In a video that I show to my Childbirth class, the same video each time "week 2" rolls around in any given series, there is a woman in labor.  She lies in the hospital bed, smiling wearily up at her husband to one side of her.  A doula is seated on a stool by her other side, holding her hand.  Labormom whimpers that she is "...beginning to be afraid of the contractions" and her doula tells her that, "this, yes, this is the hardest thing you will ever do..."  And every time I reach this scene, I roll my eyes and twist my mouth and a feeling akin to repulsion washes over me.  Every. Single. Time.  I have watched this video segment so many times over the past 7 years but it is only within the past year that I have had this reaction. 

I have given birth to three children, without pain medication, without any medical intervention, and done it on purpose.  I have had a labor lasting as long as 20 hours, one quick delivery, and a labor as short as 6 hours, and one prolonged difficult delivery that almost went very very wrong.  And none of my three birthing experiences was ever, ever, ever as hard or as painful as some of the other things I've experienced in my life.  If Childbirth is the hardest thing you ever have to do?  Then you are lucky.

My first true experience with death wasn't my "missing cat" or my "sleeping guinea pig", my "gone to heaven" grandfather that I hadn't seen since I was a toddler... it was watching my mother die.

It was pretty horrible, all the drama and intensity and crisis...but what was harder was getting married without my mom, having a baby without my mom, and watching my firstborn graduate highschool without my mom.  The moment of realization that I was doing something that was a significant relational growth factor without the very one who had been there/done that before me was always a striking and numbing moment.  It would be this moment of dread that coursed through me, a chill washing over me and a renewal of that original grief... plus the addition of this new wound.

The moment I got the phone call telling me that my uncle, my moms younger brother, and my mentor and guide, was diagnosed with the same disease that had taken my mother from me, THAT was harder than hearing my midwife say to me in a tense tight voice, "Dionne? You must push this baby out right now".  And the way our entire lives were uprooted, by choice but no less easy because of that, seeing my children hurt and bewildered, watching them struggle and flail about because of me... that was harder too.  Knowing that my actions back then before my uncle passed away and my subsequent actions after he passed away were to blame for some of the defining characteristics in my children, has been very very very hard to choke down, to digest, to eliminate.

Sometimes, in my life, the act of living has seemed harder yet than the act of birthing new life.

Watching my child, the one I've fought for, advocated for, encouraged and supported and loved, the one I first gave birth to, first learned from, and first dragged kicking and screaming through her teen years, give up her entire future for the love I could just not give enough of, has nearly destroyed my heart.

Seeing young girls in my classes become unfit mothers, holding an abandoned or neglected or abused child in my arms, seeing my husband undergo risky spinal nerve radio frequency testing, hearing that my stepfather may have cancer - all those things have been just as hard as 20 hours of childbirth, sweating and crying and pushing and overcoming the whole way.

When my friend called me early one morning a year ago to say her sister was critically ill and could I take her boys after school, I actually ached inside my own heart for her.  I ached for her fear, her potential loss, her anxiety, and her burdens.  When she called me just recently to  tell me her mother was also very ill, it hurt all the way to my toes.  Her grief and fear were so tangible and I so badly wanted to take them on for myself... grief and fear I'd already experienced and knew deep within... grief and fear that no one can carry for you but that you must work through on your own.

And this newest thing is so far maybe the hardest yet.  It makes me fear for what else is still yet ahead of me.  I met this person, a stranger, in a time of need.  I came specifically to meet a portion of that need.  Instantly I felt drawn in, welcomed, befriended.  As time passed, all those fun feelings came stronger and richer and more beautiful, as true friendships are apt to be.  And as all the loveliness that is "friendship" blossomed and grew, the other portions of her need also grew: bigger, darker, nastier, scarier, and more draining, as true need is apt to be.  For the first time in my life, even undergoing the impending death of my mother, I prayed to God to inflict ME instead of someone else.

I was driving down the road, lined with trees swaying in the wind, everything around me fresh and green and so flagrantly God-blessed.  I was praying and with everything I had I pleaded for this burden to be shifted onto my own shoulders, for the darkness to be lifted from another and blanketed onto myself.  I asked God directly to please, take me in place of.  And God replied.

He spoke into my heart with the vision of His own son, beaten, ridiculed, and tortured - and He placed the image of my child there in that place and then He asked me if I would give my own child instead of myself?  And I am ashamed that I could not.

I could, however, see even more clearly just how awesome the gift of our Lord is, understanding at least some of what the cost was for God.  I would, gladly, give my life in exchange for my dear friend, but I could not hand over my child. 

I am so sorry that I am not so brave, so courageous, so selfless... and that I am so sinful, so human, so insignificant after all.  And I am sorry that I cannot lift the burden of another.  God will have to do that for me... and I trust that He will.