Labor and Delivery

Six weeks ago, early in the wee hours of a Friday morning, I was in a tiny, closet-sized room in the hospital Emergency Department.  I had two separate IVs in my right arm, pumping me full of fluids and electrolytes; they were drawing blood out of my left arm.  Every time someone walked into the room they apologized for the size of the room.

I was like, hey, I have a bed, a TV and a door, I’m good.  Every time they opened the door, I got a peek of a woman in a bed parked by the nurse’s station, so I wasn’t going to complain.

The severe abdominal pain that had sent me to the ER six hours earlier was beginning to lessen, but the numbers that showed up on my bloodwork didn’t lie.  I had known I had gallstones for ten years, and by watching my diet, I had been able to avoid surgery but finally, that night, the pain became more than I could bear and the bloodwork was clear, something, most likely a gallstone or the nasty, tar-like sludge that had been collecting in my very diseased gallbladder for years had blocked my bile duct and my liver was very unhappy. 

I needed surgery, so the hospital admitted me, but I was still stuck in the ER.

Finally, after several hours, the nurse burst into the room, “We have a bed for you!”

“Great!” I said.

“It’s in Labor and Delivery!” she said.

They had found me, a fifty-year-old woman, a bed in the maternity ward.

And I laughed.  And I kept laughing throughout the rest of the day.  I laughed every time someone texted me asking me how I was and I got to tell them, “I’m in Labor and Delivery!”  And when my dad, who had left to get some things for me back at my house, texted to see where I was, I said, “Check in with Labor and Delivery!”

Later in the afternoon, when I had two liver doctors in my new room and the surgeon and her resident popped in, the surgeon said, “Well, it’s a party in here!”

And I said, “It’s always a party in Labor and Delivery!”

And I kid you not, my surgeon started to dance.

And every bit of this was perfect.

You see Reverend Jane had asked me several weeks before if I would preach on June 14^th and when I pulled up the readings and saw the Genesis reading with Sarah laughing when God told her she was going to have a baby, I knew I wanted to preach on laughter, but I also like to give personal stories when I preach and I just didn’t have anything that fit with Sarah.

Until they told me at the hospital that I was headed to Labor and Delivery for my gallbladder.

The bad news was I needed surgery.  The good news was that I was going to have an awesome story to share.

In our reading today from Genesis 18 and 21, Sarah also winds up with an amazing story to share.  Sarah and Abraham are having a normal, routine day when three strangers approach their camp. 

Abraham treats the men as he would any strangers, providing them food and water, encouraging them to eat and rest and wash their feet.

The men ask Abraham where Sarah is and the fact that they ask for her by name should tell Abraham that these are no ordinary men.

Abraham says that Sarah is in the tent.  Actually, Sarah is hiding behind the tent flaps eavesdropping, because of course she is.  This is probably the most excitement she has had in a while, certainly the most interesting thing that has happened to her that day.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  We’d all be hiding behind the tent flap.

What Sarah doesn’t know is that her day is about to get wilder than she could ever imagine.

Because one of the men, who we are told is the Lord, tells Abraham that by the time He passes this way again, Sarah will give birth.

At this, Sarah laughs—we are told she laughs to herself, but I imagine she was a little vocal about it and that her laugh was more of a scoff or a snort, because Sarah is ninety years old.  She is long past the age where she can have children.

God, still addressing Abraham, asks why Sarah just laughed.  Does she not believe that anything is possible with God?

Now Sarah knows she’s in trouble.  She pokes her head from behind the tent flap and denies ever laughing.

But God, and I imagine Him smiling, says something along the lines of this, “Oh, Sarah, do not try and gaslight the Lord, your God.  You were laughing.”

Why was Sarah laughing though?

In Romans 5:1-5, Paul writes words that we are familiar with, that suffering produces endurance, endurance character and character hope, but at ninety years old, Sarah has long given up hope she will have children.

