Greg preached in a church last Sunday that had two morning services. That’s code for “a church with nice landscaping.” Our church is humble, and the seats really need to be cleaned. We love it.

I didn’t go– not because I already heard his sermon like three times already– but because it was a ten-hour-day, and that’s not my idea of a Sabbath. Greg took along two of our children. Now, my oldest boy liked the church because they had “donut time” and the three-year-old had a swell time as well. She liked riding the “alligator.”

She meant the “elevator,” but this is Florida so you never know.

Adults often mix up their words as well. I think about this whenever anyone tells me about their home improvement stories. They know I love them. What they don’t know is that I’m listening for key words like “remodel” and “redecorate.”

A few years back a woman was lamenting her horrid kitchen “remodeling” project. I asked her what was involved, and she went on about the paint colors and the wallpaper boarder she was trying to hang. I kept waiting for the part where the stove blows up, but it never happened. What kind of story was this anyway? I tried my best to show sympathy.

Meanwhile back at the ranch in 2004… our kitchen ceiling is torn out, there are no functional cabinets, and every nut and bolt from The Home Depot is lying on every available surface. You didn’t dare stay stationary or you’d be used as a drywall perch. If you turned on the faucet, the water would pour on your head from the ceiling. There was white dust in the depths of the upstairs toy box even though the kitchen is downstairs.

If the wallpaper lady could see me now. I mean, we had a toddler that still put stuff in her mouth. I’ll leave out the “…and I was pregnant” part, because that’s a given.

Anyway, I’d like to take a minute to clarify. Ripping out a wall is remodeling. White-washing the 70’s wood-paneling is redecorating. There’s about a 10 Advil difference.

This all comes to mind as we consider old farmhouses and abandoned barns. Some folks tell me that things need “a little redecorating,” and some folks tell me that it needs an overhaul.

There is a difference, and trust me, I have a preference for one over the other.

I should’ve known that this past week was a bad time to kick my one-cup-of-coffee-a-day habit. Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve done it. I’ve kicked my caffeine habit permanently about ten times now. But like my toddler and the stairs, I just keep going back.

Who meets up for herbal tea? Social occasions call for a cup of coffee with caramel chocolate creamer. I just can’t resist. If I drink water, they’ll make me sit at the kids’ table.

Greg thinks it’s real funny that one cup of caffeine can have such a grip on me. If I miss a morning, I have headaches, nausea, and fatigue. I’m down for the count. Once the irritability sets in though, he stops laughing and fires up the brew. He’s a believer in its effects.

I believe in it, too, and that’s why I should’ve known. I weaned down to a half a cup before it was time for Greg to leave on another trip. (This time he went to Missouri, but he came back empty-handed.) The first morning after he left, I woke up to a headache, a fussy baby, rain that wouldn’t stop, and a dog who threw up on the carpet. These were all signs: It was going to be a bad week.

It was a long week, and bless the Lord, it’s over.

Sometimes you just have to get through it. Sometimes you have to take control—changing some things around to make it work. And sometimes you have to change who you are in order to rise to the situation.

In my case—caffeine notwithstanding—it was all three of these things. Morning sickness returned. Though it wasn’t the hyperemesis that I suffered through the first trimester, it is hard. This is the stuff of life that you just get through.

Secondly, some of my naughty children need more structure. I’ve been lax with the summer routine, and so Greg sent me out alone this morning to create another schedule and order our lives better. Our family happens to thrive on routine—a home with preschoolers usually does.

And thirdly, God has sent me here for this task. The qualities that we often lack to continue this journey—patience, charity, long-suffering—are fruits of the spirit that are necessary for godly lives no matter the task God calls us to. It is no use blaming it on the children. Get wisdom, be humble, and be quiet enough to hear Him.

By the time Greg got home, I was weaned. No more coffee. Greg was sure glad to be out of the state for this episode. He said so. But I’m sure glad he’s back.

We made what we thought was a very reasonable offer on a 67-acre piece in Tennessee yesterday, but our offer was rejected. The owner wouldn’t budge, and we couldn’t afford a larger offer. This puts us back at square one, pretty much.

The seller’s rejection of our offer seems to be influenced by the local rumor mill. (This is my speculation based on the story I will tell you.) Several weeks back, Greg and I were speaking with an elderly gentleman about his 100-acre place for sale. We toured the property and agreed that it was the nicest place we’d seen so far. The owner told us that his asking price was fantastic, since a farm down the road sold for $1000 more per acre. Yet, it still seemed pretty high to us.

