Laboring With

In May I had the privilege of accompanying five other nursing students and our professor on a two-week trip to Haiti. We worked with Midwives for Haiti (www.midwivesforhaiti.com) in mobile clinics, a local hospital, and birth centers. Needless to say, it was a wonderful, stretching experience. The following is a reflection I wrote after a day at the hospital.

In most cases, I feel like the English language falls terribly short in expressing the intricacies of human existence and emotion. One phrase where I do think it is spot on is "laboring with".

On a technical level, this means providing support to a woman throughout the stages of delivering a baby.  This could be providing water, massaging, verbal coaching, or suggestions for techniques and positions. These are all things you learn and observe in nursing school, but in the US they are often performed for the laboring woman, at least in part, by a significant other, friend, or family member. The nurse checks in frequently and remains for the duration of active pushing, but the nurse is not the sole provider of that care.

When we walk into the labor and delivery ward of St. Theres hospital, the labor support looks very different. Whether due to policy or culture, laboring women have no one with them other than the hospital staff, who are low in numbers and greatly overworked. Our addition as two nursing students and a nurse midwife almost doubled the number of staff.

Here, standing beside cracked exam tables, under the half-hearted breeze of a single fan, assisted by a one-wheeled IV pole, a Doppler and the power the human spirit, is where I learned what it means to "labor with".

You don't know the meaning of laboring with until your skin smells like someone else's sweat, until you squat beside a woman to rub her back as she moans through another contractions, until you feel your abs tense with every one of her pushes, until you literally support her body with your own.

By the time her howls reach a climax and you hear that first gurgley cry, it's easy to feel like you've somehow birthed that baby alongside her. But one look up at her sweat-streaked face and exhausted smile is enough to remind you who deserves all the praise and more.

This is the privilege of laboring with. You get to see the incredible beauty of a body that can build another tiny life, to feel the awesome strength that brings that tiny life into the world, to witness the moment when a mother first sees her child. No matter where you are or what you have, birth shows you these things.

Baking the Heavy Away

The weather is beautiful this week. And it feels like it's about time.

It's the end of the semester, so everyone is just limping towards the finish line, one due date at a time. But these past few weeks have felt especially rough. I told a friend recently that it felt like those around me were in the middle of an air raid, and I was just waiting for the next hit.

The unexplainable pain of a little life taken much, much too soon.

The gut wrenching story of hurt and wrong and indifference, close to home.

The tears left when a prayer for any answer leads to an answer you were hoping wouldn't come true.

The stone in your stomach when your eyes are opened to yet another way that our society cripples spirits.

Hit after hit after hit. Not touching me, but hitting all around me. Is there a word for that? When you feel the ripples of the quakes that are leaving cracks in people you love? I sit on couches and chairs and floors, hold hands and hearts and stories, and hope that somehow, if my tears mix with theirs, the pain will be less stifling.

But I can't.

I can't make it less. I can't shelter you. I can't pick up the heaviness of it all and carry it on my shoulders so that you can stand tall once again. Though I want to so, so badly - I can't.

So I wrap my arm around your shoulder and ask you how you're really feeling. I give you space to grieve and time to remember and reassurance that doing those things is important and valid.

I bake.

I bake until my roommate gives me and my mountain of pans and bowls a funny look, because I cannot lift the heavy things off your heart. I cannot shelter all the ones I love from this air raid, or any other. But if I put sugar and flour and bananas in a bowl, I know that in 45 minutes there will be something good in this world, something I can hand to you that says "I'm here", something that will make you smile despite the well of tears.

So as the ground shakes beneath our very feet, I will do my best to bake the heavy away.

Thoughts on Healing

I am  full.


This does not mean I don't have  cracks.

This does not mean there were never  holes in my soul.

But it does mean that I have found the  hope  to patch the cracks,
and the  love  to fill the holes.


I am
      full.

Doctor Grasse

To my knowledge, I was Dr. Grasse’s patient only once. On the day I was born, he was the one to catch me.

According to my memory, I was grandpa’s patient many times.

After all, a doctor teaches.

So I got lessons on nutrition, though probably not the same kind he taught his patients, as he handed me the turkey leg at Thanksgiving dinner, when I was still in a highchair and the piece of meat was about as big as my head. Or when he dipped my finger into the icing of my birthday cake, which I have no doubt I was eager to follow along with. Or when we stood at the stove, measuring out butter and sugar for peanut brittle.