Sarah laughs not because she doubts God’s power, but because she doubts God’s grace.  Why would God gift her, Sarah, a child after all these years?  Why has He decided to answer this prayer now?  Sarah’s laugh was born from a lifetime of disappointment.

Later, after giving birth to Isaac (a name which incidentally means “he laughs”), Sarah laughs again, but this time with joy.  There is an implication that people used to laugh at her, mocking her, deriding her, shaming her for her lack of children.  But now, Sarah acknowledges, they are laughing with her; they are sharing her joy.

That Saturday morning when I had my gallbladder out, afterwards, they took me back to my room in Labor and Delivery.  You could hear babies crying.  Periodically, I could hear little feet belonging to a new older brother or sister running down the hallway outside my door.  It was a ward filled with joy.  What better place to be brought back to after having surgery.

That night was surreal.  Nights in hospitals are generally a surreal time, especially following surgery.  You live in a dreamlike state, a haze from the leftover anesthesia and the painkillers.  You never feel fully asleep or fully awake.

At one point as I drifted into waking, I asked the night nurse about the compression sleeves on my lower legs, the ones that inflate and deflate to keep you from developing blood clots.  I asked her if they were really necessary.  She moved to the foot of my bed and began undoing the sleeves, as she checked my legs for signs of swelling. 

When she began to take off those lovely, bright yellow hospital issued socks with treads on the top and bottoms, I started to feel embarrassed.  After everything I had been through in the last 48 hours, I was embarrassed for her to see my feet.  Afterall there hadn’t been time to stop for a pedicure when my dad raced me to the hospital.

She carefully examined my feet for signs of wounds or other red flags and then she walked to the bathroom.  A moment later, she reappeared carrying some of that no rinse soap they give you before surgery and a washcloth.  She walked back over to my bed and then she began to carefully and thoroughly wash my feet.

There are times when we only see God in hindsight, in retrospect, in memory.  We are Moses getting a glimpse of God only after He has passed us by.

But sometimes we see God in real time, in the moment, because when a nurse begins washing your feet at one o’clock in the morning after you have been through one of the scariest moments of your life, that is Jesus-love at work.  When you are vulnerable and weak, an unexpected moment of kindness and tenderness can humble you to such a point that, like the old hymn says, your soul begins to tremble, tremble, tremble as it wakes itself to a higher truth.

God is present. 

He is present in the night nurses and others (like the Stephen ministers we’ll be commissioning shortly) those who have answered Jesus’ call in Matthew 9:37-38 to be a laborer for the harvest.

God bless those laborers who have committed themselves to bringing God’s healing and love to others.

God bless the grace they bring, the hope they stoke and kindle within our souls.

And God bless their joy.

Right before they were set to wheel me back for surgery, the nurse who was checking me in and prepping me, looked at me, looked at my dad, looked back at me and said, “Do you want to give your glasses to your husband?”

I pretended to think for a second and then pointed at him and said, “Sooo, that’s my dad.”

The nurse was embarrassed, but we all had a good laugh about it.  I have a young dad.  I’m fifty.  He’s seventy.  His mother, my grandmother, is ninety-one and depending on the day we might all look the same age. And on that day, right before surgery, I probably looked somewhere between seventy years old and—you know—zombie.

When the surgeon appeared a minute later, she looked at me, looked at my dad, looked back at me, pointed at my dad and said, “And who’s this?”

And then we all started laughing again.

Author Anne Lamott calls laughter, “Carbonated holiness.”

And it was that holiness I felt bubbling up inside of me in those final moments before surgery.  I had no fear; I felt only excitement.

Suffering, a chaplain once told me, is a thin place, that place where the veil is thin and God’s presence is palpable, but I would add that hope and joy are also thin places.  God is with us through all times, both good and bad.

He is with you right now, as near as your own soul.

May God’s presence bring you joy today.

And may that joy be rich with laughter.

Amen.