Afterward, a local real estate agent related a story about a man who came in from California and bought the infamous place down-the-way right on the spot. “No offense,” he told us, “But you people coming in from California and Florida had a recent housing boom. It’s driving things up.” Just as an unfortunate aside for us, it seems the bubble has burst in our area.

Anyway, I believe I found the piece for the price mentioned, but it has a 3 bedroom house on it. (?) Other factors drive up the price of vacant land, such as: creeks, springs, riverfront, vicinity to town, timber to pasture ratio, and general fertility of the land.

Fast forward to yesterday. When Greg made our offer, which was in line with what has sold in the area in the past six months with other comparable pieces, the owner mentioned the story about “that one piece down the way.” It seems everyone knows about that place, and word is getting around. He isn’t in a rush, in any case.

Elisabeth Elliot writes, “I had been praying for something I wanted very badly. It seemed a good thing to have, a thing that would make life even more pleasant than it is, and would not in any way hinder my work. God did not give it to me. Why? I do not know all of his reasons, of course. The God who orchestrates the universe has a good many things to consider that have not occurred to me, and it is well that I leave them to Him. But one thing I do understand: He offers me holiness at the price of relinquishing my own will.”

We trust in providence, and so our disappointment is tempered. It’s just another leg in the journey, which ironically, may be leading to nowhere. (I had to say it.) We delight in Him, and not in a place—at least, not in a place that is here– and so I really mean it when I say that it’s all OK. We’ll wait, watch, and know that He is still working right where we’re at.

That’s all for now. Besides a rabid raccoon in our neighborhood that attacked a man and lots of thundershowers, it’s pretty quiet around here.

Trust in the LORD, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
and your justice as the noonday.
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
Psalm 37:3 - 7a

My first four births didn’t leave me terribly excited to do it again. They were typical medically-managed hospital births with all the IV potions, ice chips, and monitors that come with it. My fifth hospital birth, however, left me fearful of childbirth. This birth was medically uneventful; psychologically, it was a disaster.

My Christian faith doesn’t allow for this kind of fear. Since it is not grounded in faith, it does not please God. (Hebrews 11:6) Therefore, I understand that I have two options: overcome fear or displease God. I’m choosing the former, though this leaves me with much work to do.

As part of my commitment to overcoming fear in childbirth, I’ve been educating myself with books on the subject as much as time will allow. Though I don’t buy into the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves,” there is a certain aspect in which God works while we work. Sometimes God steps in and changes everything, and sometimes He enables us to walk confidently on the path He’s called us to take. This is what the verse means when it says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil. 2:12) We work and God works.

There is one particular book, Supernatural Childbirth, I avoided reading because I didn’t buy into the concept of “painless childbirth.” I’d heard about women who had painless deliveries, but I kept my thoughts about the matter to myself. Upon a recent recommendation, however, I finally read it.

It was only a few pages into the book, and it was easy to tell where all the controversy surrounding the book came from. Author Jackie Mize makes some pretty bold claims, which I will address next. Before that, we need to understand the title, Supernatural Childbirth. We all know what “childbirth” means, her husband Terry Mize describes what is meant by “supernatural” in the book’s forward:

Something that Jackie and I want people to understand is that to us, supernatural childbirth is being able to believe God to get pregnant, carry that baby to full term, and have a healthy mommy deliver a healthy baby.

Yet, just a few pages later (p. 22), Jackie elaborates on what she really means with the concept:

When I refer to supernatural childbirth, I’m talking strictly about being able to conceive and to have babies with a pregnancy free from nausea, morning sickness, pain, moodiness, depression and without fear of any kind; then going through the entire labor without pain, and through the delivery without stitches and anesthetic. I’m talking about using the Word of God to overcome, change and make things better.

There are so many foundational doctrinal disagreements between the author and I that it is incredibly difficult to know where to begin. The author is coming from a “word of faith” perspective on Scripture. Some people refer to this as a “name it and claim it” theology, and my foundational disagreement with this hermeneutic is not merely traditional—as in, I’m a frozen chosen Presbyterian and therefore intolerant of the unknown—but substantive.

