Missions: Organic, Locally Grown and Dead

What’s society abuzz about these days?

Fresh and local.

What’s the church abuzz about these days?

Fresh and local – 

Local ministries done by local believers in our local area. We’ve redefined the Great Commission to be about loving our local neighbor. And we’ve redefined it to the extent that our millions of dollars of missions giving in the church has been redirected to social effort in our communities. 

Loving our neighbor is obviously a command in Scripture.                                                      It’s a good thing.                                                                                                                                 It’s a great thing.                                                                                                                              But it is NOT the Great Commission.                                                                                            And it is NOT missions. 

The Great Commission commands us to go to the uttermost.                                          Section 8 housing in America is not the uttermost. 

It’s the reason why Nate and I and other peers who are going into unreached missions have been denied funding from churches. After 7 months of asking for church support, we’ve only been backed by ONE church. The overwhelming reason: “Our missions budget is used up” or “We focus on our local area first.” Thank God he has used individuals to carry our finances to the point where we have almost 50% of what we need to reach a new tribe in Papua New Guinea. 

Obviously fresh and local is not a sinful philosophy, but it’s a philosophy from the world that Christians have been sold on. When we as the church want exactly what secular society is touting, however harmless it seems, we need to take a step back and evaluate. 

Satan has used something silly and off the radar to deceive us. It’s brilliant, really. We’ve taken a totally amoral societal trend and used it to neglect the Biblical command to go to all the nations. And people are dying and going to hell because of it. 

Remember that Paul told the Corinthians to not be ignorant of the devil’s schemes. 

And before you think that what I’m saying is absolutely ludicrous, just think about it for a second. 

Erin’s Birth

I would say that typically I’m not easily swayed by the crowd, but when I was getting advice about labor from mothers who had been there, I felt like I should listen. I mean, I didn’t want to be that arrogant millennial who refuses ALL advice.

You should do these pelvic exercises this many times a day for this long.
You need to have an advocate in the delivery room with you.
You need to research the c-section rates of the hospitals in the areas.
Your body was made for this; you don’t need any medical intervention.
Do not get an epidural! They cause permanent nerve damage.
Refuse medication. It interferes with your ability to listen to your body’s signals.
Read this book.
Practice this type of breathing.
You need a birthing ball. 

But around the second trimester I thought, you know what, I know myself. I already have anxiety issues, and the more I research, the more freaked out and overwhelmed I feel.  Hundreds of women give birth every day, and no matter how much research or “practice” I do, it’s going to suck all the same. So I’ll just deal with it when I get to that point. 

I stopped googling; I stopped trying to prepare. I didn’t go to any childbirth classes, practice any breathing techniques, watch any videos; I didn’t get any weird birthing balls. I just learned the basic stages of labor and what to expect with each.

At 36 weeks, at my normal appointment, my blood pressure was suddenly through the roof. The doctor wasn’t concerned. She told me to come back in a couple days just to be safe, but it was probably a fluke. 

At 36 weeks and 2 days, it was Nate’s birthday. I scribbled out a few ingredients on a grocery list so I could make him his favorite cake later that day. I ate a waffle for breakfast, went back in to the doctor and my blood pressure hadn’t budged. I squirmed in the chair on the crinkly paper. My sweet, sweet doctor came in and said, “Let’s have a baby today.” 

I cried. 

At 4:00 I went to the 4th floor of labor and delivery at the Forsyth Hospital. They admitted me to a room. I wore an ugly gown.

Nate asked if this meant he wouldn’t get his cake.

I was given blood pressure medicine and some sleep medicine to relieve my anxiety and help me rest.

Early the next morning they started pitocin to get Erin moving.

I watched a couple episodes of Gilmore Girls. The nurse on duty was an idiot, and had never seen the show.

I had always wondered what contractions feel like: It’s just squeezing; but instead of expelling unused blood from your womb like normal every month, your body’s trying to expel a 7, 8, 9 pound body. 

Okay then. 

No thanks.

I got an epidural. 

The pain went away for one contraction. Then something went wrong with the epidural; it wore off immediately on half of my body. I laid on my side and with every contraction sang in my head to my sweet Erin, 

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird, and if that mockingbird don’t sing, momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring…”

Time passed. 

Pain sucks. 

The nurse who was supposed to be monitoring my contractions was doing who knows what and had been out of the room for a very long time. Nate finally was able to get her. My contractions were really close, and I thought I might be in the last stage of labor.

Erin was ready. 

I took deep breaths and pushed like the nurse told me. It took a few practices to figure out what “push” actually means. But then I knew. 

The computer monitor stopped working, but I knew when my contractions were happening, and my body knew when to push. 

The nurse and Nate both abandoned me temporarily to try to get the monitor working. I pushed on my own.

An hour later, Erin was born. 

They checked her vitals. 

They sewed me up. 

I needed to pee, but I couldn’t. 

I got a catheter. 

I was wheeled into a recovery room at 11 at night. 

Erin went to the NICU for a couple days and I had to stay in the hospital for a couple more days to wait for my blood pressure to go down.

We all went home.

The end.

Could I have been more prepared? Definitely. But what would have been the point? It wouldn’t have taken away the pain. And I trusted that if something were to go wrong, the doctors would use their years of medical training to make the right decisions for me and my baby. I wasn’t going to bank on my 2 months of research to go against their years of expertise and possibly risk death to me or Erin just because I wanted the birth to happen a certain way. 

For my next kid, I’m not going to do anything differently. 

Having a baby just sucks. There’s no position you can move in or breathing technique you can do or oil you can diffuse to make childbirth an enjoyable experience. Pain in childbirth is a result of the fall, and you’ll suffer through it like millions of women have. And if you’re lucky (and in the vast majority), you’ll be just fine and you’ll both survive. 

My advice: if your personality says “do all the research,” then do all the research. If you want to watch the scary birth videos and attend all the classes, go for it. But if that’s not your style, and you’re more of the “I’ll be happy now and let it suck when it gets here” type, then do that and don’t let anyone talk you out of it. Childbirth is a normal part of life. It’s okay to just let it happen.