God is in the Midst of Her...

It was inexplicable and immediate. For so long, midwifery had been *it*, the thing I cared most about in this world, my love for Jesus incarnated. I tattooed “sage femme” under my breast, for crying out loud! In my soul, I WAS a midwife! And perhaps I still am; I do still and will always claim “wise woman;” I believe that is the Lord’s design. But being a midwife is no longer my greatest earthly identity. For almost 3 years I was first God’s child and Christ’s beloved, and secondly, I was a midwife. But today as I write this, I am first God’s child and Christ’s beloved, and secondly I am the woman who loves Jeremiah McWilliams.

This started playing out in my heart in July (probably about the time I first started writing this “Gestating Halley” series – it’s taken me this long to sort it all out). As of early July I had been dating Jeremiah for less than 3 months. (Heck, I’d KNOWN him for less than 3 months, period). It was quick. We hadn’t told each other yet that we were in love, but it happened soon after. I would sit in my mother’s kitchen in St. Louis and think out loud about my bewilderment. I told her numerous times I just couldn’t understand why working as a midwife’s apprentice wasn’t giving me the ultimate joy and fulfillment I expected. I also told her that for the life of me, I couldn’t “turn down” my desire to be with Jeremiah; I could not lessen it, I could not make it equivalent to my desire to attend births, and I could not mesh it nicely on the side. My desire to be with Jeremiah was greater, and it would not be squelched. My wonderfully intuitive mother listened to my ramblings with patience for several sessions. Then one day at the lunch table, she looked up at me and spoke truth that is still resonating: “You know, Halley, sometimes we have a hole in our hearts that we cannot fill, and until we are able to fill it with what it was meant for, we fill it with something else.” Suddenly, Clarity – that elusive but oh-so-gratifying angel – paid me a visit. “Are you saying that I had a Jeremiah-shaped hole in my heart that I was filling with midwifery?” I replied, flabbergasted. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

And so I told Julia in early August that I had to stop apprenticing with her for the time being, because I couldn't keep up with the crazy lifestyle I had assumed, and because I needed to figure a lot of stuff out. She was incredibly gracious and understanding, for which I am eternally grateful. It’s now mid-October and I’m still mulling that conversation with my mother over in my mind. It was so simple; it was so freeing; it was so true! It made a lot of sense then, and it makes even more sense now. I did not become a horrible, selfish person over the summer (as I wondered when I found myself hoping that no babies would be born on the precious nights I got to be with the man who understands me so easily and loves me so well). I do still have the willingness and the earnest desire to exhaust myself, inconvenience myself, and sacrifice myself for that which is dearest to my heart. But my deep love for birth is now in 3rd place, and at present, it’s a distant 3rd place. If you have been reading this entire story, I do not have to tell you that my passion for birth and mothering runs as deep as the Atlantic. And yet my love for Jeremiah has mightily overpowered it – there is no contest. So then, how deep and high and sure and true is my love for Jeremiah! It’s INCREDIBLE if you stop and think about it! :)

I want to be on-call for Jeremiah. I want to answer his 3am phone calls. I want to spend national holidays with him. I want a life with him! And I am more than willing – I am eager – to amend my dreams in order to blend them with his. He is my greatest dream, after all, and I will exhaust, inconvenience, and sacrifice myself for him. Jeremiah loves my dreams; he wants to see them all come true – it is for this reason I can securely put them in his hands. Jeremiah – the most amazing, selfless, incredible man in the whole world – wants to amend his own dreams in order to blend them with mine. We cherish each other’s hearts. We want to be together, and we are finding our way.

I feel certain in writing this that there will be at least one reader who will disapprove or even condemn me for this, perhaps in person, but more likely outside of my presence. They will say that I cannot let a man “take over” my dream of becoming a midwife, that I cannot change my plans “just because” I now have a man in my life. This perspective makes me sad. It is so misled, so ruthless, and so self-seeking. Recently I heard biblical love defined as “self-forgetfulness.” This term sums up well how I have come to feel about how my individual dreams and ambitions fit into a relationship. I can assuredly set my dreams – and therefore myself – gently to the side, forgetting my heart to an extent, because Jeremiah isn’t going to forget my heart. To the contrary, he loves my heart with great passion and tenderness, just as I love his. I will forget my dreams if I can see his fulfilled. I believe this is love. And as one, we kneel before the Cross with every longing of our hearts, and trust our Savior to knit us closer together and bring our hopes to fruition as He deems fit.

