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.

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…

"We endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the Gospel of Christ." ~ 1 Corinthians 9:12

Jesus, help me remember to hope not in my will, but in Yours. You do not withhold any good thing from Your children, but simultaneously You inform us that we will suffer for Christ and for Your glory. Not to punish us or humiliate us, but to make us the best image of ourselves: more like You. Help me to remember to set aside my worries (most of them trivial) about the future, the stress, and the unknowns, and help me to more willingly say, "Here I am, Lord! Send me!"

"And hope does not put us to shame, because God's Love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." ~ Romans 5:5

I feel like the world like to tell people that hope is foolish and whimsical and childish. But You know better, Jesus. True hope -- hope in You -- cannot be extinguished. Because it's real. Because it can be backed up. The Holy Spirit has been given to me and all who believe. I've been drenched in the love of Christ. And thus all HOPE is not lost. My heart can continue to dream and flourish, delighting itself in the treasures and challenges that may lie ahead from my King.

"But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart." ~ Luke 2:19

I love this simple verse. I imagine Mary is just a few hours postpartum (and probably a little ticked off that she's had to entertain shepherds when she's exhausted). This is one of the grandest scenes recorded in the Bible -- the birth of Christ! The time is monumental and everyone is talking about it. But Mary is quiet. She has been incredibly faithful, in the face of losing her husband and her reputation, maybe even her life, and now that the angel's promise has been fulfilled, she can ponder. It feels good to know that Mary was a ponderer. Because I am a ponderer. This verse tells me that God made women ponderers on purpose, and that I can be comfortable in this part of my design.

"What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops." ~ Matthew 10:27

This verse makes me want to be a missionary.

"God is waiting to be put to the test by His people in prayer. He delights in being put to the test on His promises. It is His highest pleasure to answer prayer, to prove the reliability of His promises." ~ E.M. Bounds

A feel-good quote I have written in my Bible. A good reminder. So often I fret about things, the large, but more often the (eternally) small. I could be praying about all those things instead of worrying about them, allowing my Lord His highest pleasure...making His promises come true. I'm reminded of another quote by Luther: "Pray, and let God worry."

A Change of Heart, A Change of Attitude: Instead of saying "Wow, this is really difficult so God must not want me here," say "Wow! This must be really important, because look how much Satan is doing to stop me."

This is EXACTLY what I need to tell myself every day (really every hour) when I FREAK OUT about becoming a nurse and a lobbyist at the same time and not knowing how to do either job well! But that is also how I know God wants me exactly where I am -- He uses the weak to lead the strong, and the foolish to shame the wise (1 Cor 1).

"By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life." ~ Psalm 42:8

A lyrical reminder of His everlasting presence.

"Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say 'Here I am.'" ~ Isaiah 58:9

I should tatoo this on my palm. Seriously -- I need to know this always. Isn't His goodness, gentleness, and steadfastness unbelievable? Who else can be so constant but our God?

"I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, 'Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart.' Then my spirit made a diligent search: "Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has His steadfast love forever ceased? Are His promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His compassion?' Then I said, 'I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.' I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old." ~ Psalm 77:5-11

I will remember the deeds of the Lord. I will remember when He transformed my relationship with my mother, as He continues to do daily. I will remember when He saved me from my unhealthy relationship with my ex-boyfriend...the saving was excruciatingly painful, but it was necessary and I am better for it. I will remember when He revealed to me my calling to midwifery, after years of not knowing who I was to become. I will remember now that He is faithful when I am faithless. That His mercies are new every morning. That nothing is impossible for God. That if the King of the Heavens is with me, who can be against me? That when my circumstances feel more unsure and wobbly than ever, it is His righteous right hand that upholds me. He makes me remember my song in the night.