Where is Home?

Nearly every day for the past few weeks, Jackson has been telling us, “I wanna go home.”
“Where,” we ask.
“To Ethiopia.”

While I would love to say that Ethiopia is our new home; if I’m honest with myself, I know that we will always be seen as outsiders. At the same time, we can’t say America Is our home anymore. We sold nearly everything…Outside of family and friends, the only thing that ties us to America is our passports. We live in transition…in a sense we are homeless.

Many thoughts run through my head…but one thought continually comes to mind, “Is this a good way to lead and support my family?” It is great to know that my boy misses Ethiopia. Yet I realize that he’s only expressing the tip of the iceberg regarding his thoughts of a life in transition. When we are back in Ethiopia, he’s going to miss family, friends and comfort back in America. Am I setting my family up for an identity crisis?

I press on though, and lead my family in this journey, trusting in two things I see in the Bible. First of all, this earth is not my home. And second, it’s not a house that makes a home, rather it’s the people in it.

I trust that it is actually ok (perhaps even good) for us not to be too tied down towards any location we may end up at. Perhaps it is good that we are homeless, as it drives us towards a deeper longer for something much greater, namely our eternal home in Heaven. While we can enjoy many of the places God has graciously given us; No place in this world can compare with what he is preparing for us; so why fool ourselves into thinking it can?

Yet while Scripture paints the picture that Heaven will be a spectacular and unbelievable place, it is not the beauty of the city that makes it so attractive…Rather it’s Jesus who dwells in it. “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev 21:3-4)

What makes any place magnificent is not the place itself (no matter how amazing it may be); rather it is the people. So while we have no place to call home; we do have each other…and that truly is home. Praise God that he is using our work to draw us closer to each other, and towards him. Praise Him that while this earth in its current state will never provide the security and stability we much need, God is preparing for us a place in eternity that will never fade or fail.

The Blessing of Eve

I write this with my little slice of joy resting in my arms, for whom I would endure the pain of childbirth a million times over.

In this time around Caleb’s birth and around Easter when we celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of our Savior, the Lord has really been showing me some of the amazing parallels between The sacrifice of His Son and the labor and birth of a child.

I was blessed to be able to give birth to both of my sons naturally, unmedicated and beautifully with a wonderful midwife. Yes, blessed. Both experiences were incredible and unique and the most intense of my life (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually…did I mention physically?) and I wouldn’t change them for anything. Don’t get me wrong, it freaking hurts. But the joy is so worth the pain! With Jackson I was in awe of the whole experience, and learned a lot about really relinquishing the control I often think I have, and giving everything over to Him – trusting in His timing, trusting in His plan, knowing that He not only knit my baby together in my womb, but that He was in charge of each painful contraction, and that this was the way it had to be in order to work this life – my son – out of my body.

This second time around the Lord has been showing me some of the amazing ways that He allowed me to experience something similar to what Jesus experienced. He has allowed me a brief look into the reality of His love for us. Here is a rambling mix of some of the similarities He has been showing me.

The curse from the garden – the entry of sin into the world made it such that God’s Offspring (Jesus) would have his heel struck in order to bring new life (Gen. 3:15) and that Eve would have pain in childbearing in order to bring new life (Gen. 3:16). There is enormous blessing in both of these curses – We receive the blessing of Christ and of being ransomed and given new life through His sacrifice, and as mothers we receive the blessing of new life being brought forth through us in a shadow or reflection of the gospel.

It is all orchestrated, guided, and directed by our Father. Every detail, every contraction.

For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. The joy set before him was giving new life to this fallen world. To those who would believe on Him. We can become sons and daughters through the Lamb’s perfect, holy sacrifice. For the joy of a child, a mother endures the pain of childbirth.

He anticipated the day and chose to go forth with it.

Jesus patiently awaited the appointed time, making the necessary preparations. As expectant mothers, so do we. We wait for God’s timing which He has laid out from the beginning, and we prepare ourselves as best we can for labor – for the birth of a child.

There is pain. We know it is coming and we endure it because we know the joy that lies ahead. New life!

Blood and water

Tearing of flesh

A broken body is given

There is loss of dignity, humiliation, and incredible vulnerability (though every mother I’ve spoken with agrees that when you’re in labor and delivering your child you couldn’t care less about who sees what! This time around I’m becoming more and more amazed at the way that He has made my body for this purpose, and less self conscious about this body He has blessed me with) (But that’s for another time!)

He went through it alone. Jesus Christ was the only one who was able to go to the cross, who was able to bear the burden of our sin. There were people surrounding him, but he was alone. We have husbands and mothers and midwives or doctors but they cannot do it for us. That baby has been in our bellies for nine months, preparing for this time, and it is ours to bear. What a humbling gift since we are incapable of even doing it on our own! Paradox...

Submitting to the Father, knowing and resting in the fact that He is in control

Christ humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. As mothers we are humbled that God allows us to bear children – to know that they are ours in a way that nothing else is. We are humbled that He loves us so tenderly as to care for us as we labor, and our labor is certainly not in vain!

Through one’s suffering, another receives life!

Once we are given this new life He continues to sustain us, nourish us, teach, lead, guide, admonish, encourage, rebuke, correct, comfort, and LOVE us unconditionally. Closest example we have to that? A parent’s love for their child. It doesn’t end when the baby is born - it all grows exponentially from there.

How beautifully and intricately designed it all is!

As he was preparing to go to the cross and explaining to his disciples what was to happen in the days to come, Jesus tells them in John 16:20-22,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

With Caleb I was already in love with birth in general, and the Lord has been taking me to a deeper place of understanding the beauty in the pain and the joy that comes after the sorrow. Childbirth is an incredibly vivid picture of the Gospel – a shadow, a reflection that we get to actively experience. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to say I am on the same level as Christ, and that I experienced the same thing that He did on the cross – that’s not what I’m saying. But I do believe that He has given us the undeserved gift of a glimpse into that very thing. Something that we as women, as mothers, get to experience, and that He teaches us amazing things if we listen to Him.

“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Psalm 30:5b

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 12:1-2