I also feel certain in writing this that most of you are my dear, dear friends, and want me to be happy and free and alive and well. (And I am! More than ever before in my life, I am!) I know you are the ones who, even if you hadn’t read this explanation of my heart’s overhauling, would still stand by me whether I was a midwife or not. Thank you for your kindness and unconditional friendship…makes me tear up to think of it! It is because I have come to believe that you love me for who I AM, and not for what I DO, that I can say that I am no longer going to be the least bit sheepish or apologetic about loving Jeremiah more than I love midwifery! I am going to REJOICE! REJOICE in the Lord always, I will say it again, REJOICE! (Philippians 4:4). Friends, I have found him whom my soul loves! (Song of Songs 3:4).

If I was going to rewrite Eric Church’s song “Love Your Love the Most” to reflect how I feel about Jeremiah in relation to how I feel about midwifery, it would go something like this:

“Yes I love tiny babies
And pregnant bellies too
I love a good sweet birth story, it rocks on Friday nights.
Hell yes I love my dreams, but I want you to know
Honey I love your love the most.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlCGnGLlu64

And, so we are at the end of my gestation. I have been born as Jeremiah's love, and it feels amazing to breathe outside the womb. I might tell you I was post-dates, but God would tell you this birth happened exactly when He ordained, just as my birth as a Christian happened, and just as my births as a midwife, a mother, a grandmother, etc will happen, if and when God wills. But for now, I am quite content and ridiculously happy being madly in love with Jeremiah McWilliams. I don't have to have all the rest worked out -- after all, I'm just a newborn ;)

Looking back on the first half of this calendar year, I can say that both nursing and lobbying were better and worse than I thought they would be. I suppose they both surprised me. Let’s start with lobbying. My desire to take over for Mary & Debbie at the Capital had everything to do with my sense of duty to my midwifery sisters and the women of Missouri, and nothing to do with caring what Tony Messenger tweeted about, or why Senator Crowell insisted on reading “The Shack” when he was filibustering. It’s not that those things don’t matter; it’s just that they weren’t interesting to me. I cared about the ins and outs of daily life at the Capital in a narrow, peripheral way – if the gossip it had anything to do with midwifery, I forced myself to care about it, and if not, I would just think about how many more hours I had to stay there and be fake before I got to go home.

I thank God for Sarah – the brains of our operation, and the majority of the manpower. She very generously offered to help me at the Capital, and yet it ended up being me helping her. While I found most of Missouri politics annoying, she found it invigorating. She was and is, always, amazing. I found that going back to that place day after day, week after week to be draining, intimidating, and often extremely boring. However, being at the Capital was better than I expected in some ways too: I was hardly ever alone (which makes SUCH a difference at that place!), when I was alone I found that I generally knew what to do (or could text someone who would tell me what to do) and towards the end I actually got interested in some of the bills unrelated to midwifery. The best part was that in the end I felt a great sense of pride for the part I played to ensure that midwifery remained legal…and, of course, being at the Capital meant I wasn’t at the hospital! :)

Now for the surprise of being an RN, being a staff nurse. I suppose I thought it would be easy – boy, was I wrong. It’s so physically exhausting, and frequently mentally unsettling. It definitely demands more of me than I expected. I pray every morning as I go into the hospital that God would let me (and my patients) survive from 7A to 7P. I learn something new every day, and I’m thankful for that. Granted, it’s things like “You don’t need an order to draw from a central line, only a PICC line,” or the difference between expressive, receptive, and global aphasia. Good things to know, and interesting things too, but nothing that makes me say “WOW!!! I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow!” It seems like a rip-off that my work as a staff nurse would be SO draining, but not SO rewarding. If it’s going to deplete me, I sure wish I felt like it was all worth it…you know? I do love being able to sign my name “Halley Watson, RN.” I take a lot of pride in having those letters behind my name, and I know that my work is valuable. Nursing can never be completely swallowed by technology….a machine cannot convey empathy, a machine cannot listen to someone’s story, a machine cannot keep someone’s soul alive. So, I do feel important as an RN. But I also feel quite underappreciated. I’m constantly overloaded to the point that I cannot convey empathy, I cannot listen to stories, and I can’t keep souls alive, just bodies – all I have time for passing meds and doing brief assessments. It’s good time management, sure, taking care of five patients at once, but it’s not healing. I didn’t sign on for this.

