TO become mother is the richest wealth, that is allowed by God to the woman’s heart, but this rose-branch also has its thorns. What in Paradise God pronounced upon Eve, that she would bring forth her child in sorrow, has after her been the lot of every woman born of a woman. No childbirth without anguish.
It is indeed entirely true, that the suffering during and the after-pains after this anguish is not on a line with sickness. There is no poisonous corruption here at play. No medicine is administered against it. Even though it can bring a precious life into danger, of itself it does not lead to death, but to life. Sickness, unless there is an antidote, goes through suffering into death. Childbirth, provided circumstances are not untoward, goes from suffering to resurrection and renewal of life.
But though there is no sickness in the mystery of childbirth by itself, yet you cannot say, that it is natural. Unnatural, antinatural rather, says the Scripture, is this rise of the new life from the sometimes so dreadful menacing ordeal and the sometimes death-shore approaching agony.
No, says God’s Word, so it was not ordained by your God. In His creation, had it not been disturbed by sin, the new, young life would have come into being from pure delight, in sweet sensation, without aught suggestive of pain.
That now it is, as it is, God Himself in Paradise explains to be a punishment. A bitter punishment not imposed upon the man, but upon the woman, in connection with what the Scripture declares: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (I Tim. 2, 14).
And it is true, indeed, that not every woman has a like part in this anguish. The dispensation here is indeed very unequal. For one almost without suffering all the months that precede, just a painful emotion for a short time, and then, after speedy recovery, a picture of health and strength. And over against this so many another woman, who is almost exhausted by reason of all sorts of vexations, before she comes to her hour, in that hour itself sometimes to be tortured as on a rack; and after that terrible hour to suffer for weeks and months together, in case she recovers at all; and even if she does, to mourn all her life long the aftermath of that awful hour in broken strength that is never restored.
In between these extremes, of which one, as is said, does not turn a hand for it, and the other who had to pay for it worse than with her life, there are hundreds and thousands, whose lot changes with lesser and greater difference.
But however great the difference, woman as woman continues to bear this bitter suffering. And how this suffering is to be divided among the daughters of her generation, is not subject to human decision. That decides, that divides and appoints He, Who can make no mistake, the Lord our God.
PRUDISHNESS in our times banishes everything connected with childbirth from conversation.
Pure, exalted, free exchange of thought regarding this important chapter of our human life is smothered, that, alas, all too frequently, the impure and unholy whisper of sinful passion may be put in its place.
Our Savior does not put His seal to this prudery. Openly, in the hearing of the multitudes, before the ear of His disciples, He recalls these hidden, deep mysteries of human life.
“A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow,” so He spake in S. John 16, 21, “because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.”
And so it is, praise be to God, also in by far most instances. Truly weakening sensations months before, and also bitter anguish in the birththroes, but, when it has been endured, heavenly gladness in the blessed mothereye, when for the first time it may look upon the little one, that drinks in milk at her breast.
Motherwealth after motheranguish.
And yet, this is no fixed rule.
Sometimes in that anxious hour the mother or the little one succumbed. At rare times even mother and child together.
Then in one moment of time there is the ruin of a hope, so sweetly cherished for months together. Then there is death among people, where new life was about to be given. Everything somber, closing up the heart, and instead of the little baby voice, that was to be heavenly music, nothing but sobs and tears.
A young mother, who after everything that has been struggled through and endured, finds nothing but a cold, white infant-corpse, that mainly from love is concealed from her.
Or again, the baby saved, but the mother succumbed, and the newly born infant without mother come into the world.
And sometimes the saddest of all.
A husband who loved, a young man who for months already had dreamed himself a father, and now … nothing more. No child he had prayed for, and no more wife, who would have given him that child.
Nothing, nothing but black night, till the God of all comfort comes to his soul and calls out unto him: “In your blood, in the blood of your soul, live” (Ezek. 16, 9).
YET, though it runs no such tragic course, childbirth ever remains an episode of extreme importance in the homelife, which as a general thing is treated with greatest superficiality.
For indeed the cradle may interest you, and the beautiful infant, as one of God’s little creatures, may lead you up to the Creator of the children of men. It is even human, and therefore good, that all there is charming about it, because it is small and lovely, attracts you; and that the nurse and all that goes with her name, engages you.
But yet, shall it be well, then here also life must be lived more deeply.
More deeply lived by the husband, who, though the wife bears the anguish, yea, just because the wife bears the anguish, in holy sympathy of love, will suffer with her whom he loves. If ever the heart of a man is drawn out from his selfishness, to forget himself and to give himself to another, it must be in those days of anxiety.
But the young mother also must multiply thoughts within herself, and live through days of so high seriousness, seriously also with respect to the future.
Only by becoming a mother, the young woman breaks forever with a life, that in many ways was merely play with her.
All this is now ended, and brought to nought. Now calling beckons; from now on there awaits her a glorious task, to train that little child, given her of God, first for the family, then for the world, and under it all, for heaven.
Also the motherbreast, undoubtedly, for that too is a miracle of God in your own blood; but more still your motherheart is what your baby asks for, or better yet, God asks it in behalf of the darling, which He gave you.
A SECOND, a third childbirth does not bring that anxiety and neither has it therefore that great charm; and yet, unto the end, no course through the mystery of life remains so deeply serious.
You would say, there is but one way through this hiddenness; and see, in the end every new confinement proves to be different. Never the same, always different, be it the impressions of the heart, be it by what God had appointed for us in it.
But what above all imparts so different a character to a second or third confinement, is the little one you already had.
For the first time that little sister and brother in your own family. Something you well knew in your parental home, when you yourself were a little brother or little sister, but had never so enjoyed it in its beautiful poetry.
That little darling at the cradle of the newly born. Understanding nothing of it, and yet in his childlike way gazing so seriously at the little wight. O, so beautiful, and yet also again so bitter; for almost never have two little children been seen in one home, but early or late, there sprang up a fountain of that selfsame water, that once poisoned all Cain’s heart and made him seek so terrible a relaxation in Abel’s death.
O, from that chamber of birth are the issues of life, and he who has but an eye for it, observes sometimes already in that chamber a whole world in miniature.
WHAT is most serious therefore remains: A childbirth lived through without God.
This truly is the zenith of self-delusion. For how could there ever be a childbirth, if there were no God; if God did not create; and did not give the wife the motherblessing to bring forth.
A mother and a child do not yet make a childbed. In the chamber of birth God must always be present to you. That only imparts to it a sacred mystery, and so only can also the suffering, the sometimes bitter anguish, in confident faith be struggled through.
Then, before it comes so far, prayer is made. Prayer, before hope came, that hope might come, and when it came, that it might be fulfilled. In and during the fulfillment, prayer for assistance and help. And prayer the first evening after the birth for the life of the young baby.
So prayer is made and thanks given. For God is good and great, and a God full of compassion also to that little child.
Does not Baptism already beckon?
And Baptism, that holy Baptism of God Triune, what else does it say, than that your little one, yea, truly is yours, but yet really already from his birth belongs to his Father Who is in heaven?
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