Hormonal Help

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Motherhood is a life-change of massive proportions. From the outside it looks like fun and games – rocking babies, cuddling toddlers, playing with preschoolers. From the inside it can feel more like persecution. I don’t believe there’s any other earthly experience that packs such a surprising wallop.

Eve of the Garden of Eden described new motherhood like this: “I have brought forth a man.” She didn’t have a clue.

With her first look at baby Cain, she saw an Adam look-alike and thought he was simply a mini-man. Maybe she also thought her newborn would take care of his own needs as Adam did. In any case, those first few weeks of round-the-clock mothering must have been a rude awakening for her.

Poor Eve. She hadn’t had a chance to learn about children through babysitting jobs or by watching another mother raise kids. She didn’t have any siblings or even a mom to call for advice.

But God knew of her lack of motherhood-education, so he gave her an ace-in-the-hole: hormones. By the time she delivered little Cain, her mothering hormones had already kicked in, bonding her to her baby while he was still in utero. After he was born, God gave her a second infusion of hormones to initiate Cain’s food supply and further connect the two of them. All of us moms know the deep love she felt as she held and nursed him.

I’ve watched my daughter Linnea and daughter-in-law Katy become moms (6 times over) and have marveled at their strong bonds with each child, despite increasing workloads. As a grandma lacking any fresh inflow of hormones to go along with these 6 births, I’ve loved each child but am not bonded to them like their mothers. Instead my part has been as a non-hormonal support on the side.

Now I’m preparing to watch daughter Birgitta become a mother, but this time I’ll be leaving the sidelines and stepping closer to the center of the action. When I think about moving into this unexplored territory, it’s encouraging to know that God is going to endow at least one of us with his magical maternal hormones, and I’ve witnessed Birgitta’s strong pre-birth baby-bonding already.

Five months from now when God launches Birgitta’s labor and delivery hormones, I may even get to be her coach. Then when she’s discharged from the hospital, I’ll most likely be her ride home – to my home, which will also be hers and her baby’s. I can’t predict how all of this is going to go, and during these next weeks I’ll be asking God for his thorough preparation of all 3 of us, Birgitta, baby, and me.

For now, though, I might as well ask him the pressing question on my mind. “Have you got any hormones for a close-to-the-action grandma?”

“Live in complete harmony with each other, as is fitting for followers of Christ Jesus. Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you, so that God will be given glory.” (Romans 15:5,7)

Did you really want me?

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The words “unplanned pregnancy” are code for “out of wedlock,” which is what’s happening within my daughter Birgitta right now at 16 weeks pregnant. But “out of wedlock” babies aren’t the only ones that arrive “unplanned.”

Among my own 7 children several were unplanned pregnancies. Five, to be exact. Birgitta herself was unplanned, since I’d had a tubal ligation before she came. Although I eventually had a reversal, Nate and I didn’t know whether or not additional children would come. (Photo: Baby Birgitta)

What’s the difference between planned and unplanned pregnancies?

In reading Scripture we see that children are always considered a blessing, planned or otherwise. When God wanted to reward a woman for righteous living, the best gift he could think of was a baby. And when he was arranging salvation for all mankind, the idea he settled on was to send his Son… as a baby, by way of an unplanned pregnancy.

Babies are extremely important to God, a truth laced throughout the Bible. Caring for the children he sends, especially for their spiritual welfare, should be one of our highest priorities.

Nate and I used to attend a church whose pastor understood this. He spoke to his congregation on “Recruitment Sunday” (when every Sunday school class needed new volunteers) and said, “No adult should be sitting in a class for grown-ups if even one helper is still needed in the children’s department.” He agreed with God’s priorities. We’re to love, instruct, and nurture all children with equal care, since he has his own plans for every life, not just for those who were “planned” by their parents.

Last week a blog reader shared something extra special about our coming baby (on “Timing is everything”):

Hm-m-m,
Just thinkin’…
7 is the perfect number…
7th child having the 7th grandchild…

Thank you, reader, for that smile-worthy insight. Birgitta and I have both enjoyed it, and I know our little one will get a kick out of it someday, too. God was probably the one prompting you to write it so we’d all know how keenly he’s been involved in this “surprise” pregnancy.

My 7th grandchild may grow up to ask some tough questions that are difficult to answer, but comments like the one above will bring light-heartedness into what might have been a stressful conversation. Birgitta has already begun preparing for these questions by keeping a scrapbook of encouraging comments and messages sent our way. And if this child should ever ask, “Did you really want me, Mommy?” Birgitta will be ready with her “yes!” backed up by the “yeses” of many others.

And then she can give her child the best news of all by saying, “There’s also one who wanted you even more than all the rest of us, and it’s God himself.”

“Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” (Ephesians 1:4)

 

Getting Through (all of) This

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How clearly I remember the moment this blog came to be. My daughter Linnea and I had always shared a love for writing, and she’d taken the lead by establishing a blog site in early 2009: www.KissYourMiracle.com

“Hey, Mom,” she said one day. “Why don’t you start a blog? Just put it out there to see what God will do with it.”

It seemed like an easy, solid idea, and since all of us have tough stuff to get through, www.GettingThroughThis.com seemed like a good name. Although I didn’t know it at the time, Nate’s cancer and death would be God’s first blogging assignment for me. Trudging through widowhood would be the second.

And now the Lord has identified the third, Birgitta’s unplanned pregnancy and baby. As the banner on this site says, we hope each post will leave you, the reader, and us, the writers, encouraged to keep moving forward, fortified to “get through” the days and nights of challenge coming to us and most likely to you, too.