This past March I heard back from Newlife, about six weeks after submitting my application. I took a deep breath before I opened the email attachment, sure that my life was about to change forever when I’d read the words, “Congratulations! You’ve been selected to the 2011 class of Newlife International Midwifery School!” But that’s not what happened. Instead of a congratulatory letter, it was a shocking but very sweet rejection letter. It was probably the kindest rejection I’ll ever receive in my lifetime. I didn’t believe it. I was frozen; time was frozen. It could not be.

God had been telling me, “Apply for Newlife, apply for Newlife” for over two years! Since when does God tell people to be missionaries and turn their entire lives upside down, and then prevent them from going where He calls them to go?!? What in the world was I supposed to do now?!? I was angry with God; furious, even. I felt that He had deceived me. Perhaps that sounds blasphemous, but it’s true. Thankfully, my anger didn’t last too long, at least not the acute anger I couldn’t ignore. An unexplainable peace came to me within a few days, especially after sharing my sad news with some sisters in Christ. “It must be a God thing…that’s the only way to explain it,” my aunt said to me. “And He has a reason.”

My aunt was right. My reason came along just a couple weeks after our conversation. Jeremiah came along (via my aunt, funnily enough) – and he is the reason I was not supposed to go to the Philippines. I knew within our first few meetings that he was a gift from God…an incredible gift that God had been preparing for me for a long time…and a gift I wanted to hold onto. As you read a few entries ago, my romance with Jeremiah ignited immediately and still continues to get sweeter by the day. He is the love of my life, my other half, and I am so, so thankful that I am living in Missouri and not in Asia. God’s plan, as always, was far better than my own.

April was a big month for me. I met JMac and started falling head over heels, and I also started exploring other paths toward midwifery, now that Newlife was a no-go. I sent out an email to my midwifery friends about possibilities in St. Louis, and it was suggested to me that I contact Julia (name changed) to inquire about an apprenticeship. I emailed Julia, she got back to me, we chatted on the phone, and she invited me to meet with her about the terms. That meeting was a weekday evening at the end of May. I was very, very, very nervous about it. I felt like my whole future was hanging on that meeting. I invested everything in it.

The meeting was so characteristically Julia – laidback and comfortable. I was dressed up; she was in sweatpants. I expected her to sort of interview me for such an honorable and highly-sought position as a midwifery apprenticeship, but she really didn’t. She told me she knew I had “put in my time” at the Capital and done my homework, and she said she thought I deserved a chance at the real thing. I was ecstatic!!! I left her house on Cloud 9 that night. We decided that we would start on a trial period before hammering down any terms, partly because I lived in Columbia and would only be able to work with her 3 days a week until I could move to St. Louis.

Immediately I started looking for part-time work in St. Louis. Julia understood that I would need to work on the side; as a beginner-level apprentice, she would be compensating me with an education and not an income. And so I spent most of June looking for nursing work in St. Louis, and coming up empty-handed. Everyone wanted me to have a full year of experience to be considered for part-time work. It was reasonable, but frustrating. Despite not being able to move to St. Louis, at the end of June I started working with Julia 3 days a week as we had discussed, Wednesdays through Fridays. Just a couple days into our time together, I got to attend a birth with her. It was awesome (albeit more exciting than we planned on!) and I felt like I was back in the saddle again.

Within a few weeks, the wear and tear of commuting between two cities every three days started to get to me. This was my life: work 12hr shifts on Saturday and Sunday, breathe (and pack) on Monday, work a 12hr shift on Tuesday, drive to St. Louis Tuesday night, work with Julia (and be on-call) Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then drive back to Columbia on Friday night to repeat the cycle. Sounds insane, right? It was. It may not have been so draining if my time in St. Louis wasn’t also my time to be with Jeremiah. But that’s how it was – we live in different cities, so when we could be together, we stretched our dates until 2am, sometimes even 3am. It was and is a complete joy to spend my STL nights with the man I love – I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, I started hoping on a daily basis that no one would go into labor because I wanted to spend the little time I had in STL with JMac, not at a birth. And I started feeling very guilty about that.