I began my childhood in the Assemblies of God, moved onto non-denominational churches, and then finally attended home churches as a teenager where everyone had secret names, prophesied, and waited for orders to move to the mountains for the end times. I’ve been “healed” by Benny Hinn, made faith promises to Robert Tilton, been prophesied over by a few of the big names, and received all my theological training as a child by these folks. I’m not a stranger.

One of the reasons I’m forever indebted to Elisabeth Elliot is because I locked myself in my room when I turned 16 and read all her books. This is how real faith took root and grew. She taught me that God is interested in me offering myself wholly to Him to use at His disposal. This is what He requires of me. The message I received from my childhood training was that God wanted to bless me with money, wealth, and happiness, and if He wasn’t (which He wasn’t), the problem was my lack of faith.

Hogwash.

Supernatural Childbirth is based on the erroneous presupposition that God exists to make us happy. There are Scriptures that we can pull out of context to support this belief, but it is not in line with the Bible’s whole counsel. Many of the great heroes of the faith, according to this logic, were terribly in want of faith: Job (who lost all his wealth and children), Stephen (who was stoned to death), and the apostle Paul (who suffered imprisonment, shipwrecks, and beatings)—just to name a few. Instead, when we understand that God exists for His glory, and that the chief end of God is to Glorify God, and God told us that working all things for our good is His good pleasure, we are able to endure these “light and momentary” trials, knowing that He has our good and His glory in mind.

If you remember the story of Joseph, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery, he is imprisoned, and eventually he becomes a ruler over Egypt. Then the Bible gives us the punch line in Genesis 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

Where was Joseph’s deliverance? Could not God have prevented this? Was Joseph’s faith to blame? No, God did not merely use the events for good, but He ordained them. John Piper notes, “The word ‘it’ is a feminine singular suffix that can only agree with the antecedent feminine singular noun, ‘evil.’… Psalm 105:17 says about Joseph’s coming to Egypt, ‘[God] sent a man before them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.’ God sent him. God did not find him there owing to evil choices, and then try to make something good come of it. Therefore this text stands as a kind of paradigm for how to understand the evil will of man within the sovereign will of God.”

Consider how the Scriptures teach us that God ordains all things:

In Deuteronomy 32:39 God says, “There is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.”

In Exodus 4:11, God says to Moses, when he was fearful about speaking, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”

When Job’s wife urges him to curse God for his calamities, he replies, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity” (Job 2:10). And then the author of the book commends Job by saying, “In all this, Job did not sin with his lips.”

Amos 3:6 says, “If a calamity occurs in a city has not the LORD done it?”

Satan is real but never, ever out of God’s control. Mark 1:27 says of Jesus, “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.” And Luke 4:36 says, “With authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out.”

Isaiah 45:7 says God is the “The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.”

Jackie Mize believes all infertility is not of God and is something to be remedied by more faith. (chapter 5) Though the Mizes do not mention stillbirths specifically, their words offer no hope to these sorrowful circumstances. Tragedy is not “supernatural childbirth” (per the definition)—as if God was absent from this hell or that the mother’s lack of faith is to blame.

While stillbirth is uncommon, many women experience a miscarriage sometime during their childbearing years. On page 43, Mize declares that she would not have a baby prematurely because “we paid our tithes.” (Mal. 3:10-11) Miscarriages, or “casting your fruit before its time”, will not happen to those who tithe, according to Mize.

Statements like the following lead one to believe that God exists to serve us, and not that we exist to serve Him: “You should have a perfect family too. Four may not be the perfect number for you, but however many you want, you can have them by using the Word of God. The Word will produce for you just as it did for us.” (pp. 55-56) As if the Word of God exists to do our bidding!

Throughout the book, the author cites her experience as proof that God works according to our faith. For example, she was told that she could never have children, but after standing on the Word of God, she did. The problem with most of the stories told here is that she never mentions any medical terminology, proofs, or whys. If she couldn’t have children, why not? Saying that God healed her from some mysterious disease is just ambiguous. Now, I believe that God can heal, but these stories, even from a non-critical point of view, lack substance.

The entire book hinges on the interpretation of Genesis 3:16, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and they desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Jackie Mize and many others believe that, “Jesus bore that sorrow, that grief, so that we don’t have to. Isn’t that good news? I don’t have to bear sorrow and grief!” (p. 26)

This road—the one that Jesus walked so you don’t have to—is the path Mize leads you down so that you can experience a painless birth. When you begin feeling pain, you need to curse the devil and get back to believing.

