of does what it wants. Personally, I would be nauseous both full or hungry, both rested or tired. And speaking of rest, what’s that?? In the beginning, in those first few weeks, there is, typically, extreme exhaustion, no matter what you do. You could sleep all day and wake up and feel exhausted.  Physically, the woman is taken over. She is no longer in control of her body, and this is the beginning of the death of herself.

But it doesn’t end with the completion of the first tri-mester; no. way. As the pregnancy progresses so will her weight, her hips will spread, her belly will expand, her breasts will enlarge, her feet will change, her ligaments (all of them) will loosen and the once graceful and deft will quickly become, shall we say, a bull in a china shop. On a confessional note, I bump into more walls, door frames, and banisters than I care to admit. My large belly has actually turned on and ignited gas burners on our stove. My husband got nervous one night, because he was certain I’d burn my belly reaching up over the stove to get something down from the cabinet above. At this stage in the game I can’t actually just sit up from a lying down position, but have to sort of do this roll thing and throw in a grunt or two. And that’s just what I’m willing to share.  Every month that progresses by, she will lose more and more of herself and who she was. Every turn through out the pregnancy changes her, for good–there’s truly no going back to what was.

While the physical symptoms present themselves in such tangible ways, there are yet more concerns for the pregnant woman that lie just under the surface of the physical in the emotional and intellectual. Fear.  I am not only losing control of my body as it seems to completely hand itself over to this process of growing this life, but I am in the midst of a deep, spiritual awareness that I’m not in control and that awareness brings with it fear.  Humanity in general does not like to be out of control; we’d rather be God than confess that we need Him.  This truth is ever present in the life of the pregnant woman. What do you mean there’s, technically, nothing I can do to guarantee a successful result?! Fear (and anxiety, it’s sister) is the tantamount emotional and intellectual response to the realization that one is not in control. And fear is the exact emotion she will feel (some of us more and some of us less) during the entire pregnancy, for there is no definite to lay hold of; confidence is pure illusion.

For me, fear rears it’s head frequently. I remember remarking to a friend when I was pregnant with my first that I wish I had a window that I could look through to see if everything was okay with my baby. I want there to be something that I can do to ensure a good result: I won’t drink coffee or alcohol, I’ll avoid noxious odors and certain foods with old-wives tales linking them with miscarriage (from any culture), I’ll happily stop running and other activities that could result in loss or damage to the baby. But still, even if I do all of those things, there’s no guarantee. Even currently being 38weeks (almost 39) pregnant, I still have that lingering concern about whether or not everything is okay, and I have it everyday. Throughout the first trimester, I was concerned about miscarriage; then through the second trimester, concerned about late term miscarriage, still birth, the results of tests; and, now, as I approach the end of the third trimester, my concern lie in her movements throughout the day, what the outcome of labor and delivery will be, is she really healthy (mentally and physically), and will we be okay through the c-section/recovery. As I go through my day without taking hold of the concrete answers I desire, and made aware of my inability to do anything, I am thrust to my knees (sometimes very literally) at the foot of the Cross, asking for help to make it one more day, to take one more step through what seems to be a thick fog. Each breath accompanied by honest confessions of fear and weakness and heartfelt pleas for His mercy.  The more I progress through this pregnancy I made more and more aware that while the end will hopefully result in the bringing forth a new life into this world, there is something between here and there and that something is death.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

From conception to birth, the woman is thrown to the foot of the Creator’s throne, dependent on His will, His mercy, and His strength through her weakness. Everyday for nine months, she will make this journey; everyday she will hand herself over to the death of herself; everyday she will be much more different than the day before; everyday she will join her voice with Mary’s, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Everyday she will die, only to be raised up anew.

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The Death and Life in Fertility to Birth

“’Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.'”

Isaiah 49:15

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Matthew 10:39

It’s not surprising that the topic of life is first and foremost on my mind. At some time, in the next 3-4 weeks, I’ll give birth to our third child. It is an exciting event; a new life will exist in the world, creating her own ripple effect in the lives of her parents, her brothers, her grandparents, and those she will one day encounter. The whole event is, simply, miraculous; there is a lot of joy and celebration that should surround such an event.  From the moment of conception, through pregnancy, to the culmination in birth the common theme is new life, and not incorrectly so for it is in fact a new life in the world.