What’s wrong with me? I’d wonder. Being a midwife’s apprentice is what I’ve been dreaming about for the past three years! This is my purpose and the deepest desire of my heart! I felt terrible about my inner turmoil. I felt like I was betraying Julia and her clients by not being excited about midwifery and birth 24/7. What *was* going on inside me? Had my passion for woman-empowering, baby-honoring birth faded? Not in the least. Was I drained, emotionally and physically, and therefore just didn’t have the energy to be “on” all the time? Certainly, that was definitely a part of it, a big part of it actually. Did I hate being on-call? Yes, I did, I’ll say it. Is that selfish? Maybe…but it’s honest. (You never realize how much you value being able to turn off your cell phone or go on a weekend road trip until you can’t do it).

But it was more than exhaustion and annoyance with the on-call life. Because for almost 3 years prior, I would have gladly sold my spleen for the chance to miss sleep, answer 3am phone calls, and do postpartum visits on national holidays. And for nearly 3 years I HAD exhausted myself running back and forth between nursing school and the Capital…I HAD paid a lot of money to attend a Midwifery Today conference in Philadelphia over my last-ever Spring Break…I HAD stayed up until 3am reading about births I wished I was attending…I HAD taken abuse from countless family members and friends for my unorthodox passions. It was definitely more than the exhaustion and the inconvenience – it was that quite suddenly and without my permission, midwifery ceased to be the deepest desire of my heart. Love took over.

Birth. But not the birth I expected.

As 2008 began, I saw "The Business of Being Born" with my mom and my roommate Katie (and instantly turned two skeptics into staunch supporters). I can't say I learned anything new when I watched that movie (I had spent the past year researching maternity care!), but it did shake me up. It dawned on me that birth was not just something that affected ME as a career path, but something that would profoundly affect all the women I know and love -- most of whom live in Missouri, where midwifery was at the time a felony. In early February I discovered Friends of MO Midwives, our statewide advocacy organization. I decided quickly that I had to do my part to contribute to the legalization of midwifery in my home state. I made a batch of brownies and drove to Jefferson City for "Cookie Day." The Capitol loomed before me, and somehow it looked even bigger than it did on my 4th grade field trip. My heart pounding within me, I set foot into senators' and representatives' offices, gave them my brownies with a note "From an aspiring midwife" stapled to the bag, and asked to speak to them about the matter closest to my heart. I did not feel like a worthy authority at all, but I did know that doctors should not be slicing women's vaginas open without their permission or awareness. I knew that mothers -- not health care providers -- know what is best for their bodies and their babies. I told the elected officials what I knew and what I wanted. Although I know realize that some of the people who "listened" were just being politicians, it was enough to make me want to come back.

And I did come back. I came to the Capitol every Wednesday for the rest of the 2008 legislative session, and a couple times a week at the end. It worked out nicely because I didn't have any classes or clinicals on Wednesdays. However, at a crisis point towards the end of session, I called my nursing instructor the morning of our Thursday clinical and told her it was more important for me to be at the Capitol lobbying than for me to attend my mental health clinical. Part of me can't believe I had the gall to do that, but what's even more amazing is that my instructor agreed with me! Now that I think about it, making that phone call was an outward declaration of what I had been feeling about nursing school all along: indifference. I just didn't care about it very much. (I cared about doing well, but that had more to do with my disease of over-achievement than it did with a passion for nursing). What I did care about was justice, and safety, and excellent care for women and babies, and I knew that I would need a voice louder than an RN's to make a difference.

