Then Jesus began to teach his disciples: “The Human One must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and the legal experts, and be killed, and then, after three days, rise from the dead.” He said this plainly. But Peter took hold of Jesus and, scolding him, began to correct him. Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, then sternly corrected Peter: “Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts.”
After calling the crowd together with his disciples, Jesus said to them, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them. Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this unfaithful and sinful generation, the Human One will be ashamed of that person when he comes in the Father’s glory with the holy angels.” Jesus continued, “I assure you that some standing here won’t die before they see God’s kingdom arrive in power.”
Mark 8:31-38

The battle of love and fear

A part of the way I approach my doula work as a minister is always assuming God is already at work, and like a child lost in the woods, delighting in each breadcrumb I discover as they lead me home.

The more I have witnessed women birth, the more I am convinced we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what the female body in pregnancy and birth can teach us about Reality, about God and the mysterious ways God works in the world.

Consider this, in the birthing woman’s body lies a battle between love and fear.

The physiological reality unfolding in her body is a dramatic display of powerful hormones. Oxytocin, the love hormone (the hormone we all excrete when we orgasm, laugh, experience joy) is the force behind the powerful uterine contractions that force baby down into the pelvis and eventually out of her body. At any time in this process, the threat of adrenaline and cortisol, our flight/fight response hormones of stress and fear, can slow and even completely stall the process. When a birthing woman perceives a threat, these powerful hormones release and cause blood to move away from the uterus and into her hands and feet: to fight or to flee.

Love and fear.

Is this not our most primal battle as humans? It certainly is a spiritual battle God speaks of throughout the Scriptures. Why must God continually reassure Israel with the refrain Do not be afraid, Do not be afraid?

God made us. Our bodies, our sinews, our flesh, our muscle, our sophisticated hormonal responses.

God knows that our Reptilian brain will cause us to make decisions out of fear, but when we know that we are fully safe and secure, we can make meaningful choices out of love.

There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
1 John 4:18, The Message

Expectations

There is another important truth we can glean from a birthing woman. Uterine contractions are a productive sensation that leads to new life. As I coach mothers time and time again, when we perceive that sensation as a threat and double down on our resistance, we will experience more trauma. Uterine contractions are other-worldly in their power. They overwhelm us, yes. They can scare us, for sure. They remind us instantly of our infinitude and lack of control. But if we can find a way to surrender, we can ride the waves of this productive pain to new birth, new life.

This is where our theme for this second week of Lent enters.

Acceptance vs. Resistance

We see in the text from Mark that Peter, the passionate disciple, is struggling immensely with his expectations of what Jesus, the Messiah, would accomplish and how, with the clashing reality of Jesus’ terrifying words that he must suffer and die for new life to burst forth.

Peter, so sure of himself and so committed to his internal narrative of how this all would go down is said to scold Jesus, to which Jesus replies, “Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts.”

Damn. That’s harsh, Jesus.

I identify with Peter real hard throughout the Gospel accounts. He continually struggles to hold his vision with open hands. Every time Jesus challenges him, Peter initially resists, ultimately causing more trauma and pain when confronted with information that contradicts his expectations. Cutting off the ear, the three-time denial, the moment of fear as he realizes Jesus has led him into open water where he can only fully trust the Lord and the subsequent sinking in response to that fear.

Expectations vs. Reality. That’s where God gets me every time.

Surrender

I am embarrassed to admit it, but I have not learned this lesson well at all in my adult life. In every major season of life transition, I have encountered a stretch of time in which I could only trust in God’s timing, will, and manner; where my options for what I could control and try to hustle into reality had run out. And every single time I have thrown a tantrum like my three year old.

Chris and I had decided we would marry, and now it was on him to propose. Those weeks of waiting exposed the nastiest side of me: passive aggressive comments about timelines and venue booking deadlines, frustrated date nights, anger.

Surrendering to reality would have saved me weeks of anxiety, tension and frustration.

Fast forward five years and 10 days past Parker’s due date, I had done all the things to naturally induce labor (sex, nipple stimulation, eating dates like my life depended on it, long walks, etc.) and every night that I would wake up to pee only to realize I had not gone into labor, I melted into a desperate tantrum in the bathroom with God.

Surrendering to reality would have saved me weeks of anxiety, tension and frustration.

Fast forward two years and 9 days past Cedar’s due date, and Good Lord I was at it again! Pity parties, anger, helplessness.

Surrendering to reality would have saved me weeks of anxiety, tension and frustration.

God comes to you disguised as your life

Those are the words of author, retreat leader, speaker, playwright and psychotherapist Paul D’Arcy. God comes to you disguised as your life. God is your life. God is not hiding in plain sight waiting for you to find her. God comes to us as the various tensions, releases, circumstances and relationships we encounter every day. My futile attempts to make my life happen on my terms have always landed me frustrated, breathless and tired. In recent years, I have found it helpful when confronted with Reality that confounds my expectations to take a deep breath and surrender to it.

As James Finley beautiful says “What’s in the way is the way.”

Peter was so deeply concerned at Jesus’ prescription for himself. But Jesus was God. He knew exactly how this profound act of love needed to go down. Peter saw Jesus’ approach as unnecessary, inconvenient, and frankly, wrong.

Again, we find that birth is our greatest teacher. The way we birth is often the way we make love. It is the most intimate, revealing act that helps us gain a glimpse of the Reality of how we truly see ourselves, how we love ourselves; how connected we are to our bodies, how willing we are to trust and surrender to the moment.

It is natural to try to fight labor the moment it becomes intense. I remember a particular active-labor-contraction with Parker that sent me groping the wall of my bedroom like a wounded animal. I needed to find a grounding position that would allow me to trust God with my body, and to take the waves as they came.

Peter mistook his expectation as reality. Jesus corrected his skewed view.

What is the productive tension you are tempted to resist in your life this week? In your resistance, are you finding that you are experiencing the greater trauma of trying to take control? What might it look like to practice surrender to your current circumstances, to the season that is taking longer than you thought it would, to the contractions of a Loving God who wants to birth something new in you?

Embrace God’s paradoxical invitation today:

All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them.

May we lose our lives in all the right ways.