But what is less spoken of, but I believe to be inherent in the event, is the death involved in order for this new life to come forth. For, to be sure, there is a death, a real death to self from beginning to end. This death lies in the fact of the lack of control that is part of the fertility and child-bearing process. There is nothing guaranteed within the process. No matter how much a book may claim otherwise, encouraging that you can in fact plan when you will conceive based on some temperatures and fluids, the fact remains that not only are these very factors out of our control, but even if all the elements align perfectly, there is still some portion of control lacking in the acquisition of the final product: conception and implantation.  Conception and implantation have no guarantees attached to them, for the threat of miscarriage is very real in the first trimester and even in the second, not to mention tubal implantation. Graduating into post week 20, and you still aren’t guaranteed a successful outcome, as I’ve heard a number of stories about how everything was just fine and then…Even now, at nearly full term, there is no guarantee that everything will be fine; even now I have not complete and total control over what will happen.  And so it is, from the beginning to the end, I am radically changed through the event of death and not of life; in this event, at every turn, I am reminded of my place (at God’s mercy) and the futility of my capability.

But though it is death, it is not death for death’s sake; but for life, to bring forth new life and, typically, not only one new life, but two. I don’t mean to be callous in my math here but, yes, for the time being, I am excluding the man from the equation. While he participates in the beginning, the whole of the pregnancy is rather abstract for him, only becoming “more real” upon birth and at that moment the death he experiences–because of this new life–begins.  I say this as a woman who is married to a man who lovingly cooks for her during the first trimester when her stomach can’t handle it, understands as her expanding belly and increased number of pillows demands at least half of the bed, and cancels work trips and outings with friends because, “It’s just too close to the due date.” Not to mention a man who is as passionate about natural labor and childbirth as his wife is and knows his supporting role in labor. So I don’t mean to say that the man isn’t part of the process, but for what I’m talking about here, life out of death as it relates to fertility, pregnancy, and the birth of the child, I’m focusing on her, the woman; because it is this journey, which is her journey and during which he plays a supporting role (albeit the primary supporting role). He stands apart from the event, looking on, watching, providing support when and where he can, but ultimately this event is between her and God. She will suffer death over and over again, which will bring forth this new life of her own and that of her child. He will be impacted but later, subsequent to her death and new life.

Plus, to be honest, I can’t speak from the man’s point of view. The only information I’ve been able to garner about the whole event from his perspective is from my husband. He’s willingly admitted the abstractness of the whole thing and we laugh when he asks, “Is there really a baby in there?” To which I like to respond, “No. A litter of Kittens.” About which we both admit that that scenario (though creepy, loaded with questions were it to happen, and perfect fodder for a B rated sci-fi movie) would be significantly easier than a real baby.  He’s also admitted a feeling of helplessness during our miscarriages. During our last miscarriage, as I lay on the bathroom floor in the fetal position, enduring 3 hours of transition contractions to pass the sack (etc), all he could do was lay with me unable to take my pain, to alleviate it, to stop my tears. I know it was no “easy” task to witness the woman he loves he excruciating pain and discomfort and sorrow and I’m sure there was a death in that for him; the line I’m desiring to draw is between the one who goes through the event and the one who witnesses the event.

While I’ve attempted to appease the allegations that could be brought forth against me for not including Him in my discussion of Her, I’m sure I’ve not exhausted all possible appeals. With that said, I want to get back to why I’ve started this post in the first place: the death and life in fertility to birth. I plan to look at three primary areas as they relate to the themes of death and life: pregnancy, labor and delivery, and infertility and loss. As a woman, I will be able to speak from experience of having gone through the bulk of these events–the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrowful.  As a theologian of the cross, I will see these events through the lens that God creates out of nothing (not just in the beginning but now); that these events participate in that death and (re)creation: and how, in the depths of the fear, the realization of the loss of control, and deep insecurity, Jesus Christ proves himself to be true and real and  present in that suffering with us, not to “test” us but to to whisper to us, “I know. Take my hand. Follow me” and to be our strength when we’ve got none left to walk on.

More to come…

 

Posted on by laurenlarkin 2