The 2008 legislative session ended in mid-May. It came down to the wire: the Senate waited until the afternoon of the last day of session to pass our licensure bill, and the House was not able to get it passed before the solemn hour of 6pm tolled. I cannot and will not speak of the politics involved, but it was messy and ugly. I prayed and prayed and prayed that our bill would be passed and midwifery would be legalized. But 6pm came, and midwives remained felons. I was numb. I was heartbroken. I couldn’t imagine how my friends felt, who had already spent four years at the Capitol trying to legalize midwifery, and had already tasted such bitter disappointment four times over. It was so unjust. But we still had a small glimmer of hope: at the end of the 2007 legislative session, a bill legalizing certified professional midwives (or someone holding “tocological certification”) was passed. When the state medical organizations realized what had happened, they challenged the law in court. We hired an attorney and fought back. Those big wigs assumed we were just a bunch of silly housewives, but they were about to learn we were a force to be reckoned with. When the 2008 session ended, the Missouri Supreme Court still had not ruled on the tocology law. And so we continued to wait.

I was cruising on the Mediterranean Sea with my mother when it happened. Knowing the Supreme Court was going to announce their decision any time, we (well, she, honestly) shelled out the cash so we could check our email on the cruise ship. It was about 3am in Missouri on June 25th when I logged in and saw the email that dumbfounded me and brought tears to my eyes: “MISSOURI WINS!!!” It couldn’t be! But it WAS! The Missouri Supreme Court had sensibly determined that the Missouri State Medical Association (MSMA) and the other physician groups didn’t have standing to sue, so they threw out the case, thereby making the tocology law immediately effective and making midwives instantly LEGAL!!! After half a century of Missouri women not having legal midwives, and Missouri midwives running from the law, justice was served. My mother and I spent the rest of our delightful European vacation on Cloud 9, and I knew I would not be returning to the same Missouri I had left.

I returned to a Missouri where midwives were legal, to a Missouri where my sisters and daughters could have homebirths with legal midwives, and a Missouri where I myself could BE a legal midwife. It was an awesome feeling. I do not have sufficient words to describe how huge that was, how huge that is, how huge that will always be. I started my final semester of nursing school, and I could no longer deny that my graduation from college was around the corner. Full-blown adulthood was screaming toward me like a bullet train, and every day went faster than the one which preceded it. Ever since I had first become interested in midwifery – two years before this time – I had thought about it in a future context. When I’m done with nursing school, then I will pursue midwifery. Or, when I’ve graduated college, then I can start midwifery school. All of a sudden, I could think about midwifery in a PRESENT context: the time has come! It’s here, it’s now! If I’m honest with myself, it was just as nerve-wracking as it was exciting.

I decided about this time that I was going to stop battling God over whether or not I should go to Newlife/the Philippines, and just take the cosmic hint, and apply. (I’m a little slow on the pick-up sometimes). Newlife started in the fall, like all schools do, so I knew I would have an awkward eight-month chunk between graduation and when my “real life” would begin. I quickly decided that I would get some “silly nursing job” to bridge the gap and save money for tuition. I applied at University Hospital here in Columbia, where I had done the majority of my clinicals. My classmates were all flustered about applying to ten different hospitals and getting a jump on things on September 1st. Myself, I applied for two University jobs in mid-October, roughly two months before graduation. I had two interviews, one with 5 West and one with Labor & Delivery (I’ve thought soooo many times, Maybe I could *change* L&D, maybe I could make it a whole different world all by myself…). But I always wake up from that fantasy pretty quickly. Plus they wanted me to work nights, which I could not do because I had already committed myself to lobbying at the Capital in the 2009 session at least two days a week. (Plus I have a firmly ingrained circadian rhythm).

I knew I had to take a “silly nursing job” that wouldn’t (a) get me fired, or (b) make me go home crying every night. I had already done my senior practicum on 5 West, so I knew the people and the protocols. It made for an easy transition. The patient population on 5 West comprised all things traumatic: car accidents, motorcycle accidents, gunshot wounds, knife wounds, horseback riding accidents, falls from ladders/balconies, you name it. It also included all things surgery: hernia repairs, gastric bypasses, dialysis accesses, appentdectomies (appendix removal), cholecystectomies (gallbladder removal), and surgical complications (chronic wounds that never heal). Nothing about this excited me; in fact I found it pretty lame. However – I had no ethical problems with trauma/surgery nursing either (at the time -- I do now, wouldn't you know it?), which is a LOT more than I could say for OB nursing!

