Birthing

The rocky landscape we've been driving through the last few days is breathtaking. It’s so stark and stunning and lavish and wild. As I have gazed out the window, it has expressed what I couldn’t.

In fact, along this whole journey, each new landscape has reflected what’s going on in me – peace in the prairies, desolation in the desert, exultation in the treed foothills. The soil and vegetation and rocks have wondered and wept and worshiped; they have interceded for me.

Before we started this journey, when we were just considering it, two people told us that we were pregnant with this thing God is doing in our lives. But actually, I feel more like a baby than a mother. 

This journey to California has felt like being birthed. Home was a safe womb, where we were fed, loved, nurtured and protected. This long highway has felt like the birth canal. At times it’s been dark and painful. It’s felt like having the life squeezed out of us. There have been excruciating conversations about our deepest sin and brokenness, how we've wounded each other. Other times our discussions have been full of hope and anticipation for the new life we’re starting.

God is re-creating us. I thought our family, our marriage, was pretty wonderful. Turns out, God has even more for us.

In Denver, Andrew bought me a new iPhone. As I was synching my old 3G for the last time to download the photos, I cried. Of all the things I’ve given up, I cry about my old phone.

“If I give it all to you will you make it all new?” croons Will Reagan and I nod in time with the music.

We are being transformed from glory to glory. He is making all things new. We are coming out with joy, being led forth in peace, the mountains and the hills are breaking into song.

Anyone who thinks this life in Christ is about going to church and tithing is sorely mistaken. He doesn’t just want our Sunday mornings or one-tenth of what we have. He wants it all. I have never been more emptied. Or more free.

Like a newborn, I am revealed in my raw nakedness, bawling my song to the bright world. I have nothing to offer. Oh Lord, cradle me to your breast and feed me, for your Word is life. 

- Anne