Just two days ago, I gave birth to my third little one. My third boy.
It was a phenomenal experience, as birth often is. I mean, aside from the reality of a whole other person making their way from inside your body to outside being its own impressive thing, there’s also so much that I feel God longs to teach us in the process of bringing new life into the world. I was certainly not the exception this week.
God has a lot He wants to teach me about trust and patience. And there’s not much else that requires more of our trust and patience in Him than carrying and delivering a baby.
With my pregnancies, I always have intense prodromal labor in the last six-ish weeks. That means that I have frequent, intense contractions that look like real labor, both in my body and on the monitors. However, these contractions are ineffective in the way that they don’t actually signal labor. But even with it being my third baby, I still struggled to know if it wasn’t the real thing. And as this went on, I began to doubt myself and my body, if I would know when my baby was going to come. I would pray, “Lord, please give me wisdom to know when this baby will be born.” And He would whisper quietly to my heart, “Trust in the process. Trust that I made your body to do exactly what I willed for it.” And the night before he was born, God gave me the peace of knowing that it was not going to be much longer. I had to trust in the process of pregnancy. I had to trust that God made my body perfectly and uniquely, and I needed to trust Him.
The next morning, when labor started, I wasn’t really trusting. I fully believed that it was another false labor spell and that in a couple hours I would be contraction free and on my way to my baby shower (perfect timing, right?). After two and a half hours, my husband ignored my pleas to wait and went and called our midwife. She arrived not too long later and confirmed that yes, I was indeed progressing.
Time went on though, and I wasn’t anymore. I stalled, my contractions were miles apart, and I was convinced that this was all going to stop again. My doula told me often to believe in my body and how God made it, my husband comforted me and loved on me, and God reminded me of the same conversation again: “trust in the process.”
Suddenly, things moved quickly. And before I knew it, our little guy was about to make his arrival. In those moments of fear, right in those final moments, I was reminded again of the same thing. As I trusted and patiently waited through contractions and pain, my sweet little boy made his way into the world.
And now, I wait and trust again. I wait to see if he will sleep, I trust my body to provide nourishment for him, even if it’s taking longer than I expected, and I wait and trust on God’s leading to let me know if or when I need to do things differently, for mine or my baby’s sake.
Trust in the process.
It’s hard though. Trusting in a natural process, like birth, is challenging enough, but trusting in the process of God is a whole other thing. Because even though we know He is for us, and for our good, we get awfully caught up in our own way and what we want. And sometimes, as we are fighting so hard for what we think is right, what we think should be happening, God is whispering to us: “Hush, beloved. Trust in the process. Trust in me.”
I’m not really any good at it, definitely not on my own. But I am thankful for a faithful God who continues to show me the way, over and over. He is leading me to trust in Him, in this process of waiting and growing, and to ultimately become more like Him.
Trust in the process, mommas. Whether it’s motherhood, marriage, health, finances, whatever it is. Trust in His process. I promise it’s good.