I got my silly nursing job squared away with as little effort as possible as I poured myself into my Newlife application. I prayed over it. I wrote a book of an answer to each essay question (they said to be thorough!). I had multiple people read it and edit it. I finally submitted it in early February of 2009, right at the deadline. Meanwhile, graduation had come and gone, which was celebratory and awesome, yet surreal and frightening. Christmas had come and gone, and I felt like the happy-go-luckiness of childhood slipped permanently away from me, tossed to the curb with the wilting Christmas tree. I was stricken with fear. What had I been thinking? How could I possibly manage to work as a full-time staff nurse (which I had never done before) AND be a full-time lobbyist (which I had never done before)?? I felt very alone. January 5th came all too quickly, and, seemingly without my permission, my life crossed the threshold into “the real world.”

Part II: Finding Myself...Again. I'm back. Time to discuss what I hardly know how to put into words: the over-hauling of my heart and purpose that has taken place without my permission this summer. Honestly, I'm terrified to pen the words.

[This blog of self-discovery has turned out to be much lengthier than I anticipated, thus I am posting it in three sections. Here is the 1st chunk].

For the past three years, my soul has been aglow with the peace of knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life: become a midwife. Most of my 23 years has been spent not knowing who I am at my core and trying desperately to discover it. But in the fall of 2006, I stumbled upon midwifery. I learned to my horror that millions of women are manipulated, traumatized, wounded, and needlessly cut open every day in our "modern" maternity system. I found out to my great happiness that there is another way, a beautiful, under-appreciated, constantly misunderstood, and sometimes illegal way to have a baby: at home with a midwife, a wise woman, by your side. And I instantly wanted to be a wise woman myself. Conception.

Gestation began as I started to nurture this dream within me. I quickly became engrossed with the study of all things birth. I joined Yahoo groups and email lists. I poured over advocacy websites and read every book I could get my hands on. First it was "Baby Catcher," by Peggy Vincent, a homebirth nurse-midwife's autobiography. I devoured it in 3 days; the initial story was about the first birth Peggy ever witnessed. She was a nursing student at the time, and so I felt a special connection to her from the start. Every birth story was beautiful in a unique way and I wanted more than anything to share in that beauty. The next thing I got my hands on was "Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must be Fixed to Put Women & Children First," by Marsden Wagner. In sharp contrast to "Baby Catcher," "Born in the USA" was an infuriating unveiling of our money-driven bloodbath of a maternity system. "Baby Catcher" warmed my heart and "Born in the USA" made my blood boil. I started nursing school in January of 2007 and I continued to study midwifery ravenously on the side.

During the summer of 2007 I witnessed a birth for the first time. I was working as a camp nurse at a Young Life camp in northern Georgia, and the secretary at the camp arranged for me to meet a friend of hers who happened to be a midwife. Charlotte* invited me over to eat cantelope and discuss all things birth. She told me she had three ladies due in July, and did I want to come to a birth if it was alright with the families? I was ecstatic!!! My dream come true!!! Charlotte called me a week or so later to let me know that one of her clients had agreed, and that she would call me as soon as she went into labor! It was 3AM July 20th when I got the call. We sped off into the Georgia mountains and my heart was racing with anticipation. Grace* labored beautifully with her husband at her side. The lights were low, the house was quiet, the children were sleeping. A sweet baby girl was born at 5:05AM, when she was ready, and she slipped gently from her mother's body into waiting hands on the bed she was made on. No one ever took that baby from her mother. There was no need. I was a silent observer and I took it all in with awe. I was so humbled. So overcome. So enchanted. I knew I would never be the same.

A couple months later I completed my OB rotation in nursing school. The contrast between home and hospital birth was stark and cruel. The second birth I ever saw was a cesarean section. I'll never forget seeing that woman's uterus sitting on top of her abdomen, silverly blue and sickly looking, with the fallopian tubes hanging off like chicken legs on either side. It was so violent, so taboo, and yet all too real. It will be reality for 31% of all the women who give birth in the US today. I'll never forget in OB lecture when we were learning about episiotomies (a surgical cut into the vaginal tissue toward the anus, done to enlarge the vaginal opening for delivery). Our instructor (a mother of 4) talked about episiotomies as if they were no big deal, mundane even. I raised my hand and tersely asked why informed consent was not required for doctors to perform episiotomies (read = surgery) on women. My instructor did not know what to say, and stammered through an answer about how episiotomies are simply part of the labor & delivery process, and a woman consents to a possible episiotomy when she starts receiving care from an obstetrician. (Hmmm I thought, I should keep that in mind if I ever see a cardiologist; I'll be consenting to open heart surgery by walking through the door!).

