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Becoming a Midwife
Hannah J. Johnson
Hannah Johnson hopes to use her midwifery skills
serving the community around her, and also for
overseas missions. Currently enrolled in the Charis
Midwifery Course, she eagerly awaits the unfolding
of God's plan, and can't believe how good He has
been to her already! Being an RN working
in an emergency room in Richmond, VA, she encounters
many life or death situations every day. Read on
to enjoy snippets
from her past that have led to who she is in the
present.
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Being a midwife is so much
more than delivering babies, but that is where it starts.
“Please,
Lord, please; give us children. Fill our home with their laughter. Heal me of this disease.” For three years, such was the prayer of a
woman whose heart’s desire was to be a mother. Similar was the
prayer of her husband, who longed to be a father. Always praying,
but never the answer they wanted. Week after week, month after
month, year after year they prayed. For three years this cry
ascended to the throne of grace. After this time, which included
countless trips to the doctor, and the eventual discussion with the
dreaded words “you will not ever be able to have children”, the
couple once again prayed to the Lord, and surrendered their desire
to his will. “Lord, take this desire and transform our will to be
like yours. Lead us into the path of life where you want us.”
Naturally, they assumed that was not parenting their own children,
but maybe adoption or missions.
Within the month, this woman was pregnant. The couple named their
beautiful, tiny daughter, who weighed in at five pounds ten ounces,
Abigail Marie because of the joy she brought to her father. After
this, the doctor again said, “It is not likely you will have any
more children.” Less than two years later, another baby graced the
family. Her name was Hannah Joy.
That’s where I came in. I was directly named after Hannah, whose
story is told in 1 Samuel 1-2. Hannah was loved by her husband, yet
was grieved because her husband’s second wife had many children and
she had none. 1 Samuel states,
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She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and
wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O LORD of
hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your
servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but
will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to
the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall
touch his head”. (1 Samuel 1:10-11) |
The LORD
did answer her prayer, and provided her with a son, whose name was
Samuel, the well-known prophet of old. Hannah’s burning desire was
fulfilled, and she praised the LORD because of it.
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My heart
exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in the LORD. My mouth
derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation. There is
none holy like the LORD; there is none besides you; there is no rock
like our God…The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and
he exults. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy
from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat
of honor.
(1 Samuel 2:1-2, 7-8) |
My mother also prayed in thanksgiving, and the LORD, in his great
kindness provided her with more children. I have three younger
siblings, Caleb, Josiah, and Joelle. Hannah apparently had five more
children after Samuel. It is beautiful how Hannah honored her vow
and dedicated her first-born son to the LORD. She recognized the
greater call of motherhood, which is not simply to nourish, clothe,
and tend her young, but to train them for righteousness that they
might serve the Lord.
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After much practice at pretending to be an Indian woman,
Amy took the final step. She ventured into the temple
itself, walking past the priests that stood at the
doors. Her steps echoed in the stone hallway. ‘This is
quite different from that festival day,’ she thought. The temple was dark. ‘As dark as the pits of hell,’ she
thought, shuddering. In one shrine stood the devilishly
ugly idol, the one that these poverty-stricken people
sacrificed their goods and their children to. Amy
shuddered again. Then she saw the priest and the
children, beautiful little girls just like Preena. Amy
knew that what she had heard was true. Hardly anyone
knew that these little girls were ‘married to the god’
just so that they could live a life of unthinkable
shame. But Amy knew now. Her world turned black as she
realized the horrible truth and thought of all the
children throughout India that needed to be rescued from
this life. (Davis 397) |
As a child, Amy Carmichael’s story was my favorite. I read it over
and over. The exotic jungle she lived in, close encounters with
tigers, foreign language and culture… it all intrigued me. However,
there was something about her devotion to rescuing the temple
children that really gripped my heart. She spent decades freeing
them from slavery and child prostitution and bringing them to her
home where they could grow up as children and learn the love of
Jesus. Amy wrote this little poem for her children:
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O dear Lord Jesus
Thou lovest me.
I do not know at all
How that can be.
But, dear Lord Jesus,
I know it’s true,
True as that grass is green
And skies are blue.
So, dear Lord Jesus,
Help me to be
Thy loving little child,
Pleasing to Thee.
(Carmichael 1-12) |
This is
a far cry from the binding darkness of a pagan temple. Amy saw the
value of the life of each and every child, and had no qualms about
stepping in and changing the outcome of an otherwise evil situation. She treasured each child. She gave many of them new names, built a
compound for them out of limited resources, invested in them,
educated them, tended the sick, and fed them. When their lives were
headed for total spiritual and moral destruction, she intervened.
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“Oh mom, you have got to see this baby in the nursery!” It was my
family’s first Sunday at a new church, and Laurie, the pastor’s
daughter who was ten at the time, was taken with the new blue-eyed
baby. For the next ten years, she babysat me and my siblings. Whether it was to relieve my mom so she could clean, or for a date
night for my parents, or a whole weekend for them to get away,
Laurie was always my first choice. She would play puppies with us
when we were little, then stay up late and talk with us “older
girls” about God when the others were in bed. She took us out for
ice cream, came over and swam in our little pool, and corresponded
with me even when she went away for college.
