Foreword
I wrote the following post about Asher’s birth just prior to the United States' contact with and subsequent quarantine guidelines for the Corona Virus. I didn’t post when I first wrote it or thereafter because the timing went from “not feeling right” to worse and worse. Today, I am so thankful that I waited until I felt further prompted to share this post, because I have gained just enough more perspective to see the whole picture more clearly.
First, I want to address the global situation that we all find ourselves in. More so than having any personal fears or worries in regard to the actual virus, I have found myself disappointed and misunderstanding the current times we are living in. It is no surprise to anyone who has read some of my blog posts or even Instagram captions, that I have been believing and speaking into the prophetic word that the year 2020 will be a year of double blessing, and prosperity, and breakthrough, and a great spiritual revival, and that many amazing signs and wonders and visions and dreams will be made manifest to us. Also, as I address in the following blog post, I strongly believed that the birth of my sweet new baby was going to fit perfectly into the prophetic words for 2020, starting with a birth on 02-20-2020 (he was born 3 days later on the 23rd) and ending with an undeniable anointing of Joy. Instead, from the very first day of the year 2020, my family, our extended family, our community, and now the United States and beyond, are experiencing what feels to be the exact opposite of everything spoken in faith and prophecy. It has left me confused to say the least.
Although my daily life has changed close to none with the quarantine guidelines, my spirit has felt some unrest. Thus, I have decided to spend extra time seeking the Lord and discerning his voice. For days I felt like I was coming up nil. Then last night after falling asleep I was woken up several times throughout the night from hearing distinct voices. Honestly it made me more fearful than anything, but I eventually slept the rest of the night and had a crazy dream. Still, I have no interpretation for my dream, but I could sense the willingness in my spirit to hear God’s voice today. I spent the first half of the day reading my bible and listening to worship music and watching a sermon. Suddenly I felt the presence of God drop some truth into my heart about all of the uncertainty I have felt this year so far. Ironically, I already wrote about this very truth 10 days ago when I sought to write about Asher’s birth. But now I realize the words I wrote so perfectly describe the much larger situation at hand.
As I detail below, with Asher’s birth I was feeling let down that not every single thing I was declaring for his birth came to pass. This is how I feel about these first 3 months of what is supposed to be a “banner year”. The simple truth that God spoke to me today was that, when things appear to be the darkest, that is when He is the most near. Psalm 23 says, “Even when I walk through the darkest valley… you are close beside me.” And with this realization I felt the nearness of God and that, I am not as far off as I thought I was. And that we are not as far away from the banner year that has been prophesied as we currently think we are.
Today I am going to leave that revelation right there, plain and simple without digging into it the way I would like. Instead I am going to let the following blog post, about Asher’s birth, that I wrote 10 days ago, explain the rest.
The 23rd
Psalm 23
1
The Lord is my shepherd;
I have all that I need.
2
He lets me rest in green meadows;
he leads me beside peaceful streams.
3
He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths,
bringing honor to his name.
4
Even when I walk
through the darkest valley,[a]
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
protect and comfort me.
5
You prepare a feast for me
in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings.
6
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
Forever.
Psalm 23 is probably the most familiar Psalm, and it is one I have read, memorized, and contemplated before. But I must admit, that I have never gravitated toward this passage of scripture in the way that I know many people have for comfort, peace, strength, or hope. I guess I easily associate this passage with trials and for that reason I somewhat avoid it. Not because I am a stranger to trials, but because I don’t like to think about or dwell on hard things that have or haven’t, may or may not happen. So imagine my level of avoidance when the Lord dropped this passage on my heart in the few days before Asher was born. Even with my spirit prompting me to open my bible and read Psalm 23, I chose to ignore that still, small voice, and continue on declaring a perfect, everything completely aligned, easy and pain free, supernatural birth.
As I wrote in my previous blog post, just days before my due date with Asher, 02-20-2020, I was confident that he was going to be born ON his due date. Starting the evening before the 20th I could tell my contractions were shifting from braxton hicks to early labor contractions. I was certain that I would wake up in the morning and be in labor and have a baby by the afternoon. Yet, by the afternoon, my just piddled out and then completely stopped. When nighttime came around I felt a little defeated that Asher wasn’t going to have the perfect birth date, that I so publicly declared over him, and then I settled back into the waiting game that is labor.
