I have been a nurse for longer than I've done anything else in my life. Graduating in 1986 (no need to do the math) I have worked mainly in pediatrics although my heart has always had a tug towards obstetrics from conception to the completion of the first year of life.
I have seen many amazing and heart stopping things in my nursing career. I have been at the side of a labouring teen ager while I was still a teenager myself, still in nursing school. I have seen the hand of God do mighty acts of healing which have taken my breath away and held the hand of a mother crying while God took their child's breath away.
All the opportunities I have had God has surrounded me with a powerful testimony of His presence and sovereignty in EVERY situation...those explained easily by medical science, and those which left us all asking why.
When we were first married the Lord allowed me the opportunity to work in the Pregnancy Counselling Center of Edmonton. This was an absolute dream come true. I am passionately pro-life which I believe strongly to be pro-woman (but that's another blog). After 2 years there God blessed us with children of our own and I was no longer able to stay at the center.
I use all this to preface that through all my experiences I have never been given the illustration of Psalm 129 ever before like I did last night at work.
I work in a small Urgent/Emergent care center. We had a woman come in who was pregnant, 7 weeks, and bleeding, heavily. In my presence this sweet lady gave birth (and yes I mean GAVE BIRTH) to a perfectly made, purely amazing infant. Not expecting to see more than a blob of tissue, we rinced the tiny form off, breaking away the blood that had clotted this little one, and in that moment I clearly saw an infant. NO I did NOT see a "Product of Conception" or a "FETUS". I saw an infant. Had my eyes not been blurred with tears I would have clearly been able to count fingers and toes. I saw the eyes...and the little nose hole. I saw a baby.
As I drew close to the head of the Mama, tears streaming down her face, I whispered, "your baby has been born and is perfect". Becoming more tearful, she could not bear to see the tiny formed body. She told me she knew the second he was born...and thanked me for not calling it a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion" but knowing she already loved this little babe, having fought for all her life to keep him, realizing it was a labour of love, she gave birth. The moment was sacred.
This little one is the first angel of Christmas. It has renewed my passion not only for the unborn but also for the empty arms that often lose their little ones through miscarriage or abortion.
"You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made". Psalm 139
May the empty arms of every mother who is experiencing loss be filled with the Prince of Peace this Christmas.
