I’m roughly six weeks out from delivering my fourth baby. We can’t wait to meet our sweet baby girl, but I know deeply in my bones the wall of pain I will have to walk through before she is in our arms. And I dread it.
But we don’t labor or give birth as those without hope!
It occurred to me that my dread for the physical suffering I’m about to endure for the sake of life is not so different from Someone who labored for life long before me.
I had a heart-shift during my second birth-giving experience. I went from fixating on how much each contraction hurt and how I would probably ask for an epidural after THIS one to meditating on my Savior suffering on the cross all day long to give me eternal life.
And ever since then, I go into this holy headspace where the gospel is so vivid and real to me. I know that I have a sympathetic high priest, a Savior who can identify with every ache and pain felt by my human flesh, and because He did, I can. He suffered all the way unto death to give eternal life; I can suffer and survive (by God’s grace) to give an earthly life. This thought continues to feed my hungry mother’s soul.
But the identification doesn’t start (or end) there in labor! It has hit me right in the heart that Jesus knew deeply in His bones the suffering He was about to endure. We see accounts in Matthew 24, Mark 14, and Luke 22 of Jesus drawing away with just three of his disciples the night before His crucifixion to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. The text says His soul was “sorrowful and troubled.” He prayed that the Lord would “let this cup pass” from Him, and “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” After His repeated pleas for the Father to save the world by any other means than His own deep suffering, Jesus was still able to say “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.”
Wow. If I really think about Jesus sweating blood in prayer as He braced for the physical and spiritual pain He was about to endure for my sake, I know that I have Someone who understands the pain of labor even better than I do. I know that it’s okay to feel dread. Even fear. To feel sorrowful and troubled about it. That’s not wrong. But I need to follow His example and bring all of that to the Father in prayer, even asking for a few others to pray about it with and for me! God is not distant and aloof to these trials of body and spirit; He is here. Ready to be our strength, our help, our conqueror. When we call on Him, He will always see us through. He will always work out the most redemptive outcome. And we’ll give Him the most glory for all of that when we endure with willing spirits.
I’m 33 weeks with #4 and have been thinking about how well I KNOW what grief this child’s sin nature will bring to me in the future based on my experience parenting her big siblings. We know what extra work that nurturing her will bring our family. I am sure she will hurt me, disappoint me, offend me, exasperate me on some level in her life. I know all of this just like Jesus foreknew every sin I’d ever commit against Him and He still said, “Yes, I’ll die for you.” And He even delights in us, y’all; He finds great joy in our salvation.
His immense love for us outweighed our deep offense against Him and the price He’d have to pay for it. It’s beautiful. It’s the gospel. And it’s why we don’t give birth as those without hope.
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