I should mention here that I started thinking about how and where I would pursue my midwifery education very early on, before my OB rotation, before I witnessed that beautiful homebirth in the Georgia mountains. I have always been a researcher. I have always been a scientist, wanting an answer for every question. (I really don’t know how people lived without the Internet!) I endlessly OBSESSED over what route I would take into midwifery: certified nurse-midwife (CNM), or certified professional midwife (CPM)? I would think to myself, Well, I’m going to be an RN anyways, so it really makes more sense to become a CNM, and it’s more socially acceptable, and it’s legal everywhere…but CNMs practice in hospitals, and pretty much have to do whatever their collaborating physician/hospital says. Two seconds later I would think, Well, then I should be a CPM instead. CPMs attend homebirths, which is what I want to do, and they often have more autonomy. But being a CPM might make me a felon, and the Board of Nursing won’t like me being a RN/CPM! What a quagmire! (OK, maybe I don’t use the word “quagmire” in my thoughts, but you get the picture.)

Eventually I decided that I was going to be a CPM, because homebirth was and is *so* important to me, and I just figured I’d move to a legal state, and the heck with the Board of Nursing. I POURED over CPM schools/distance learning programs/apprenticeship possibilities, but I was enchanted by one of the first I discovered: Newlife International School of Midwifery in Davao City, Philippines. It was everything I was looking for: the mission, the passion for women and babies, the passion for sharing Christ’s love, the clinical experiences and curriculum, the opportunity to learn about a different culture, the chance to stretch myself immensely and grow extravagantly as a professional, as a person, and as a believer. I was in love. Even so, the thought of uprooting my life and moving across the world for TWO YEARS terrified me. I would brush it aside…and the Lord would put it on my heart again…I would brush it aside…and the Lord would put it on my heart again. I did this repeatedly over the course of two years, unable to ever completely dismiss or embrace going to the Philippines. In the midst of my confusion, the action continued…

I feel different. I feel exhausted yet alive, defeated yet hopeful, and unsteady but expectant. Most beautiful of all, I feel more cherished than I ever have. So much has happened and changed in the last three months. In many ways I feel like a different person from who I was when I last posted on May 5th. So much has happened since then, both externally and (more significantly) internally. Part I: Jeremiah.

On April 16th I met the most incredible man. It was a blind date (something of which I have always been cynical), but it was arranged by my aunt, who's judgment I trust thoroughly, and it came at a time I was unusually open to stepping out of my comfort zone. (In the two months preceeding this blind date, I had gone on my first date period since HIGH SCHOOL, plus I had been casually dating someone I met on the INTERNET for a few weeks...somehow I stepped so far out of my little comfort zone I couldn't even see it anymore). "So how bout it?" my aunt said, and I thought to myself exactly this: "What the hell? Why not?" I gave her permission to share my phone number and email address with the selected suitor. Five days later on a Saturday evening, I got a phone call from Jeremiah. (It wouldn't have seemed as long as it did if my aunt hadn't called/texted at least 3 times in the interval to ask if he'd called me yet). Jeremiah seemed friendly and fun and easy to talk to. Our brief conversation basically consisted of..."Oh so you work weekends?" (Yes). "And you live in Columbia, right?" (Right). "Well if we're ever in the same city at the same time, we should meet up." (Will never happen coincidentally, I figured). I quickly decided that I wanted to meet Jeremiah ASAP so that I could know who he was from the get-go, instead of contemplating unrealistic expectations and then potentially being disappointed/disillusioned when we did eventually meet. (Which is exactly what happened with the Internet guy...it was icky). Jeremiah started a friendly email conversation on that Monday, and on my 2nd or 3rd reply I told him I was going to be in St. Louis on April 16th and 17th to see a Cards game with my family, and if he wasn't busy would he want to hang out? (Of course I never had any plans of going to a Cards game with my family during that time span; my sole purpose in driving to STL was to meet him, but I needed a cover story!)

