Call the midwife

I was so, so certain she was a he. For nine(ish) months, I had struggled to wrap my mind around the reality of being a mother. In those dreams, those moments when I tried to grasp what it was God was doing in my life … well, in those seconds when I cast my eyes forward, my baby was always a boy.

And then, there she was. Ten pounds, two ounces of “it’s a girl!” pressed into my chest even as I struggled to regain my equilibrium. A baby? A girl? A mother?

I have never been the same.

Gender miscue or no, from the moment I looked into Mary Hannah’s eyes, I found myself looking for clues as to who she was. Later, after her babyhood sweetness peeled away like the layers of an onion, and she revealed her love of people, her fierce empathy, her nurturing ways, I found myself looking into those same eyes and asking a different question. It was no longer, “Who are you?” It was suddenly, “Who will you be?”

Perhaps the best part of parenting a teen– the most painful and the most poignant– is standing by as that question is asked, again and again not by you as a mother, but by the child as an emerging individual. Mary Hannah started asking that question early and often, so it’s no surprise to us, really, that she landed on the answer while not yet old enough to drive.

Those traits we watched with such awe and wonder (and yes, frustration in the moments when they were applied too early and too randomly) have proven themselves vital to her call. Mary Hannah is called to serve women in childbirth as a doula and, later, as a midwife. Her goal is to serve not here in the States, but in places where childbirth is still a deadly proposition haunted by archaic practices that harm both mother and baby.

It makes total sense. Everything about her, really, was so clearly, so completely made for the role she’s found herself pursuing. The way she comforts the hurting. Her compassion for hearts in hard places. Her love of physical touch. Her amazing aptitude for understanding life sciences and applying them to the here and now. Her fearless love of Christ, and her ability to put herself aside and simply serve, no matter the status of her role. She was, quite literally, made for this work. Those who know her best, upon hearing her plans, only nodded approvingly.

“A midwife? Oh my goodness, yes. That makes sense.”

There have been caution flags waved by loving folks who fear for the prospects of an itinerant baby catcher in a developing nation. There is, after all, no money to be had in this field, no status, no future.

“Don’t you want to be a nurse? Or an obstetrician?”

She smiles at the questions, but is firm. A midwife. In villages. Ministering to women and babies and families. A midwife.

While I have no doubt she would be exactly the kind of nurse that I would want by my side in a crisis, or exactly the doctor I’d hire to usher my baby into the world, it’s not her call.

There will never be fancy letters after her name, or a shift rotation making her days and nights predictable. And while her gender caught me off guard in the beginning, after watching my daughter’s heart blossom, I would have been utterly astonished had either of those things come to pass in her life. In all of my time praying over her, all of my days asking God to whisper her purpose into her own ear, I never once felt that there was anything so orderly in the road ahead. God’s call was always, I somehow knew, going to be something outside the realm of safe and comfortable.

And here it is. Her purpose, being revealed. Being prepared. One day at a time. Before my very eyes. Unexpected, perhaps, but breathtakingly beautiful. Just like Mary Hannah herself.

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