A quick look at many godly examples in the Scriptures show us that they bore sorrow and grief due to no lack of faith (think of Job), but to the greater purposes and good of the glory of God. There is no explanation in Supernatural Childbirth of Scriptures’ hard words: “take up your cross,” “the fellowship of His sufferings” or “in this world you will have trouble.” If you have trouble, it is because you do not believe enough.

Did Jesus break the curse? Yes. Yet, we live in the tension of the “already, not yet” in that Jesus triumphed over sin and death, but we don’t realize the fullness of that in this life. If it were so, we would not die. Death is a curse. Why not use The Power of Faith to triumph over your sin and impending death? Why just use it for childbirth?

The victory is ours in the end, but we experience the consequences of sin here in this life. We are reminded of the goodness of the glory of God whenever we have a toothache, a migraine, or a broken down car on a deserted highway in the middle of the night. Why is this a reminder? Because this place is not our Home! If we could escape sorrow and grief now, why would we long for heaven?!

So, the question must be asked, Who am I to critique this method of painless childbirth, when I obviously have no experience in the subject? Isn’t my bias toward pain influenced by my previous experience, thereby disqualifying me from being objective on the subject?

One does not need to experience a painless birth to have great faith. Faith is not measured by the intensity of contractions. Many factors influence the inherent ease at which some women give birth—size of the baby, pelvic capacity, fetal presentation, labor positioning. Many physicians and midwives note that women who are able to “let go,” “give in,” and “surrender” to the process typically have shorter, easier deliveries. In fact, head-strong women tend to have more trouble, as they don’t like to feel out of control and so resist the process.

Jackie Mize gets it right when she says this, “The pain women experience in childbirth comes mostly from fear and lack of knowledge.” (p. 32) If she began the book with this statement and spent its entirety educating women on the childbirth process, she’d have a book worth reading. Except for the vague references of the uterus being a muscle one must relax when it contracts, there is no real childbirth education. It is more of an education in substance-less faith—one that places it’s hope in what God can do for us and not in who He is.

In conclusion, there are many things a woman can do proactively to ease the pain of childbirth: acquire more education, seek the labor support of another woman, and decide on a safe, comfortable environment for starters. We should ask God to comfort us and to ease our pain in His mercy. This is good and right. Yet, the comfort we receive from our faith in God is not that He always takes away all our pain on our command, but that if we should make our beds in hell, He is there.

My favorite part about baseball life is that Greg takes all the kids to practice. This means that at scheduled times each week, I get blessed peace and quiet for a couple hours. Now, sports have a way of ruining families and tearing them in all different directions. As for us, it keeps us together. I’m so nice -–I mean, refreshed– when they get home.

It’s also good for homeschooled boys who are around their mothers and sisters all day to hear, “Now throw that ball or get off my field! This isn’t Little League, son!”

Just for fun, here’s a video of our favorite player pitching his first game:

People don’t consider me the poster child for the simple life. With five small children underfoot, I have been told that I have my hands full. A bustling household may seem to be at odds with simple living, but it is not. Children make noise, cost money, and wake in the middle of the night. They are hard work if you are going to raise them right, which means raising them yourself. Yet I can think of no sweeter means of enjoying the simple, good things in life than alongside God’s gift of children.

A Simple Life
A simple life is a single-focused life. It is one that glorifies God, and children are not obstacles to doing that. Sure, it’s a little loud at times, but above the din I can still make out God’s clarion call to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We must purge the things that encumber us, so that the goal is not obscured. Our family’s aim is a straightforward one—to glorify God with our lives. Children only add to the pleasure of living life to the glory of God.

Now I know it’s easy for us to lose perspective while we are waist-high in laundry, and so in this space, I will explain two ways our family purposes to avoid getting lost in the clamor. You don’t have to go crazy. Things happen and milk spills, but commotion happens whether or not you have children. Each person who endeavors to live a God-honoring life has a choice: the narrow way, or the wide way; the way of the cross, or the way of the culture; the simple way, or the encumbered way. Each one of us chooses each day whom to serve; your own laundry pile is there, no matter how you choose.

The first way our family is learning to walk a narrower path is by decluttering—discarding those things that hinder our mission to glorify God. The second way is by choosing well—purposely embracing the things that help us to glorify God. We rid ourselves of the frivolous things, so that our arms are not too weak to carry the essentials.

