Delivering Children

I have physically delivered three children. There is a lot of preparation, anticipation and excitement prior to labor and delivery, and then there is a lot of waiting. But suddenly one day it is time for that baby to arrive. All the emotions intensify until pain takes over. Carol Burnett once described the pain of childbirth as taking your bottom lip and pulling it up over the top of your head. But just when you think you can not stand it anymore, delivery time arrives and with a wrenching, ripping moment your child is removed from your body. Mixed with joy and relief there is grief; grief that your body is not the cocoon anymore. Your child is now able to survive outside your body.

There are many “deliveries” for a mother. Oh, none are so dramatic or physically painful as the first, but they are deliveries none-the-less. For one of the roles of parenting is to prepare the child for independence; survival apart from the parents. So deliveries are a part of the process. Each developmental stage is a delivery to newness. All are emotionally thrilling yet also painful as that child relies less and less on you for nourishment and support (those toddler words, “I do it I-self!”)

I have delivered all three of my children through high-school and on to college. Exciting moments yet also painful. I have also delivered all three into marriage. The indescribable emotion of watching my children’s faces as the passionately gaze at their spouses caused emotional waves of motherhood to crash on my mind and heart. All three of these children and their spouses (and one grandson) have been delivered to colleges and jobs in three different states. I now have an “empty nest” and I am having to redefine the role that I have known as “mother.”

Mixed in with these personal experiences is also the “delivery” of camp ministry. This past spring God helped me see my last year of service here as a labor and delivery process. When I walk around camp I identify physical ways that I have nurtured life in this place. There are many notes and cards from staff and campers that tell me that there are lives I helped nurture (they call me “Boss Mom” for a reason). And I am sure there are myriad of things I know nothing about. These last few months of excitement, preparation, and anticipation have shifted as the reality of my leaving brings some overwhelming and painful moments. Yet I know it is time and that it must happen. For this “infant” (i.e., camp ministry) is ready for new life, new independence, first steps, new people, and fresh nourishment—independent from me. And as a mother it is hard to let go. Will others love and care for this baby as much as I have? At times it does feel like a wrenching, ripping emotional separation from me.

So while I am currently redefining “mother” in the physical and emotional sense with my familial empty nest, I also have to let go of the “boss mom” title and redefine who I am in the pastoral empty nest. My nest seems to echo with silence.

But for both of these roles there is also great joy and knowledge that my children (family and camp) are not left alone, for I have delivered them into the loving hands of the Father who has grand plans and adventures for them! While I have given much of my nurture, love, discipline, and joy to them, they were never mine to begin with. The earthly children of my flesh and the camp children of my heart have always belonged to God. And He has assured me that I have mothered faithfully, lovingly, prayerfully, and well. And He has assured me that while this final act of delivery will be painful, there will be the first breaths of new life, and the new hands of those who will give care and nourishment are blessed and empowered by God Himself!

So I continue to labor, to deliver, to breath. God is faithful.

“From the LORD comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.” Ps 3:8