So we met at the Kirkwood Kaldi's on Thursday evening, April 16th. It was natural from the very beginning. I was stunned by how insanely good looking he was (of course I had stalked him on Facebook, but he is all the more attractive in real life). The conversation was easy and fun, and I tried to be a good listener, but it was hard because I was in goo-goo-ga-ga land the whole time. I had a very clear yet intensely magical feeling that I was supposed to meet Jeremiah; that it was a God thing, that it had been orchestrated. Meeting Jeremiah was like meeting an old friend. I knew him before I knew him! It was crazy. Crazy awesome. I was so much on Cloud 9 that I tripped over my own feet twice and would have fallen on my face if he hadn't caught me (which felt wonderful). I happened to order hot wings as an appetizer, which was not a move to impress Jeremiah at all, simply a sensible desicion because hot wings are delicious, but I found out later that earned a point in my favor (too bad the wings also gave me food poisoning!). We talked for about 3 hours before saying goodnight and making plans to tour the A-B Brewery ("How's tomorrow morning work for you?" he said. "Great!" I replied, all the while the butterflies in my stomach were doing back-handsprings with glee). It was chilly so I wore his blazer home, which he had lent me earlier (which also felt wonderful). I gushed to my mom about him when I got home, smiling the whole time.

There were a couple more exciting, expectant weeks of the "I want you to know I'm very interested but I don't want to scare you away" dance. During that time we talked on the phone with increasing frequency and increasing duration (30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 1 1/2 hours...). Jeremiah went to Denver for a journalism conference and I went to Seattle for my cousin's graduation from seminary. My travel to and from Seattle ended up being hellish (something out of a National Lampoon movie as JMac said), but it couldn't have had a sweeter ending: a date with Jeremiah. May 3rd. That was the day he met my parents (and my dog), took me to the Chocolate Bar AND out to dinner AND to a movie AND out for ice cream, and it was the date when we first held hands (which made me melt like butter inside), first did the prolonged hug/snuggle (X-men will really put you in the mood), and yes, when we first kissed! Hands down, it was the best kiss ever. EVER! I knew immediately that I wanted to kiss him many, many more times after that :)

On May 7th we had a 12-hour date, noon to midnight. I loved every second of it and wished it could have gone on longer. On May 11th Jeremiah came to see me in Columbia and at lunch we had the DTR (the "determine the relationship" talk for those of you who may not be fluent in Christianese bizarre slang). He said (in the most irresistable way) "So when do I get to be your boyfriend?", and I said "Now!" YAY!!! That was a little over 3 months ago now, and I have been head over heels happy ever since. Since making it official, JMac and I have gone to Atlanta for a weekend, spent a week at the beach with his whole family (who live in Virgina and therefore I had not met any of them prior to us all vacationing together...a bit nervewracking, but it was wonderful and I adored them!), he's hung out with the Watson clan on multiple occasions, and we've had many, many, many great conversations (deep, painful, enlightening, scary, difficult, sweet, or all of the above!) and many, many, many kisses. Every time I say goodbye to him to return to Columbia is harder than the time before, and every time we reunite it's sweeter and more amazing than the week preceeding. I am madly, madly in love with him and it feels so good to say it and hear it all the time.

He's a long-lost friend I didn't know I was missing. He understands me, which is such a precious and rare thing, as many people don't. He believes in me, he challenges me, he wants me, he loves me. I told him yesterday it's like that Lonestar song...he's that easy, peaceful feeling at the end of a long, long road...he's like coming home. I have thought more than once that no one could really be this happy; that surely couples who seem to be perfect for each other aren't actually, because life just isn't that kind. And it's true; life isn't that kind. But as Jeremiah has reminded me, God is that good. It brings tears to my eyes to think that Jeremiah McWilliams is *MY* boyfriend and that Jeremiah McWilliams loves *ME*...I knew the Lord delights in giving good gifts to His children, but I never imagined He had a gift this good waiting for me.

Stay tuned for the related Part II: Finding Myself...Again.