For the Worn Out and Discouraged

laboring over the long haul

When I was in labor with my youngest baby, I went to the hospital much earlier than I needed to.

It was an understandable thing to do. Mel’s birth had been so quick; I had gone from a sound sleep at home to a babe in arms in the hospital in less than 2 ½ hours. 

This time around, I’d been having frequent, intense contractions for several hours, and I thought I’d better err on the side of caution—I didn’t want to give birth in our car on the Beltway.

Imagine my surprise when the midwife checked my progress and said I was only at 3 centimeters. (10 centimeters=time to push.) I was so sure I was further along than I was. I was sure I was in active labor. 

Even worse, the contractions had petered out by that point. 

We consulted with the midwife and our doula, who laid out the options. Robert and I could go home, go back to bed (it was the evening), and see what happened. Or we could spend the next hour walking around the hospital to try and get the contractions going again. 

I opted to walk. The contractions picked up again, and after countless loops around the quiet nondescript hallways, labor was underway in earnest. I gave birth a few hours later.

I have this print framed and hanging above my desk at home: 

The artist is Kimothy Joy, and the words are Sikh activist and writer Valarie Kaur:

In our tears and agony, we hold our children close and confront the truth: the future is dark. But my faith dares me to ask: what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead but a country still waiting to be born? 

The quote is part of a longer piece Kaur shared at the end of 2016, speaking at a time when many people were feeling overwhelmed and afraid:

Remember the wisdom of the midwife: “Breathe,” she says. Then: “Push.”

Now it is time to breathe. But soon it will be time to push; soon it will be time to fight — for those we love — Muslim father, Sikh son, trans daughter, indigenous brother, immigrant sister, white worker, the poor and forgotten, and the ones who cast their vote out of resentment and fear.

And push, many of us did. 

Now, years later, many of those same people Kaur spoke to and for are overwhelmed and afraid again. Maybe you’ve been reading the same news I have over the past several weeks. The same analysis. The same what-if scenarios. There’s growing alarm over Project 2025 and the specter of Christian Nationalism. There’s wondering whether the Supreme Court just converted our president into an unaccountable king. There’s indignation—or worse, resignation—that 82% of people in our democracy want a ban on bump stocks, but they remain constitutionally protected, and will for the foreseeable future. Overwhelm gives way to panic. Folks want assurances that everything’s going to be OK, and why wouldn’t we? Isn’t there someone who can lead us out of this mess? 

As I take stock of the world as it still is, seven years after Kaur’s secular sermon, I’ve been reminded of my childbirth experience. I remember my utter shock and dismay at hearing “3 centimeters.” How can we not be further along? There’s still so far to go. And it already hurts so much. 

In a recent conversation with Krista Tippett about Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown asked how each of us is practicing democracy: in our families, our communities, our organizations. The work of world-building is long and painstaking, but it takes place in miniature. “Small is good; small is all,” brown has written, “The large is a reflection of the small.” She recalls her work as a community organizer during 2003 and 2004, with a war raging in Iraq and an election underway at home. Her organizing work centered on a singular goal—to elect a presidential candidate—until she had an epiphany:

So we’re doing all this organizing, and it clicked for me… it’s one of those things, you see it and you can’t un-see it. And I was like, oh, we are trying to just change the top layer of this very layered cake, this very layered process, this system of governance. We think that if we just win the presidency, that we’ll be able to change the world.

And it clicked for me that actually, it’s a fractal system. And it’s layer on top of layer on top of layer. And if none of us are practicing democracy anywhere, it’s not going to just suddenly work at the top layer.

As I think about our world, not just in recent days but over a period of years, really, it’s becoming apparent that we’re still in early labor. Maybe you thought we were further along than we are. I may have believed that too. But it would seem the hardest stage of the work hasn’t even begun yet.

And maybe you’re too tired right now to walk the hospital halls. Maybe you need to go home and rest for a while so you’re ready for active labor, transition, and pushing still to come. That’s fine. But the work is coming for all of us, sooner or later. No leader, no party, no institution, is going to rise out of nowhere and take that work away. You are needed. But you were created, tailor-made, for the tasks that are yours to do—the tasks which, if you do not do them, they will not be done.

We are all thus created, and called to the work… the labor of birthing a better, more just and loving world.

~

An Invitation for Supporting Subscribers

This month, I’m taking a break from book-related conversations with an online gathering to talk about that great interview between Krista Tippett and adrienne maree brown, linked above and here (you can listen or read or both). If you’re feeling exhausted or discouraged, I think it’s a great balm and a call to action, and I expect our gathering will leave you ready for the next phase of labor. 

Monday, July 22, noon EDT.

Zoom link is below for supporting subscribers—you can sign up for as little as about 50 cents per post. Members and friends of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Herndon are eligible for complimentary gift subscriptions—just ask.