Written July 2017
"Take my hand!" she said. They swam down into the deeper water. It was clear and warm to comfort them. This wasn't going to be an easy ride but it was right. It was full of healing.
As they swam, a vortex of water swirled to the right and a vision opened up.
"I'm letting you into my pain," she said softly. An invitation, an admittance.
"I'm here." The calm reassurance. She trusted her completely.
Their eyes saw through the water as if it had vanished and they were in the room - the hospital room with the wheely bed and the machines. The doctors, nurses, midwife stood around. Her husband was there.
"The baby's heart rate is 80." They are very concerned. "We're going to do this fast."
The girls' legs flutter the warm water as they watch the scene unfold. She can see herself on the table, legs hoisted, face flushed with drunken exhaustion. She knows there is fear of medicine but no fear of death. Her friend doesn't feel that though, she only sees in the physical.
The baby is vacuum sucked. The body slips out. There is a kerfuffle over cutting the cord. He is taken and brought back. He is laying on her chest.
"I love you," she says. It is what it is. But watching it she feels the confusing mix of right and wrong.
The vision is suddenly swirled into the vortex and is gone.
The weight of grief now feels heavy in the water. Her friend feels it too. Although they are underwater, they can breathe and speak.
"How did that make you feel?" her friend asks.
"It's hard. It's hard to... to explain... to feel... to know what I think." A quiet pause.
"Let's keep swimming?" her friend suggests gently.
She hesitates but she knows it's the way. "Okay."
Her friend takes her hand and gives it a tight squeeze.
"She's got me," she thinks. She's with me in this. She feels loved and not alone.
They swim on. The water is calmer again, less heavy, still a grief but a more settled one.
Another vortex swirls, this time to the left. They push towards it expecting to be easily pulled in but it resists them. It pushes back. Her friend looks at her questioningly. Her eyes are asking why...
"I don't like looking at this one."
So it wasn't that she didn't want to share it. She didn't like it herself.
"Why not?" Her friend is expecting it to be a painful experience - a trauma - a hurt. Perhaps it is the time with all the blood loss. Or a family hurt.
"It is hard to let myself want it."
Oh... "Sometimes we just have to let ourselves dream.. if we chase them away what are we left with?"
"But it is over. It never came true."
"Please show me. I will be right here with you. You can do this."
She takes a deep breath. "Okay."
She opens her mind and the vision opens around both of them.
She is in her living room in the blue birthing pool. The room is quiet, peaceful, there are soft voices. She is clearly in the throes of labour, unaware of surroundings, focused in. She squats, one hand steadying her, the other feeling the pressure, the force, adding resistance to the downward pull of the pushing. She is quiet and there is that mix of distress and pleasure that is slow labour.
"I can see the head!"
"Really?!"
She, watching the scene, remembers the excitement and anticipation of that moment. But it never came.
The scene freezes and fogs over. They keep watching, waiting for something to move... but it doesn't. It is stuck. Her friend speaks her name questioningly.
"Sorry. I think.. I think it wants to show us my dream. The alternate reality. If I let it."
"Please let it. You need to go there. You've spent two years not going there and you're not getting anywhere are you?"
"No."
Suddenly the scene unfreezes and the labour continues. It is becoming intense. She is still in the pool. The birth pool. The head is descending. It is not fast but it happens. Eventually there is a stronger stretching feeling, a burning... the head is coming.
Everyone is quiet. The midwife positions the doppler. The heart rate sounds strong. She seems satisfied and pulls it away.
Her husband is watching with anticipation. She is in pain - this is scary and hard but they are encouraging her.
"You can do it, you're so close!"
In the water watching, she turns away, not wanting to hear and see the pain and suffering. Her friend is quiet.
"I want to get out of the pool!" she suddenly cries out in the scene. That was unexpected.
She turns back to the vision to see the midwife respond, "Okay if you think you can..."
She is scrambling out of the birth pool and hobbles over to the bed; the floor mattress with a waterproof sheet over it. She gets onto her hands and knees. Now with all her courage she lets the head through. Slowly, painfully, a lot of fighting and not quietly either. The midwife is coaching... and eventually it slips out.
"The head is out!"
"Is he okay?"
"He's okay. Just wait."
The next contraction comes and the midwife guides the body out with a slip. She passes the baby through and she holds him to her chest. It is overwhelming and scary and she loves him. And she is so tired. He is puffy and messy and foreign looking. He has a big umbilical cord running down underneath her. He is hers. She holds him tight as he breathes and whimpers.
"That was hard wasn't it. My precious boy."
They quietly watch a long drawn moment of love. As if the scene freezes but is still full of life. She doesn't want to let it go but also she wants to run as far away as possible. And hide. Because the emotions.
Her friend hasn't moved. She wishes she would just disappear because she suddenly wants to be alone.
On the other hand she wishes her friend would understand what she felt.
"So... I really shouldn't want a different reality."
"What does God want?"
"What?"
"What does God want?"
She stops and searches that question. Is she asking what God's plan had been? Is she asking what god wants her to do now? Is she asking if God wants her to imagine a better outcome or not day dream such things?
"God wants... me to be able to move on more healed. But I don't know how to do that."
"Do you know what I can feel?"
"What?"
"The water. It is full of this promise, this yearning for light. It wants to free you."
"How?"
"You have to swim."
Well that makes no sense. But she decides to try.
"You go first."
"... okay."
