“Remember,” Kim said, “Mid-wife literally means, ‘with women.’ It’s an act of being with women in the pain and waiting of every part of women’s health, especially child birth.”
The OBGYN stared at me from the Zoom screen, her body recovering from a double mastectomy.
“With” is an understated preposition. Coffee with cream. Dancing with abandon. Surgery with complications. Being with child.
With is a word that binds together two or more things that don’t necessarily belong together. This little connecting word pulls up a chair and transforms the narrative without hardly being noticed.
To be with women in the pain and waiting—whether the waiting and pain leads to the cooing and crying of a baby or the icing and wrapping of scarred chest—is a bold binding. To be with women in these moments is a simultaneous declaration that these bodies are sacred, and these women are more than what their bodies can produce for the world.
“Midwifery God” by Britney Winn Lee
Remember, “Emmanuel” literally means “God with us.” It is an act of God being with humans in the pain and waiting of this creation’s growth, healing, dying and new birth.
God’s presence with us dignifies the soil of this earth, the flesh and bones of sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. Patiently sitting with us, Emmanuel honors this creation as a world worth more than it can produce. In dignity and honor we are invited to patiently wait,
For the healing of scars
For the mercy of death
For the growth of a child
For the opening of the womb
Whatever the outcome, we are bound up with our creator who will not let our labor be in vain.
In Advent we welcome God as our midwife, to pull up a chair and transform the narrative without hardly being noticed.
Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel!
—Rev. Shawna Songer Gaines