Be Simple: Declutter
E.F. Schumacher said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” In other words, simplicity doesn’t just happen; we default to the complex. As our family learns to liberate our lives from litter, we’ve chosen to purge the things that encumber, not those things that have lasting value. This seems obvious. The difficulty lies in differentiating between what matters and what doesn’t.

One simple test is to ask, “When I get to heaven, what will I bring along with me?” Children are eternal; material goods are not. Instead of attributing complexity in life to children, taking a good look at life’s clutter would be a better way to spend our time.

Clutter is the noise of life, and it keeps us from doing the will of God. Recreational shopping can keep us from the simple life, tempting us to spend beyond our means. Leaving home each evening makes it difficult to linger around the dinner table. Swallowing a daily mass media diet leaves us too full of the world’s candy to enjoy the meat of God’s Word. These things are temporal, and don’t deserve our attention.

Be Simple: Choose Well
When my husband and I set out to simplify our lives, it was more from necessity than from philosophical choice. We had a goal, and we weren’t able to get there the way we were swimming. We’re just learning how to swim upstream, and the current is a strong one. But now that we have taken carefully considered steps toward simplifying, we are persuaded that glorifying God is more within our reach when the noise of life is turned down. And now that another season is upon us, in a few days he and I will sit down together to plan, strategize, and reevaluate the course our household is on.

Some of the questions that we will ask and answer are: Are we on track? What is working? What isn’t working? Why isn’t it working? What can we do to make it work? Does it need to work, or can we eliminate it? What’s essential, and what’s not? This is one way we strive to choose well, to live our lives intentionally.

To give one example, we run our household on a loose routine; not because we’ve extrapolated some Bible verse to support the way we want to do things, but because routine answers the question, “What’s next?” It helps us to live life purposefully. Our weekdays have a specific flow of schoolwork, chores, and family time each evening. The children know that on Saturday we tackle house projects, and after that we play. And they especially look forward to Sunday, when we worship with our church family.

When we plan, the first choices we make are the ones that we believe God is asking us to make. We will fill our lives, but with what? Many of our choices follow from knowing that God wants us to train up our children in the way that they should go. Since that isn’t something that happens by chance, we have to deliberately set aside time for this training. One way we set out to obey this command is by including Scripture reading in our plans for the day.

We still sometimes struggle with doing life backward, but we are getting better at rearranging our priorities. It is common for people to look at their commitments, and then try to fit in the things that matter. We’ve learned that the better way is to make sure your commitments are the things that matter. Other good things can be added as room is found to fit them in.

We should not be surprised that we raise up worldly children if we’ve raised them the world’s way—in a causal manner, without care, without forethought. God says in effect, “Go this way!” There is a path, and He will help us to walk it if we will ask Him.

Conclusion
Children are enormous wealth in God’s economy. Children are not a hindrance to living a simple, fulfilling life; they are the stuff of life that matters. To embrace this truth, Christians should rid their lives of the things that hinder them from glorifying God, and they should take thoughtful steps to choose just those things that help them to reach that goal. Sometimes we find Biblical precedent that is obvious, and sometimes we ask for wisdom as we apply His Word. In each case, though, it is important that we not just think, but think biblically. And when we think biblically, we find that the only fitting conclusion is to simplify, in order that God might be glorified.

(editing by Rick Saenz)

I’m not sure why I’m bringing this up now. I think it’s one of those things that’s only funny once a lot of time has passed. Anyway, I forgot to include an important detail when I wrote my birth story last year. I skipped the part about when we arrived at the Labor and Delivery floor in the hospital.

So the elevator doors open (there was no way I was taking the stairs), and Greg and I step into the corridor. It’s quiet except for my labored breathing. We look around and spot the nurse’s station. Except for one person, there’s nobody in sight.

That one person was a 20-something-old **BOY** lounging lazily on a tipped back chair. (Why is my life so difficult?) I have nothing in particular against the Y-generation, or whatever it is that they’re called now. I just knew he was probably listening to rap music on his iPod too.

I grabbed Greg and told him like it was, “That boy is NOT going to be my nurse.” Greg understood my statement as I meant it: a direct demand that he needed to ensure. Here I was about two hours away from giving birth, and I’m surrounded by the XY species. I was even delivering another male, and it was just so…wrong.

Now, lots of women like to have their husband as their labor coach, and that’s great. My husband—God bless him—has….other strengths. As Greg so astutely observed, “Honey, I think it’s just a woman thing.” He tries, but there might something in here of my unwillingness to accept the fact that he understands anything of what’s going on at the moment.

