Not Yet, But Nearly
A devotional on pregnancy, patience, and the path to becoming a midwife
Birth is ceremony.
Every time I attend a birth, I remember, my body remembers, my soul recognizes: this is holy ground.
It is a ritual that rearranges me, a thread that stitches stability into my life. In the chaos of the world (both my personal world, and the world at large), attending birth returns me to the altar of what truly matters. Humanity rests on this ritual, and to say it’s a grounding force is a fierce understatement.
To witness someone give birth is to be reminded *viscerally* that love is real, and that God, however you understand them, lives in the body. Birth is one of the few remaining places in our modern lives where love becomes physical in the most literal way: muscles contract, waters break, sounds pour from the throat, and a human being is brought into the world through another. It is raw, wild, sweaty, soft, ancient.
In those potent moments, whether silent or roaring, smooth or chaotic, God is not somewhere far away. God is in the room. In the pulse of the placenta. In the trembling of the thighs. In the way the baby curls instinctively toward the chest it already knows.
You don’t need doctrine to see it. You don’t need a priest or a prayer book. You just need to pay attention. Because in birth, something holy happens: spirit becomes flesh. The veil between worlds thins. The divine mystery puts on skin and takes its first breath.
And in those moments, every witness: midwife, partner, doula, friend, is invited to remember that love is not a performance, but a force of nature. A presence. A portal.
Birth shows us that love is not only felt, it’s labored for. It is breathed through. It is bled for. It is birthed.
Right now, I am deep in a cycle of waiting.
Waiting for a baby.
Waiting for a phone call.
Waiting for the body to soften, open up and become a portal.
And I’m also perpetually waiting to become the midwife I am truly meant to be.
Like pregnancy, the path of traditional midwifery is not measured in semesters or exams. There are no tidy benchmarks. No gold stars. Only skilled hands becoming wise through repetition. Only intuition maturing through lived experience. Only the deep medicine of time and patience.
The knowing grows wild and round like a belly.
It arrives in the quiet between contractions.
It settles into the bones after hundreds of home births.
It’s not granted by degrees, but gathered through devotion. It is not awarded, it is absorbed, through every cry, breath, and birth.
So while I wait, I am apprenticed to patience, to slowness, to precision and purpose. The waiting stretches long because, deep down, I know this path was written into me.
A Lesson on the Magic of Desire
The end of pregnancy feels enchanted to me.
It’s swollen and sore, beautiful and boring, cosmic and domestic all at once.
The baby drops low into the pelvis, the body grows heavy with knowing.
And still, the world asks impatiently:
"Are you still pregnant?"
(You resist the urge to cast a mild hex)
This is the ripening hour.
Everything softens, sweetens, and bends toward birth.
But here’s the real magic of this phase: desire deepens.
Not the casual kind of desire, but the aching, sacred kind.
The kind that ripens slowly over time until it becomes unbearable, in the most holy way.
It’s the kind of desire that creates willingness.
To wait.
To labor.
To break.
To open.
To meet whatever comes on the other side of the veil.
When a birthing person says to me, eyes glassy with exhaustion and longing,
"I’m just so tired of waiting,”
what I hear underneath is:
“I’m stretched to my edge with wanting.”
And that wanting is doing its work.
It’s not just emotional, it’s alchemical.
It builds the capacity to surrender.
It gathers strength.
It chisels the soul into something wide enough to receive life as a force.
People constantly wonder how to prepare for labor and birth. Here’s the secret: Desire is your preparation. It is the spell that calls the baby through.
This deep hunger to meet the baby is not a flaw in the system—it is the system.
It is how love stretches its arms wide enough to carry new life.
The Mystery is the Highest Honor
We live in a culture that fears mystery.
We want everything fast and tidy, downloadable, and delivered by 2 PM.
So when labor doesn’t begin on our schedule, we’re told to hurry it up.
To induce. To control. To intervene.
If labor does not move on our timeline, we are told something is broken, we are confronted with a cascade of augmentations.
But labor that begins from within - spontaneous, slow, and sacred - holds its own kind of genius.
It whispers: You are ready.
It reiterates: Your baby knows the way.
When we skip the waiting, we often skip the wisdom, and a quiet and essential ritual is lost in the rush.
Yes, there are times when induction of various forms is necessary.
When the body needs encouragement and a baby could use a gentle nudge toward the process of labor. The body and the baby are incredible at sending signals when something needs support, guidance, intervention. But when there is no discernment, and we intervene simply because we are uncomfortable with the unknown, we are actively interrupting something ancient. There is a divine choreography at play in spontaneous labor. A wordless conversation between body and baby. A weaving of hormones and energy and intuition that can’t be replicated on a hospital clock.
When labor begins on its own, it is a sign that both baby and body have whispered “yes” to the crossing. It means that the womb and the soul have entered into sacred agreement: It is time. When we override that agreement without necessity, we risk disrupting more than just the timeline, we risk silencing the inner voice that says, I trust myself. We risk shaking the bond between mother and baby, who were not quite ready to meet. We risk teaching ourselves that discomfort is something to fix, rather than move through.
There’s wisdom in the waiting and medicine in the mystery. Birth knows this. Midwifery knows this. They are love stories with no shortcuts, only trust, only time and love.
