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Newsletter Archives ~
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Our Newsletter

     Charis thanks you for your contributions to our growing newsletter.   Without you  these would be blank pages!   Post your  Charis  workshops and gatherings,   submit  questions you  would  like  professionals to answer and announce your baby's    births.     Share  your  heart   with  us.     Send  your thoughts  and  comments   to   our  "Letters  To  The  Editor" section.
     Submissions   should  be  made by  the 5th of each month for that month's publication.

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Women who  desire to  prepare  well  for the NARM exam, a requirement    to     obtain    the     credential    of     Certified Professional  Midwife   (CPM),  can  enjoy  a  comprehensive course  that   is   designed  with   the  highest   standards   of excellence and that is written from a Christian perspective.

This course is designed and  written  by  Susan Oshel,  CPM, who  has  been  serving   childbearing   families  for  over  3 decades.  We are so blessed and so excited to  have  Susan as part of the Charis family!

Contact  Susan Oshel for more details:
(757)271-1247
 

Ideals or Idols?

A sermon has been brewing in me recently and I wanted to share it with you this month since it is relevant to  childbirth. The topic is "ideals".  Take a few minutes to think about your ideals. What is super important to you? What has shaped your ideals?

For many of you reading this e-mail, you have certain ideals relating to childbirth about which you are very passionate. I know I do! Those ideals influenced the  decisions I made concerning my pregnancies and births  and had a huge impact on our family's birth experiences.

I think we would all agree that our ideals are a good thing. After all, many ideals are shaped by Biblical principles. God himself wired each of us a certain way so that we would be passionate about certain things. If we weren't passionate about those things, they wouldn't have become our ideals. It is our ideals (about which we are passionate!) that affect our choices and ultimately our direction in life. I believe wholeheartedly that, for Christians seeking God's best for their lives, our ideals are God-given.

Now that you are sitting there silently celebrating your ideals and how they have positively affected your family (and possibly the world), I want to shine a little spotlight on something about which we don't often think: It is possible for our ideals to become idols; and that is NOT good.

If you have ideals that you wouldn't completely lay down for the Lord, those ideals have snuck out of the ideals box and onto the throne of your life where only God belongs. That makes them idols.

Of course, we don't have a physical shelf on which we have placed a physical idol to worship, but when we allow something to become as important to us as our relationship with God, then we might as well have created a shrine in our living room.

How do we know if our good ideals have taken on greater importance than they should? Sometimes it is hard to tell until our ideal is challenged and we are faced with having to lay it down.

I've seen this happen often with birthing ideals. It is really tough because our birthing ideals are based on scripture and science. We have tons of evidence to back up our  choices and it is so hard to resign ourselves to having a birth that is different than we wanted. Even harder is the recovery after a less-than-ideal birth.

Perhaps it is the mother whose ideal is an all-natural home birth who ends up with a hospital C-section because of a persistent transverse baby. Or maybe it is the family who had chosen a birth center birth whose baby chose to come at 34 weeks, too early for the birth center. It could be  something as simple as the OB of choice being out of town for the labor and the least favorite one in the practice is the doc on call. Because birth is such an important event in a woman's life, it is potentially devastating for her birth to be different than she hopes.

The way you can tell if your birthing ideal has become a birthing idol is what you do when it is time to lay it down. Do you cry, pray, let it go, and trust that God loves you and has your very best at heart? Do you process the situation with God and with loved ones in a way that  draws you closer to Jesus and increases your faith and  trust in Him? Or do you cry, pray, and become angry at God for taking away something that is so important to you and for putting you through something so painful? Do you process in a way that puts walls between you and God?

I encourage each of you to consider your ideals... all of  them. Are they in the ideals box where they belong? If so, celebrate them! If not, find someone to whom you can be accountable and work on moving those from the place of "idol" back to the place of "ideal" where they belong. Life is much more fulfilling that way!

Remember, now, this doesn't pertain just to birthing; it is relevant to every area of life. Perhaps healthy eating is an ideal of yours. When you go to Aunt Mabel's house for dinner and she serves her famous deep fat fried whatever, remember that every bit of health food will be poison to  your body if you don't have an attitude of gratitude toward your hostess.  Eat a little bit and enjoy spending time with your Aunt who loves you and worked hard to prepare a meal for you.

Love and blessings,
Kristin

P.S. My computer died and it is in the process of being resurrected and rebuilt. If you sent me an important e-mail in May or June and I haven't replied, call me and leave a message. (My cell phone also died, so right now I can only call in and check messages.) I'll check the  messages once a day and will call you back. Sadly, our high-tech stuff didn't fare well in the move to FL!