Surviving New Life

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about birth lately, given that my very first grand baby is on the way. And I’ve been thinking about the miracle and design of the process, how a baby passes from one world to the next. From womb to earth. Water to air. And how those painful minutes in between are the most vital of all. Because as that baby passes through the birth canal, squeezed and pressed through, physiological changes are happening within him, water is forced from his lungs, and he has a compulsion to take his first breath. Without this very process—the squeezing and pressing—he would struggle in this new world. He would find himself ill-equipped. Unprepared. And chances are he would not survive.

Yet, we question the design. Why did God make it so hard? We ask for ease and comfort.

Every farmer knows this truth even in the animals. For if you help a struggling chick out of an egg, you’ve debilitated him for life. He may not survive. Because there is a process, beyond ourselves, that we cannot see. A process designed by our Father to give us the best chance in this new world. There is a greater purpose to the pain. A triumph at the end of the struggle.

I have some new friends. A young couple breaking out of the throes of addiction, trying hard to get on their feet again. He’s been clean for a good 90 days. She has a couple weeks maybe. No more. It’s new for her, this world, and hard. She is overwhelmed by the pressures around her. She has been thrown out of her home. She has nowhere to go. No footing. No grounding. She feels lost and alone and afraid not knowing how to breathe in this new place. All the while her old life and the comforts there call her back. The ease to escape the trial. To return to the place she knows.

The struggle is real.

But there is a new spark in her eyes—a reflection of the love she is finding on this side. A place she truly belongs. And she is holding on. She is pressing through.

And since God has been teaching me about these things—lovingly giving me these truths you and I are talking about now—I had words in this precious moment in time when He allowed me to be a conduit of His love for His child. I shared with her just this—how the growing pains and the pressure and the squeezing—even that—are vital. How the process prepares us, strengthens us, and helps us to not only survive, but thrive in this new world.

That each thing she is experiencing is not in vain.

It will allow her to breathe.

To be fully alive.

And His little lamb asks why does it need to be so hard?

I don’t know all the answers. I didn’t know what I did wrong when I broke a chick out of an egg one day on the ranch and held its last breath in my hands. When I cried for its life because I had done everything I thought was right to help it survive. But in the very act of bringing it ease, I had lost it.

I don’t have all the answers, but He does. And if we’re in His hands, we trust the process because we can’t always see how it makes us strong. How the very fight equips us to survive.

This beautiful young girl looked at me then, with all the weight bearing down on her shoulders, and the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes. She whispered, “Thank you. I’m going to think about that the rest of the day.”

And the breath of the universe caught between us. I felt it.

He was right there. Right there to help her forge into new life.

And, yes, little one, we all need to think about that.