In the next couple days many people mentioned to me that maybe Asher would really come on the 22nd and still have that “double portion”/prophetic numbers for his birthday. This is when I began to know/feel/suspect that he was going to instead be born on the 23rd. I have no idea what made me think this, but I became so sure of it that I started looking up every scripture in the bible that had a chapter 2, verse 23 in it, so I could find something to declare over Asher in the days before his birth. And as I said before, I actively and purposefully avoided reading Psalm 23 even though I felt the prompting and tugging of my heart to do so. I like numbers and numerical symbolism so I often look up scriptures that coordinate with certain numbers. In regard to anything with 2:23, I was surprised to find only a small handful of verses:
“Be glad, people of Zion, rejoyce in the LORD your God, for he has given you the autumn rains because he is faithful. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before.” (Joel 2:23)
I loved this verse for several reasons, one because it mentions rejoycing as “Asher” means “Happy, Joyful, blessed”. Also because in the bible, mention of rain or showers is often synonymous with blessing. And lastly because of the mention of Spring. Tyson wanted Asher’s middle name to be Spring because we moved to Spring, Texas and that is where our first little Texan was born!
Another verse I found and loved was James 2:23.
“And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God.” (James 2:23).
As far as believing for another pain free, supernatural birth experience this verse summed up everything I have come to know and think and believe and act upon in the last couple of years. I have learned to take God, take His Word, take the Bible, as complete (total, full without error or doubt) truth. I have come to expect the Word of God to be performed in my life exactly as I profess and walk out in my personal faith.
Born on the 23rd
Armed with these couple of verses to proclaim over Asher, I anxiously waited until the 23rd when I found myself in fact in labor! Just like the pattern of my previous births, I started having contractions the night before, went to sleep, having contractions throughout the night, and woke up the next morning declaring, “I am in labor, let’s call the midwives.” First I got ready, did my hair, put on my makeup and then I called my midwife at 9:00 am, having had consistent contractions at 5 minutes apart, lasting for about 1 minute each. Expecting a fairly fast labor, I didn’t want to take the chance of my midwife not getting to our house in time, so I told her to maybe arrive at our house by 10:00 am (thinking that the baby would be born before noon).
Noon came and went and my labor simply wasn’t progressing very fast. My contractions were still consistent and strong - although when there is no pain it is hard to gauge if they are becoming more intense. I sent my mom and our kids out of the house, thinking a little less distraction and a little more peace would help my body relax. Tyson and I decided to walk around the green belt behind our house to try to move the labor along. While walking my contractions got much closer together (like 2 minutes apart), and remained completely pain free! I kept telling Tyson how it is really hard to know what stage of labor I was in because there was no pain.
With the 2 pain free labors I have had, I can explain a contraction as a really strong muscle contraction, similar to if you are at the top of a push up and holding that plank position for a minute. Your body is working really hard and it can be hard to move or talk through the contraction but you are without any pain. The only means of gauging the intensity really becomes how easily I am able to do other things with having a contraction.
Having been declaring that my water would break giving me a few minutes warning before starting to push, we decided to go back into the house. Once back inside, things seemed to slow down again. So we did the whole walking the green belt routine a second time, labor picked up again while outside and slowed down again as soon as we went back in the house. It was bizarre.
More than anything, I was getting anxious and started to feel like I was wasting everyone’s time. I mean, this was my 6th baby! Why on earth was it taking so long?! My focus completely shifted from the pain free aspect of the pregnancy to just wanting to get to the next stage of labor. I was ready to try anything so I decided to fill up my big, giant bathtub and try my luck at a water birth. I know a lot of people in the homebirth arena advocate for water births, but it has just never appealed to me.
So, I got into my bathtub and it was actually quite nice and enjoyable. I could barely feel my contractions at all. My midwife assured me that the water was just making me feel the contractions even less than before. After about an hour in the bath and taking a little nap, I decided to get out and see if I was even still having active contractions. Sure enough, after a few minutes standing and walking around, I felt my contractions get stronger and closer together again. Since the tub was already filled with water, I got back in the tub to see if I enjoyed the full water birth experience. But as soon as I got back in the tub, labor appeared to halt again. As I said, it was bizarre. And again, without the aspect of pain as a gauge, it is really hard to know, and harder to communicate to others, just how far along the labor is. At this point, I have lost track of the amount of time that passed and I am not sure how long I was back in the tub when my water finally broke.
