Labor Pains: Thoughts on Suffering

 

I'm thinking about labor lately.

Partly because I think childbirth is a captivating process that has a thousand beautiful facets, and partly because most of my friends are going through hard things right now and labor has become a favorite illustration of mine for the work of suffering.

This started last year, when anxiety was my consistent companion and there were moments in each day when it grew more intense. I started to tell myself, "This is a contraction. You need to breathe through it. And even though this labor is long, it means God is bringing life out of you."

During active labor, contractions usually last about 45-60 seconds and come 3-5 minutes apart. During the transition phase of labor, they can last 60-90 seconds and come as frequently as every thirty seconds (which means they can overlap). I have never given birth, but I've heard a hundred stories from people who have and I have never heard anyone say it's easy. What I have heard people say is that managing the pain moment by moment, contraction by contraction, can help.

The last two weeks in my ministry as an RA have been some of the most chaotic and unsettling of my life. Not only have I been groaning, but all Creation, like Paul talks about in Romans 8. Moody has been moving freshmen into the dorms in the midst of a global pandemic, civil unrest in Chicago, AND natural disaster (tornado on Monday, which I've been told most of my life doesn't happen in the city). I have interacted with people dealing with anxiety and transition and grief on profound levels. I have had hard conversations and admitted hard things.

There have been contractions this week.

The difference between labor and long-term suffering is that labor has a definite end. It has stages one can track. It might feel like forever in the moment, but eventually, in healthy cases, the baby will come and celebration will begin. This is a fairly certain outcome in a finite moment of time.

Though our lives also happen within a finite space, they aren't quite as predictable. Suffering doesn't always exist within the timeline of a few days--sometimes it's a lifetime. Our labors last and we grow discouraged. People might tell us we'll get better, but there isn't always assurance of that outside of a distant, heavenly hope.

And yet, the encouragement of one contraction at a time has helped me. I literally stop to breathe through my hard moments now. And when I can't do them alone (which is often), I call someone to hold my hand.

So I wrote a poem about this experience and I thought I'd share it here, where I had enough space to preface it well. Hopefully it can be something good to hold onto for at least one reader :)

....

I wake in the blackest part of the night,

The peak of the pain,

And I cry out.

And no makes it stop.

No one makes it stop.

In fact, they tell me this pain is productive,

As in producing something,

But right now I’m wondering:

It it worth it?

The ones who have done this before?

They tell me it is.

One look at that new life on the other side

And I will know the Author of Life

In ways I never could before.

Right now all I know is pain.

“Help me!”

That’s my desperate refrain,

But no one’s running frantically

To come invent my rescue.

Can’t they see

That I am suffering here?

Not a scratch or passing wound,

But torn right open from the inside out,

Everything in me heaving,

Seething,

Out of sorts—

How can this be what brings forth

Life?

Perseverance is a concentrating thing,

Something I can’t accomplish with distractions—

There are so many distractions—

Why won’t anyone take this pain away?

Can it go away?

Are these labors here to stay?

Will life arrive today?

Or do I wait until tomorrow?

Does no one understand my sorrow?!

Do I suffer all alone?

In this place quite full of people,

My pain is all my own.

Why will no one take it from me?

Does no one understand this ache?

They hold my hand and fall asleep

And nothing’s happened when they wake.

I shake.

And cry,

And howl,

And push.

Perseverance is a consecrating thing.

In this bloodstained hospital wing,

Am I becoming holy?

Does my tear-stained, fear-stained face

Begin to look like His more fully?

No one takes the pain from me.

They hold my hand and fall asleep,

But He remains awake.

Watching in my darkest hour,

Because He, too, was bloodstained, tear-stained,

No one understand His pain.

And no one took His pain away.

He doesn’t even touch me.

Not so much as a hand on my arm,

And I am crying out with all this pain,

And doesn’t He see?

I think through gritted teeth.

Doesn’t He see me?

Why doesn’t He heal me?

Not until morning do I see,

The shaft of light,

The hint of grace,

A glimpse—no more!—of His dear face.

Brought forth in me.

For in my pain and desperate plea,

Though He held back from healing me,

I understand Gethsemane.

And now the pain has purpose:

For as I know His death,

So also I will know His life.