Her friend swims and she follows. Her friend is surprisingly fast and she has to really work hard to keep up. She starts to enjoy the feeling of rushing through the water - the waters of grief - the exertion and the release for her body. Her pain is rushing out through her frantic limbs.
"Wait!" Her friend stops and turns. "I need a rest for a moment."
"Okay." Her friend sits near.
She shuts her eyes and breathes deeply inward. And outward. Now what? It is on the tip of her tongue to just speak it out.
"I really wanted him to be born at home. I really wanted the birth I thought I was promised. I really, really wanted to birth him and hold him and love him and have him attached to me. I wanted what I saw in so many videos and so many stories. I wanted it for myself and now I will never have it. How can I hope for it again."
But she can't speak. It is too hard.
"How can I hope for that," she says instead, weakly.
"You have to stop hoping like that. You have to stop painting pictures and wanting them to come true and then having these fights with God when they don't. I get it, I see why you do it and I know it feels like the only way to cope but it's not. It's actually not the way to cope, it is breaking you."
"What?" her eyes fill with tears.
"It's like... you're at the bottom of this water making these visions and fighting about them all the time. Not just the visions we saw today but all the ones you make. And god wants to take your hand, take you up and show you these wonderful rainbows. Not worldly promises, but heavenly ones.
So it's okay to grieve. It's okay to cry. It's okay to be devastated because you wanted that birth and you didn't get it and it sucks. God would have loved to bless you with your hearts desire but he couldn't. And it's okay to hate that and to want it to have been different. It's okay."
She senses something... "It's not permission that I need. It's a revelation."
"Of what?"
"... of love."
"Who's love?"
"God's love. God's love brings out the deepest pain."
"Do you remember in that last scene, you holding your baby and saying you loved him. And how hard it was. And the pain. And how much you cared?"
"Yeah."
"That is God's heart for you. It is mirrored in parenthood. He loves you, he holds you, and he says, "Oh gosh, that was hard wasn't it." He knows and he cares so much."
Suddenly the water filled with light and a washy sense of glowing love and she knew how much he cared. She had felt like he didn't care that her heart was broken - not really - that he hadn't cared that she hurt so badly, in the moments that brought pain and afterwards. Now as a new revelation of his love filled her she finally began to open to him and all her tears wanted to come too.
Her friend put her hand on her shoulder, "Let your feelings out, please. You have to let God's love in."
"I want to know that you get it," she whispered to her friend.
"I have been there. I get it. Trust me."
"Okay. Hug?"
"Yes."
A song fills the ocean.
"Your Love oh Lord is like the oceans,
Deeper than endless seas.
Your Faithfulness is like the mountains and Your Word never fails."
Her friend steps back. She is with God now.
"I needed to hold my son on my chest. I needed to birth him. You took that away from me," she cries out. "I feel robbed!"
But she knows it wasn't him who stole it. She knows he wanted it to go well too. It wasn't only her dream. The enemy had brought destruction and God hated that. God was on her team, he was not the opposition.
"You wanted it too," she admitted to God.
"God I need you to show me your promises of heaven, not of earth, because earth is too painful. It's too hard," she sobbed.
She cried all the tears and thoughts and feelings she could find until things were quiet and she was done.
"Your Love oh Lord is like the oceans,
Deeper than endless seas.
Your Faithfulness is like the mountains and Your Word never fails."
The song rang through the water again.
"Are you ready to leave the water?" That seemed to be God. She hesitated...
"You don't have to leave fully. And you can come back if you do. It's not about that.
I just want to show you something."
"Okay."
She swam up toward the surface. Her head came out into the sun. The water rippled around her. It was all so beautiful and sunny and still and heavenly.
A rainbow appeared in the sky shining light rays down. How does a rainbow even shine light? Well it was.
"This is my promise."
"What are you promising me God?"
She was expecting some bible verse she'd heard a million times like, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." It didn't change anything though.
"I'm promising you a wild ride with me."
Wow. That felt right actually.
"But you're not going to know what each bit is, or what is going to happen, or what the details will be. You are not going to know if each moment will be happy or sad, grief or pain, joy or excitement. You can't know. It's not the way it works with me. I need you to let go of that needing to know. You need to drop that control."
"That is hard!"
"You don't have to strive to do it, just let go into me and I will help you. Now come with me."
A little light flickered down into the water and she followed. It took her back down to the depths where the visions had been.
The second vision was there again. She could see it through a little window in the water. It wasn't surrounding her anymore but she could see it.
"This would have been wonderful but it wasn't what happened."
"No."
"What actually happened?"
She looked toward the other vision - the hospital - the pain - the reality. She paddled over. Again it wasn't surrounding her but it was there.
"Can you find me in this?" asked God.
She suddenly saw the wild ride. God in the midst holding them - holding her baby, holding her body, holding her husband.
It was a traumatic part of the ride but it also had promise and hope and joy in it. It was so full of everything good and bad that she hadn't been able to decide if it was good or bad. That had been so confusing. Now she realised it was just everything. It was a wild ride with God.
Peace filled her. Finally.
"Thank you God," she whispered quietly with resolve. "I love you."
"Now let this precious girl love you."
Her friend swam through the waters toward her.
"Hey..."
"What happened?"
"God showed me his promise. Come..." she beckoned. Her friend followed her to the window of the first vision.
"God showed me... he was there. He was holding us. This was a wild ride with him."
"That is so good."
"Ready to go?" her heart was settled for now.
"Yes!" her friend agreed.
Their feet pushed off and they swam strongly toward the surface together.