It seems that “the boy” at the nurse’s station was an EMT in training and needed to witness a few births. Turns out he had to wait for someone with perfect Bradley technique or an epidural, as me and the screaming lady before me just weren’t in the mood.

There aren’t any men planning to attend the next birth. Well, I should say that Greg plans to be there, but he understands what to do when an irritated cat with sharp nails is curled up in a corner.

My husband returned from a trip this week with a great story. There was a woman who was working on her roof in the middle of the day wearing trousers. She attends a church that prohibits women from wearing such things (Old Order Mennonite is my best guess), but she thought that pants were best suited for the task. Her husband was sick in bed, and it was up to her to mend the roof.

Well, two menfolk from the church go riding by and spy the woman on the roof in her trousers. The men promptly report her to the church leadership for discipline for her immodesty. The wise leadership absolved the woman, and in a beautiful display of wisdom, put the two men under discipline for not helping the poor woman while her husband lay sick.

I love this story because it perfectly illustrates our tendency to strain gnats and miss the greater principle.

I tend to avoid many women’s topics because they mostly deduce to “choking on gnats” and result in women jumping on bandwagons they’d do best to avoid. That’s not to say that we should never talk about these things, just that they always ought to be done in a spirit of humility and awareness for the greater principle.

An unfortunate example I have personal experience with is the breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding discussion. Research and God’s design tell us that breastfeeding is far superior to formula. What they don’t always tell us is why some women do not have enough to nourish their babies. This doesn’t prevent some miscellaneous acquaintance from informing a young, hormonal mother about the superiority of breastmilk all the while the young mother is feeding her child some Enfamil. The poor young mother has already tried fenugreek, blessed thistle, Mother’s Milk tea by the gallon, hospital grade pumping around the clock, prescription Reglan, TSH and prolactin blood draws, SNS systems, and importing domperidone from across the border. Times five.

And so, the woman on the breastfeeding soapbox misses the greater principle of loving her neighbor while she concentrates on the fact that breastmilk really is best. (It is!) The young woman, in wisdom, feeds her child the inferior thing, as she knows that the greater thing is to make sure her baby has nourishment, even if it is painfully not her own. Oftentimes, the one being chastised isn’t unaware of the information, and in this case, she is actually more informed than her informer.

I hardly ever mention it anymore, because it seems that whomever I’m talking to is convinced that I’m just not “doing it right.” The implication is that if I loved my child, I’d get to the bottom of it.

It ought not to be this way. Motherhood is not a competition but a calling. We are too needful of one another to be so short-suffering. Sometimes we concentrate on small things and miss the greater thing; sometimes we think a perfect method is a good substitute for genuine love. In the end, older mothers will tell you that their grown, married sons who are serving the Lord didn’t much care that they were bottle-fed.

Since this entry is supposed to be about epidurals, though, allow me a paragraph or two on the subject. If I haven’t been too obscure, everything I’ve written was with the subject of epidurals in mind. To say that I’ve spent some thought on it would be an understatement. With that in mind, I’ll finally say a few sentences about why I’m not planning one this next time.

The facts on epidurals are that they are usually safe, except when they’re not. Natural childbirth advocates have safety on their side in normal circumstances. Yet, there are many reasons women choose to introduce that risk, and not all of those reasons are selfish or uneducated. For example, an epidural is the better choice when facing maternal exhaustion or something like Cephalopelvic Disproportion (CPD), which is when the baby’s head cannot or doesn’t engage the mother’s pelvis. It is often better to opt for the epidural than to venture the riskier C-section procedure.

I had an “ah-ha” moment when I read this in Dr. Grantly Dick-Read’s Childbirth Without Fear, “…it has been easier to utilize the pain-relieving discoveries of science than to investigate its complicated causes.” His tome is difficult reading, but it is the tool (science-based education) I need to face the next birth. He emphasizes the importance the mind has on birthing. I wish I could review it here, but I’m afraid I couldn’t do it justice.

I’m glad that epidurals are an option, but they essentially become the only option when obstetricians and the greater medical community do not emphasize education, doulas, better birthing options like water, and simple food, juice, and honey for long labors. We’re hoping to avoid many of these pain triggers with our plan for a homebirth this next time. It’s the right choice for us this time, but I don’t assume it is for all low-risk women.