A friend left a comment on post about Scarlett, mentioning truth as a lens, and I loved that phrase. It also provided a perfect springboard for another element of that story that I just couldn't find a place for in the post, but that I wanted to write about in some way. In probably more than one post, I've mentioned how fantastic my midwife, Jami, was throughout my pregnancy and Scarlett's birth, and she continued to be so long after (which, by the way, is one of the many ways I find the midwife experience to be about a trillion times better than the doctor experience). As I said in the post about the unexpected twists in our journey with Scarlett, Jami noted that there were a couple of things that somewhat out of the "normal" range. The beautiful thing is that while these things might have, unnecessarily, been given more immediate attention in a hospital setting, Jami mentioned them in time, but let the focus of the birth be entirely about the miracle that was Scarlett. I love this picture of her examining Scarlett, because much later, I realized that she was just then seeing some things that might be problematic. Dave was teasing her a bit by taking her picture, but she was just smiling, not betraying the least sense of worry. 
When she handed Scarlett back to me, she didn't bombard me with all the possibilities, but only said how beautiful she was. She did let me know in the most gentle way later than she noticed things that were somewhat different than might be expected, and when I told her what the doctor was concerned about, she acknowledged that he had had to tell me that. But she herself didn't dwell on speculations, nor, on the other hand, did she blow off my fear by offering quick assurances. She always, in the many times we talked about it over the next few months, managed to strike a balance between acknowledging possibilities and speaking peace over my fears, and she did it by being a "lens of truth." She filtered everything through what was just the truth, and she spoke it every time we talked - "She's beautiful, God placed her in this family who loves her, and He has a plan for her." She was, as another friend called her, "a peaceful presence," and that presence certainly was an important part of how I survived (and perhaps grew just a little!) in those first few months of Scarlett's life.
When she handed Scarlett back to me, she didn't bombard me with all the possibilities, but only said how beautiful she was. She did let me know in the most gentle way later than she noticed things that were somewhat different than might be expected, and when I told her what the doctor was concerned about, she acknowledged that he had had to tell me that. But she herself didn't dwell on speculations, nor, on the other hand, did she blow off my fear by offering quick assurances. She always, in the many times we talked about it over the next few months, managed to strike a balance between acknowledging possibilities and speaking peace over my fears, and she did it by being a "lens of truth." She filtered everything through what was just the truth, and she spoke it every time we talked - "She's beautiful, God placed her in this family who loves her, and He has a plan for her." She was, as another friend called her, "a peaceful presence," and that presence certainly was an important part of how I survived (and perhaps grew just a little!) in those first few months of Scarlett's life. So thanks, Jami. And go midwives!
Anyway, the aforesaid comment on the previous Scarlett post also mentioned my transparency, which I'm not usually known for. But I have tried, on occasion, to be a little more so, after a close friend of mine was talking about rough time in her life, and how it had hit her particularly hard because she had felt naive about anything like that happening to her. I realized that one of the reasons we go through that period of shock in rough times ("how could this be happening to me?') is that we tend to hide those feelings and experiences from even our closest friends. The result is that we spend so much time feeling like failures because it seems that no "good" mother, wife, friend, Christian, etc, would feel that way or have that experience...when the truth is that ALL good mothers, wives, friends, Christians, etc. go through these kinds of things, however the details express themselves. So I'm not advocating answering, "How are you today?" with a list of one's innermost feelings on every occasion, but I do think some transparency is called for now and then, and I'm happy for my story about Scarlett to promote that to some extent.
And on a final note of transparency, I wrapped up that post in a tidy fashion, as if I had achieved loving Scarlett, or all of my children, perfectly. Obviously I hope you all take that librerally, and not as a literal expression of my perfection! If anything, the experience has highlighted how I can't love them perfectly, and how I'm glad that their Heavenly Father can do so. But being aware of that can help me as a mother realize my tendency to cling to expectations of their futures, rather than just loving who they are...and perhaps I can move a little closer each day to the latter.
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