Because Birgitta will be the subject of many upcoming posts, please know that whatever gets published on this site about her will have already met with her approval. And as she will be “getting through” one set of tests, I’ll be “getting through” another. Both of us sense God wants to use these posts in creative and constructive ways, and he’ll take care of that, as long as we entrust the words to his care.

Birgitta’s baby is still quite small, less than 4” in length. But as she said when she saw the ultrasound at 13 weeks, he or she is “…a complete mini-human.” Technology has allowed us to peek at what God is doing within her, and as she spread out her ultrasound pictures, just watching her delight in this tiny person brought delight to me.

Maybe that’s a mini-version of what happens when God sees us excited about the plans he unfolds in our lives. If we express joy over an assignment he gives us, does he then delight in watching us the way I did in watching Birgitta? If so, as we pace through these days of pregnancy appreciating the wonder of a tiny mini-human, we could say we’re part of a “chain of cheer:” Creator-to-baby-to-mother-to-grandma-to-heavenly-Father and hopefully back around again and again. I’m beginning to see that it’s our privilege to be involved.

And that’s my highest hope for this blog site that takes 90 seconds to read. May God’s presence in these few lines each day bring delight and good cheer to the whole bunch of us: Birgitta, you, me, her child, and mostly God, as he facilitates our “getting through it” all.

“Always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.” (Proverbs 23:17-18)

Messy Business

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While visiting Linnea and family in Florida, it’s been fun renewing relationships with 3 year old Skylar and 2 year old Micah. Little Autumn, 2 months this week, has changed significantly since I saw her last, which was her birth week.

Children are fantastic, but they can also cause lots of trouble. They’re labor-intensive, expensive, loud, and worst of all, they create endless messes. Autumn, for example,  spits-up on shoulders and makes deposits in her diapers. But those messes are small-potatoes compared to her older siblings. Skylar and Micah? They’re in the mess-making big leagues.

Those two can dismantle a room in just a few minutes of creative play. They can also “help” an adult with a 5 minute project that later requires 40 minutes of clean-up. Making messes comes easily. Cleaning up is more like combat.

And then there are us adults. Even the big-league messes preschool kids make are nothing compared to the disastrous ones we get ourselves into with people. They begin slowly and aren’t usually visible to others, but months or years down the road, everyone sees.

Children make messes with sticky fingerprints, but we do something far worse when we let relationships get sticky. And just as children hate to clean up the messes they make, we find it difficult to tidy up our relationships. Picking up the pieces and putting them back together is something we don’t usually want to do, but if we let disheveled relationships go too far, the clean-up becomes twice as hard.

God describes himself as our heavenly Father, our parent, someone who urges us to make things right just like we urge Skylar and Micah to put a messy room back in order. We insist the children get it done, just as our Father pressures us until we do what we know is the right thing.

Today Skylar, Micah and I made a morning project of reorganizing all their plastic bins, putting each plaything back in its proper place. We retrieved puzzle pieces from the garage and plastic people from the yard. Books had been tucked in the play kitchen and necklaces under the couch. The orderly result was children enjoying a sense of accomplishment and fresh enthusiasm for rediscovered toys.

If we keep our relationships in order, the same thing will be true for us… especially if the relationship we’re working on is the one we have with God.

“Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” (Romans 5:11)

Emergency on Board

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Although I haven’t flown in planes too much, I’ve done enough to be at ease during take-off and landing, and nothing unusual has ever occurred.

Until today, that is.

Flying to Florida to spend time with Linnea and her active family of 5, I settled into an aisle seat bound for Orlando. About an hour before our destination, as beverages were being served, flight attendants began scurrying up and down the aisle with uncharacteristic urgency. Then suddenly the drinks were aborted, and one of them made a plea on the P.A. “Is there a doctor on board? Or a nurse? Maybe an EMT?”

We were in the middle of a medical emergency.

Toward the back of the plane a young woman had been reading when without warning she’d slumped into unconsciousness. Her seatmate, a stranger, alerted flight attendants, and she received quick attention. Staff rushed to the front of the plane and opened the overhead compartment closest to the cockpit, exposing a veritable hospital: an oxygen tank, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, defibrillator, first aid kit, and more.

Grabbing all she could hold, an attendant raced back to the patient as a nurse-passenger cleared out the adjoining seats to make a bed on which the woman could lie down. Passengers became quiet except for one observer who said, “She turned an awful shade of green.”

None of us knows what’s right around the corner. When this woman dressed for her travel day, she had no idea she’d end up sprawled across 3 airline seats strapped into an oxygen mask. When we leave home each day, none of us knows if we’ll return.

Scripture says God watches over our comings and goings. I think that means from home to work to shopping to school to anyplace else. I also think it means coming and going on an eternal scale: we go from earth and come to paradise. We come to death but go through to new life.

It might also mean coming and going in and out of relationships, emotions, circumstances. In all cases, God is watching over us, and not just watching but guiding and guarding, too.

And how about the airline patient? Did he watch her sink into unconsciousness and do nothing about it?

He did watch her, yes, and he sent a nurse, made sure the proper equipment was on board, and had paramedics waiting at the open end of the jet-way when we landed. I watched 5 of them kneel in front of her ministering medically and encouraging emotionally. As the rest of us paraded past, headed for baggage claim, she was hedged in by protective care: a team of paramedics, plus God.

And just before we exited the plane, the flight attendant made one more announcement: “Sorry about the beverages, but thanks for understanding. We hope you fly with us again soon.”

“The Lord himself watches over you! The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.” (Psalm 121:5,8)