Laurie was a rare find. She treated me and my siblings equally. She
did not talk down to us. She invested hour after hour into our
lives. She let us help her with Backyard Bible Club, where she
shared the gospel with twenty children. She also spoke on a Sunday
night at church, sharing the testimony of what God had done in her
life while she spent a semester of college in Israel. She was a
shining light for Christ as she embraced the Israeli people, Jew and
Muslim alike. She particularly became friends with a family who fed
her lamb brains, and let her stay the night at their house. She grew
to love their children, and gave them the Jesus film. All of this
she related to us. The love of God was so evident in her; as I’m
sure it now is with her own four little children.
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Before the end of this memorable day, we got a message
by radio that Mincaye and Ompodae’s one-year-old
grandbaby was dying. I jumped in the plane with Mincaye
and Ompodae and flew upriver to Tonampade. As soon as we
landed, I was told that Mincaye’s grandson, whom we
affectionately called “Chubby,” was dead. Mincaye,
Ompodae, and I ran to the house where Mincaye and
Ompodae’s daughter, Sada, and her husband lived.
Chubby was lying in a little box all dressed up in a
jumper. He had a blanket around him and looked as
adorable as ever. I was relieved to see that he was
asleep, not dead. The Waodani use their word for dead
just as we do. We say things like, ‘He was dead asleep’
or ‘You mess with me and you’re dead.’ In Wao-Tededo,
‘dead’ can mean anything from passed out to unconscious
to actually dead.
Sada watched me as I entered their little house. I
reached down to touch Chubby’s fat little cheeks. He had
been born with a heart defect that required specialized
surgery to correct. His little lips were always bluish
in color. But now as I looked down at him, he actually
appeared to be better. When I touched his face, it was
warm.
Sada continued to watch me closely. I’m sure she must
have hoped I had an outsider’s trick to save her little
boy. But as I looked at him closely, I could see that
Chubby was no longer sleeping. He was dead. In the
entire year of this little boy’s life, I had never seen Sada without her baby. When she saw my reaction to
finding Chubby dead, she must have known that it was too
late. She began to sob in grief that no one can know
until losing a child of their own. At the time, I could
not yet fully understand the depths of her pain.
How does one console a teenage mother who is looking at
her baby lying lifeless in a crude wooden box? How does
one dare to suggest that one day she will be able to
think of things other than his sleeping by her side and
nursing gently at her breast, or his soft little hand
reaching up from the carry-ing cloth, where his weight
would press him into her side all day long? (Saint
230-231) |
Steve Saint devoted much of his life to helping the Waodoni tribe of
Ecuador as a pilot. He advanced the spread of the gospel through his
work. This short little excerpt from his book, End of the Spear,
illustrates his own love for people, and for children. Every life
has worth, and he knew it. This was just one baby, who had a fatal
heart condition, in the middle of some remote jungle, with young,
native parents. It would be so easy for the world to dismiss that
baby’s death as “Well, it happens every day,” and be over it. How
sad. Steve worked among these people. He knew them and loved them.
He valued the lives of all the members of this tribe that had killed
his father. He knew the value of life.
And does this happen every day? Yes, sure it does. It happens not
only in the Amazon jungle, but across Africa, Asia, Europe, and even
North America. People are short on resources and money, and their
children die. Education and funds could prevent most of these
deaths. Children are literally starving in third world countries. The sad thing is that most of the time, no one cares. The government
sometimes cares because it makes their statistics look bad, and most
people reading an article about a famine say, “oh, that’s too bad.” Christians are called upon by God to care.
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My first encounter with the Kirkmans was a Sunday that I was helping
in the church nursery, and in toddled Grayson, dragging his diaper
bag behind him. Although I knew their family for years, it was not
until Grayson was turning six that I began babysitting for them. With dad in Iraq, mom had her hands full with the troops at home…
five boys ranging in age from eleven to six, and three girls ranging
in age from four to one. I had the distinct privilege of caring for
these children over the next three years. We spent days together at
a time, playing shoot ‘em up, watching Little House on the Prairie
and Roy Rogers, building forts in the woods, going to the park,
making supper for the hordes, driving around in the big fifteen
passenger van, going to the pool, wrestling and tickling and
hugging, kissing scraped up knees, reading about Amy Carmichael,
playing horses and legos, and embracing the latest addition to the
family, baby Abigail.
The parents of these wonderfully boisterous and tenderly
compassionate kids were two people committed to raising a godly
family. They let me peek in on their lives and share the experience.