I got lessons on anatomy at the yearly pig butchering, as we would all gather around the table where he was dissecting the heart and showing us the atriums and ventricles, veins and arteries.

I got lessons on operation – of machinery – as I sat on his lap on the tractor, clinging to the wheel, focused intently on steering toward the bale of hay that we were going to pick up and feed to the cows.

A doctor prescribes.

So I was prescribed books. Whether it was the Baby Blues comic book that I read through at least once every time we visited, or the children’s bible that he and grandma gave me for my birthday.

I was prescribed movies. From “The Wizard of Oz” to “Charlie Chaplin”, he would draw from his vast library in the basement, always seeming to have a particular one in mind, which he would find amongst the countless VHSs.

I was prescribed a jean jacket for each year of my life, graduating from small to slightly larger as I outgrew them one by one – though each stayed in the closet in case another tiny farmer came over to visit. Rubber boots too, from one size to the next, so that I was always equipped to tromp out to the cows or the chickens or the rabbits, garbage dish in one hand and a container for eggs in the other.

A doctor examines.

So I sat with him one evening in the pool of a hotel as he examined his life, prompted by my intermittent questioning. We examined his boyhood, his college years, his travels to Ethiopia and Nigeria, and his work here in Arkansas. I was amazed by the places he had been, the things he had accomplished, the lives he had impacted.

A doctors consults.

So I saw him, over the years, consulting a power much higher than his own. In his morning devotions with grandma, in his regular attendance to Calico Rock Mennonite, in his readiness to admit, whenever asked about his admirable life, that it was not with his own strength, but God’s, that he had come so far.

A few months ago, we sat with my grandparents at the kitchen table in grandpa and grandma’s apartment at Menno Haven. During a lull in conversation, my uncle absent-mindedly stroked his jaw. Grandpa, who had been silent during the conversation, suddenly looked up and said “does your jaw hurt?” We all chuckled and my uncle assured him that it was just a mindless habit, but it made me realize something.

“Doctor” is not a job. It is not a profession. It is not a way to make money. It is not something that you do during office hours and leave at the hospital when you come home. It is a calling, a way to live your entire life. Grandpa, Dr. Grasse, Meryl – whoever you knew him as, you knew him to be a doctor.

He spent his life teaching every kind of lesson, prescribing - from antibiotics to literature - , examining his own experiences and those of others, and consulting the Great Physician on how to best care for the people that he encountered at every moment in his life.

Now, as he finally rests, I can only be grateful that I had the fortune to be one of his many, many patients. And I can’t help but picture him standing next to some heavenly exam table, asking an angel “So tell me, how long has that wing been sore?”

I read this piece at my grandfather's memorial service in Calico Rock, Arkansas. He passed away on January 29th, 2016 at the age of 92. 

Act III: Pushing Through

I am a junior. In fact, I am almost half way done with being a junior. And that is freaky.

Life is picking up speed. And sometimes I wonder why it didn't ask nicely before doing so.

Regardless, here I am, finishing my first semester of the nursing program, playing my 9th season of field hockey, figuring out how to do life and keep myself well fed at the same time.

And I love it.

Not in a fluffy, sunshiney, skipping-through-daisies kind of way, but in a hard, I-cry-sometimes, we-can-do-this-together sort of way. What I'm doing is not always easy, but it is always worthwhile.

Perhaps the best way to convey the feeling of this year so far is by pointing out that this post is one in a series, where I post each fall about my goals for the college year that lies ahead.

I post in the fall. It's December.

I am constantly busy. With homework, studying, field hockey, learning skills for clinical, getting up at the crack of dawn for said clinicals, staying involved with campus organizations, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life.

But on my mind nonetheless, my goals for this year:

1) learn to swim (actual strokes)
2) be certified as a medical interpreter
3) make time for conversation
4) cook more dumpster food

I've decided I want to do a triathalon after college, which requires better swimming than my froggy-stroke. I guess this goal is part of the mental transition to life after EMU.

The second goal is once again thinking ahead, while looking back. I've realized that my Spanish skills have been grossly underutilized as of late, especially for living in a city with a large immigrant population. So I'm going to get certified to use them.

