onion milk: October 2015

Had I completely lost my mind? I crawled into my new bed as the coqui frogs sang their shrill, exotic song just outside the screened in porch. The humidity and warm, fragrant air filled my senses, stirring up the discombobulated thoughts and torrents of questions inside of me. Two weeks prior, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of moving to Hawaii, and now here I was with nothing but two suitcases and a hunch that I had heard from God. Just get through one day at a time, I told myself. If it doesn’t work out, you can always hop on a plane, go home, and forget all of this craziness ever happened.

See, moving to Hawaii sounds like a lot of fun unless you don’t have any money or enough time to say goodbye to all your friends. I felt foolish for taking such a leap of faith, even though every fiber in my being was rejoicing in the adrenaline rush. In theory, I knew God was more than capable of providing for all of my needs—now my trust in Him would be put to the test.

The next week brought confirmation after confirmation that God had me right where He wanted me. My heart resonated with the call of becoming a midwife, a title that carries a lot of mixed feelings for people, but which actually just means “with woman.” My eyes were opened to the living hell that childbirth is for millions of women around the world. It’s heartbreaking stuff to learn about, yet I finally felt like I could do something to help.

The fact is that developing nations have little to no healthcare for expecting mothers and newborn babies. The number two killer of women worldwide, second only to HIV/AIDS, is childbirth. What? The very thing that God created to bring new life into the world is killing 287,000 women every year, and 99% of those deaths occur in developing nations.

But we’re not off the hook either. Western cultures rely heavily on medical care to feel safe in childbirth. Yet why are 32.8% of U.S. babies delivered by cesarean section when experts agree that anything over a 15% C-section rate does more harm than good? And what of our induction rates? I had never known that induced birth not only hurts eons more than natural labor, but it also sends fetal distress off the charts—no wonder we need so many epidurals and narcotics.

It’s all in your perspective, I suppose. Mine has shifted drastically over the past three weeks. So far, we've learned how to take blood pressure, heart rates and UA's. We've learned how to be doulas--someone there to comfort and support mama during labor. We're learning about nutrition and how it impacts not only mama and baby's well-being during pregnancy, but how it can also cut down on delivery complications. We've learned how to teach classes on childbirth education (even though it might be a while until I'm ready for that). We have all been assigned to expecting mamas who are sharing their bellies with us so we can learn how to perform prenatal appointments. And most importantly, we are learning more and more every day who God is and how He designed birth to work.

It's been a wild journey so far. In a lot of ways, I had put God in a box. I believed He could do anything, yet I held tightly to the idea that I was in control of my future. He has overwhelmed me with His provision. Whenever I begin to panic, He just whispers, You may not have everything you need for the next six months, or year, or decade, but do you have what you need today? He has blessed me with beautiful new friends who are wildly in love with the King. He has given me the sweetest house to live in. He has kept me safe even though I’m living on a rock in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles away from civilization.

But most of all, He has reminded me that He loves me. The dreams in my heart are in His as well. He is an extravagant God...I need only trust Him.