I really wanted to finish that slipcover for the couch when I felt the labour pains coming on. The day Dorathea was born I had already finished upholstering the ottoman and sewing the rainbow carseat cover. My doula said, "Allison, you need to rest!" So I rested myself in anticipation.
4 hours of contractions were easy 1 was tolerable and then the next three hours came on heavy and relentless. By the time I thought about an epidural I was pushing. The sorrow lasted 3 hrs but joy came in the morning.
I held her in pure bliss. A mother's high I looked into her clear wide eyes, and she looked back into mine, unafraid from her struggle to be with us, but with a bruise on her nose to show it hadn't been easy for her either.
I closed my eyes and saw her as a little girl with long legs in a field running and dancing. I was breathless looking at this awesome creature, the vision of her life with us in my mind's eye. I thanked God that I was thought worthy to be her mom, her nurturer. That it could be my calling to teach her about love until she was ready to teach others. I thanked God over and over for the little soul. Mr Wordsworth said;
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
I felt that glory fresh from heaven, fragile and needing (oh wonder, me!) in my arms and praised God for her.
Ted and I looked at our list of names, baffled at how our before favorites were not the name for this child. At the bottom of the list I saw Dorathea. "Yes" said Ted, "That might be right". "Dorathea?" I said, "Is that your name?" Her knowing gaze bloomed into a smile. Not a passing shadow of a smile but a full two minute smile looking into my eyes, and it seemed like, straight into my spirit. This 3 hour old girl knew her name. She could still here God calling it to her.
Later others weren't sure it was a good name, until they met her that is. But I knew she had passed along the message to us of who she was. Dora-thea; Gift of God.
When she was one and two we would call her Sweetie-pie and Baby Peaches and Dorathea-bedea and all number of silly names. Even at one and two she would say, "No no! Not Seetie-pie~!", "Not Baby Eaches!", "Not Bedea!". We would laugh and know that this child knew who she was.
Her knack for knowing God is saying to others astounds me. She will whisper "Your beautiful" to a crushed soul, or "God is giving you flowers", Those eyes still look at you piercing the darkness and revealing God's names for his children. Trailing clouds of Glory she still is.
4 hours of contractions were easy 1 was tolerable and then the next three hours came on heavy and relentless. By the time I thought about an epidural I was pushing. The sorrow lasted 3 hrs but joy came in the morning.
I held her in pure bliss. A mother's high I looked into her clear wide eyes, and she looked back into mine, unafraid from her struggle to be with us, but with a bruise on her nose to show it hadn't been easy for her either.
I closed my eyes and saw her as a little girl with long legs in a field running and dancing. I was breathless looking at this awesome creature, the vision of her life with us in my mind's eye. I thanked God that I was thought worthy to be her mom, her nurturer. That it could be my calling to teach her about love until she was ready to teach others. I thanked God over and over for the little soul. Mr Wordsworth said;
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
I felt that glory fresh from heaven, fragile and needing (oh wonder, me!) in my arms and praised God for her.
Ted and I looked at our list of names, baffled at how our before favorites were not the name for this child. At the bottom of the list I saw Dorathea. "Yes" said Ted, "That might be right". "Dorathea?" I said, "Is that your name?" Her knowing gaze bloomed into a smile. Not a passing shadow of a smile but a full two minute smile looking into my eyes, and it seemed like, straight into my spirit. This 3 hour old girl knew her name. She could still here God calling it to her.
When she was one and two we would call her Sweetie-pie and Baby Peaches and Dorathea-bedea and all number of silly names. Even at one and two she would say, "No no! Not Seetie-pie~!", "Not Baby Eaches!", "Not Bedea!". We would laugh and know that this child knew who she was.
"-this is what the LORD says--he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine." Isaiah 43:1
How beautiful! I love birth stories. And it's so true that God calls even the little babies by name. With our first, we were sure of a girl's name, but bounced around on boys -- sure enough, along came Mary, and we'd known her by name from the start. With the second, we knew the boy's name, but never settled on a girl's; then Alexander was born. I didn't *know* I knew the gender, but it was whispered all the same. Baby #3 -- you'd think I'd have clued in by this time -- we had a girl's name for certain, but a few choices for a boy; for a brief moment, we thought the baby WAS a boy (lots of chaos due to meconium in the water) and puzzled over which "his" name could possibly be -- then we knew, she was a girl, and her name was Cecilia.
ReplyDelete