A Midwife Was the Best Pastor I’ve Ever Had
“Mmm.”
“Mmm.”
This affirmation sound was one that Tracy made over and again as a part of our conversations during my wife Kelly’s prenatal check-ups. We had never done this before, and her response was equal parts affirming and calming. Our stories were greeted with affirmation and peace; a gift in and of itself.
One of the realities of leaving ministry that year was losing our community. The other was not having any spiritual care. We found it unexpectedly through our midwife.
I wasn’t convinced when Kelly told me she wanted to go the water birth route instead of giving birth in a traditional hospital. Our initial meeting with Tracy sold me on the experience. The three of us met at “the birth cottage,” this little air-bnb looking home in the middle of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Nestled into the rolling hills of wine country, this is the sort of place you would most likely equate with a vacation rather than having a baby. It was peaceful, warm, and homey. And it was the place that our son would be born nine months later.
Tracy is a small person, probably no more than 5’2”, and had a wise and ageless quality to her. Kelly and I weren’t sure if she was 20 or 60. She had 5 kids all still at home, so we figured that she was somewhere in between the two.
Most of our appointments happened in one of two homes that our birth center renovated and repurposed for birth centers. One was in Portland, and the other was in Dundee. When we walked into these cozy spaces we immediately felt at home and at ease. There were essential oil diffusers in both places, and the smell of lavender oil filled up the entire house.
Spiritual care doesn’t seem like a real thing until you need it. Ministry people, like me, are often without it. We provide it for others until it becomes as ordinary as breathing, rarely realizing the impact of our work.
When Kelly and I first stepped into the birth center, we didn’t realize just how anxious we were. Between leaving the church and new-parent nerves, we were on edge. Tracy’s non-anxious presence, affirmation, and ability to hold space for us to process our changing world provided ballast for our ship.
At first, I held back a bit — observing and commenting to Kelly afterward. It took me several months of regular visits to fully relax into and begin trusting the spaces she created for Kelly and me to process in. Maybe it just takes a while for ministers to trust someone else’s spiritual leadership.
A few months into the pregnancy, we were a little late on the timetable of when we should have been able to initially hear our baby’s heartbeat. Kelly was getting concerned. Tracy was highly in tune with this and ordered us a full ultrasound at the local hospital so that what we could see that our baby was perfectly healthy and growing. Evidently, her placenta was in front of the baby, which Tracy compared listening for a heartbeat to be a bit like trying to listen through a thick steak.
I’m not entirely sure how to communicate how much Tracy meant to our family during this season. When you are feeling untethered, without a spiritual community, and facing a huge life transition, it’s easy to feel lost. We certainly did. We needed someone to help ground us. Calm us down. Find a way to re-center us and help us focus on bringing our child into the world.
There was a team of midwives at our birthing center, and we cycled through meeting with most of them through the course of our pregnancy. The team was amazing and diverse, from students to experienced. The ones who have been midwives for the longest seem to have been transformed from their holy work. I’ve met seasoned pastors who became defensive and inauthentic through their work, but the older midwives I encountered seemed perfectly transparent and clear. Vulnerable. Set apart. Almost other-worldly.
One, in particular, we will call her Martha, was easily 90 years old. Or 50. We couldn’t tell. Completely offbeat, and she had certainly zagged anytime the world had told her she was supposed to zig. She had a wonderful, joy-filled laugh and a pair of gnarled hands that had birthed thousands of babies. Clear-eyed. Emotionally intelligent. The best sense of humor. And even after all of this time being a midwife, was still completely wonder-filled as she guided us through our life-giving transition. She gave each of us a big hug when we left our session with her and somehow you knew, if Martha said it was going to be okay, it would be.
Each appointment with a midwife started the same way. A deep, calming breath and then a question.
“How are you?”
Less in the passing sense that we ask each other that on a daily basis, and more like, “We are going to camp out here as long as you need.”
Initially, I would think of a thousand other ways to answer that question than with honesty. Or I would answer it too quickly. Having a midwife who I didn’t have to perform for, who simply cared for us, gradually thawed both Kelly and I out. As a pastor, I felt I always had to have a smile on my face and the right answers at the ready. This was different and life-giving. Eventually, I found the strength to say “I’m not sure how I’m doing, but I am so glad that we are going through this together.”
// “A Midwife Was The Best Pastor I’ve Ever Had.” written for my friends over at Cascade Ministries