The third may seem redundant and not crucial given my gift for the gab, but the business of this time in my life makes it important. I need to put intentional space in my schedule to connect with those I love, those who are important to me. I also need to practice viewing that time as beneficial, not a waste.

The last one may raise eyebrows, but I wager you'd be convinced once you saw my grocery bill (or lack there of). Dumpsters are full of food, people! And I eat it! I've just learned a different style of cooking. It benefits from cookbooks with indexes organized by ingredient, and usually starts with something along the lines of "How can I use up four cartons of mushrooms in the next three days?..."

So there it is. Late. Random. True.

The things on my mind as I'm pushing through.

photo credit: Jonathan Augsburger

Solid, Not Perfect.

I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine a full 30 minutes early. I sat for a bit, trying to slow my heart rate with deep breaths before going into the hotel and sitting outside the conference room, fidgeting like my chair was made of crawling insects.

I'd been fidgeting since I woke up, something that my dad had obviously noticed. I remember him looking me in the eye just before I walked out the door, and, in that calm, steady voice, saying the most simple phrase:

"You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be solid."

This wasn't just any interview. It was an interview for a scholarship that would pay for nearly half of my college tuition.

And I'm what you might call and "achiever". My own worst critic. Comparing my bloopers to everyone else's highlight reel.

So those words were big. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have every single extracurricular activity listed on your resume. You don't have to have taken every single AP course offered. You don't have to be captain of the team and president of the club and valedictorian of your class.

You are solid. You are enough.

As it turns out, the seven people sitting around the table in that conference room thought so as well :)

But now, four years later, I find myself repeating that phrase my dad gave me. This time its about field hockey, not school. When I joined the Eastern Mennonite University field hockey team as a freshman, I was that obliviously happy kid who was thrilled to be part of a team small enough that I got to be a starter in my first year. Now, with a new coach and an even smaller team, we are in what you would call a "rebuilding period". We fight hard and work our tails off, but our record is nothing to get excited about.

And that is hard for me to handle sometimes. I want more. I want to win. So after each game, I zero in on my performance - good or bad - and wonder why it wasn't enough. I should be able to sprint just a little harder, play defense just a bit more patiently, take shots with just a bit more accuracy. I end up in tears on the sideline at the end of the game because I'm not perfect.

So I'm working on remembering that doing the best I can is what I should expect from myself. Remembering that success is about more than the scoreboard. Remembering that those words were about more than just a scholarship:

You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be solid.

Holding Up The Sky

I am one of those people who wanders around this world, picking up every piece of fallen sky I see - every tear, every broken heart. Yeah, I know they're not mine to hold. Yeah, I know I should learn to put them down. I'm trying.

The sky is so big. There will always be more pieces falling than my tiny hands can hold.

The sky is so big. But I'm not the only one under it.

There is a South African word, ubuntu, which has been broadened into a philosophy. As it was explained to me by my high school field hockey coach, this word means "I am because you are". Humanity is inarguably connected, no matter the mantras of individualism or the geological rifts. And if one member of us is not allowed to be all that they are meant to be, we are all barred from being what we were meant to be.

If there is yet one person belittled, confined, harassed, wounded, forgotten - then all of humanity hurts because of it.

The sky is so big. But there are so many of us under it. There are so many hands among us to pick up the pieces that have fallen, to keep our heavenly ceiling from crumbing.

So I don't have to hold up the sky by myself.

But I also cannot forget all those who are pushed back from reaching the sky.

Sure, the idea of holding up the sky was one I found in a book about women's right's issues across the world*, but this post isn't just about feminism. Whatever group just popped up in your mind three lines before, that's the one I'm talking about. Yeah, those people you'd rather not think about. The ones that you know are marginalized, beaten down, unheard. It could be women, or it could be the stranger in our land, the LGBTQ community, the homeless man you studiously avoided eye contact with as you walked past his cardboard plea for help this morning.

We cannot be all we were meant to be - beautiful and curious, powerful and whole-hearted - until each member of humanity is all they were meant to be.

It takes all of us to hold up the sky.

*this book is called Half the Sky and was written by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It is by far one of the best books I have ever read, and you should read it too. I have copies to share. Seriously, it will change you.