Their dedication to resolving conflicts day in and day out, laughing
together, memorizing Scripture together, loving one another, and
teaching the gospel and Biblical values to their children was an
awesome thing to watch. This family powerfully displayed God’s love
and specific care to each child. All of them had very different
personalities, habits, traits, and skills, yet each was so very dear
and precious. God loved them individually and spoke to them
personally.
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“Well, I found someone in DC who will take $500 to do the abortion
even though I’m so late term.” This was the conversation I heard
from down the hall. Although the outcome was more rash and tragic
than usual, the story is sadly commonplace. In an emergency room
just outside of downtown Richmond, on the line where ritz meets
ghetto, countless women walk in and out of our doors in a constant
state of depression and emotional instability. The moral depravity
of the rich university students to the uneducated and impoverished
is the same. Sexually transmitted diseases, live-in boyfriends,
complications from various methods of birth control, unwanted
pregnancies, ill-cared for children, tears of disappointment on
finding out one is pregnant and the ominous “I don’t know if I’ll
keep it”, complications from abortions, and great emotional pain are
just some of the results of the selfish world in which we live. The
girls are unfortunately reaping what they have sown.
The sex-saturated and pleasure-worshiping culture that ignores
consequences and teaches even youth to do as they please with
whomever they please, is doing no one any favors. It grieves me to
watch. One of the saddest expressions was from a girl who had chosen
to abort her baby and on finding out that it was twins, said with
tears in her eyes, “Well, that ruined my day.”
Where is the hope for these distressed souls? He is there, and he is
holding out his arms to them. If only they may hear his voice and
turn to him.
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O My child, I am coming to thee walking upon the waters
of the sorrows of thy life; yea, above the sounds of the
storm ye shall hear My voice calling thy name.
Ye are never alone, for I am at thy right hand. Never
despair, for I am watching over and caring for thee. Be
NOT anxious. What seemeth to thee to be at present a
difficult situation is all part of My planning, and I am
working out the details of circumstances to the end that
I may bless thee and reveal Myself to thee in a new way.
As I have opened thine eyes to see, so shall I open
thine ears to hear, and ye shall come to know Me even as
did Moses, yea, in a face-to-face relationship.
For I shall remove the veil that separates Me from thee
and ye shall know Me as thy dearest Friend and as thy
truest Comforter.
No darkness shall hide the shining of My face, for I
shall be to thee as a bright star in the night sky.
Never let thy faith waver. Reach out thy hand, and thou shalt touch the hem of my garment. (Roberts 18) |
This is what awaits those who trust in Him. My sister has waited on
the Lord and just two months ago married a godly man. She and her
husband are now growing in the Lord and are eagerly anticipating the
growth of their family. My sister is unfamiliar with hospitals and
pain, but is excited to begin motherhood. I have no doubt that
through her nervousness, God will comfort her because He has made
Himself known to her as her hope. She can have peace in the
uncertainties of facing decisions and bearing labor pains.
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Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might
touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked
them but Jesus called them to Him, saying, ‘Let the
children come to me, and to not hinder them, for to such
belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever
does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall
not enter it’. (Luke 18:15-17) |
I love to feel a baby in my arms. I love the weight of the little
gift snuggled in a blanket, sleeping peacefully, while holding onto
my little finger with five tiny fingers of its own. I love to look
at the little feet and ears that God created in secret, the tiny
fingernails, the cute nose and plump cheeks. Every baby I hold is a
testimony of God’s love for humankind. He desires me to have the
same love for all people. He loved them enough to shed his perfect,
atoning blood for them. I can love them enough tell them of His
love.
All of the stories I have shared are stories that have great
significance to me. They are snippets from my past and lead to who I
am in the present. The stories I have read and people I have known
have affected my life. More than anything, God has affected my life
and given me His love to give to others. I am aware of how God has
made me His daughter, and of His unconditional love for me. That
steadfast, compassionate, and undeserved love provokes me to invite
others to share in it.
Being a midwife is so much more than delivering babies, although I
look forward to that. Being a midwife means you have an open door
into the lives of others, so that you may provide for their physical
needs and bring comfort to them and in so doing introduce the One
True Comforter and Healer, the Savior of souls. It means taking
childbirth education to impoverished nations and explaining that the
real problem is not the lack of money or clean drinking water but
their impoverished souls, and inviting them to partake of the
richness found in the Living Water. It means being a true sister
when Abby has a baby, coming alongside her and encouraging her,
reminding her of where her hope lies. Yes, being a midwife is so
much more than delivering babies, but that is where it starts.
Works Cited
Roberts, Robert J. Come Away My Beloved. Uhrichsville: Barbour,
1973. 18. Print.
Saint, Steve. End of the Spear: A True Story. Carol Stream: Tyndale,
2005. 230-231. Print.
Carmichael, Amy. Mountain Breezes. Fort Washington: CLC, 2001. 397.
Print.
Davis, Rebecca Henry. With Daring Faith: A Biography of Amy
Carmichael. Greenville: Bob Jones, 1987. 133. Print.
Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Wheaton: Crossway, 2001.
Print.
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