First there was a little trickle that I thought might have been my waters. Then came another trickle that I thought was the rest of my waters. Then I stood up in the bath and sure enough, my full waters gushed out! I knew it was “go time”, as with all of my home births, the pushing stage came hand in hand with my waters breaking.
With my next contraction I pushed and felt my first bit of pain. The pain I felt was coupled with FEAR. It lasted for a moment. I can’t even give you a generic amount of time that I felt pain for because moments can in fact last only a fleeting second in the natural, yet they can feel like they last a lot longer in the spiritual. The pain I felt was coupled with fear because I knew, while I pushed for that contraction, that something was not right. I am unsure if the realization that something was wrong came because I was simultaneously experiencing pain, or if the fear came first because I instinctively knew that there was something wrong long before even getting to the pushing stage of labor. By the end of that first big push I knew that Asher’s head did not come all the way out. This was both surprising and fear inducing. In all of my natural homebirth experiences the first push has always produced a full head!
For that first push I was squatting in the bathtub, so it was hard for anyone to see just what part of the baby had come out. From feeling his head with my hand, my mind went directly to, “Oh my gosh, he is breech.” I felt several bumps, but could not distinguish exactly what I was feeling. One of the midwives was trying to get a good view and feeling as well and thought it was part of his head. I could sense worry in her voice, yet I have no memory of what she said. So without even waiting for the next contraction, or putting any real thought into what we were going to do next, I spoke directly to my fear and commanded it to leave. In retrospect I really wish I would have shouted it out loud, so the whole natural and spiritual realms could have heard it and known my authority. And then I pushed. I pushed with full control and determination to birth Asher no matter what precarious position he might have been stuck in. Again, I have no real idea if there was one push, or 2 pushes, or a contraction while I was pushing. All I know is I was resolved to get Asher out as quick as possible. Again, it was just a mere moment before he was born. The whole pushing sequence may have only lasted one minute. But in my mind I can expand each frame of every second as if I am looking at the individual frames on a filmstrip.
My Cup Overflows
As Asher was born, Psalm 23, verse 5 describes exactly how I felt.
You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. (Psalm 23:5)
Nothing compares to holding new life. There is no greater joy. But coupled with that Joy, I felt something completely different than with any of my other births. I felt victorious over the enemy. It took lots of other realizations about Asher’s birth, and a couple of days of reflection to know exactly what I had victory over in regard to his birth. In short and without offering too many personal details, the week before Asher was born was filled with anxiety and stresses that had nothing to do with his birth or pregnancy at all. For me personally I felt an internal struggle with having been declaring “joy” over his birth and my pregnancy, while there were other situations offering to steal our joy. In the physical this manifested in the final stage of my labor and with Asher’s position in the birth canal. I did defeat my fear in those moments and experienced a very real victory over the enemy in those moments as well. It has made me even more assured that pain is a direct product of fear. I can not ever again separate the two.
(*My midwives concluded, based on evidence in examining him after he was born, that he was a face presentation, born face first. Meaning that instead of the top of his head leading the way of the rest of his body, his face led the way. I wasn’t aware of the many risks that this position can produce but it makes sense why my labor was prolonged and as to why moving around, walking, etc was probably a better means of laboring.)
Somewhere in Asher’s first week, filled with emotions, I had a little “come to Jesus” moment with Tyson. I was struggling to understand why I didn’t get the exact labor that I had prayed for. Basically I wanted to replicate my birth with Olivia. Mostly I could not understand why, despite my proclamations, Asher wasn’t in the ideal position for him to come out of the birth canal smoothly and perfectly. Selfishly, I was also a little upset that there were so many external things going on trying to steal my biggest prayer of having this overflowing, spilling onto other people, Joy. And while talking it out with Tyson (and God), my spirit again prompted me, “Read Psalm 23”. Finally, in my reluctance I opened my bible and started to read;
“The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” (Psalm 23).
And instantly I gained complete understanding. Surely I should have understood this even days before when I wrote in my last blog post that joy is almost always the product of pressing, trials, hard things. I should have been prepared for a pathway to joy that contained a hard thing to overcome.
Now as I read Psalm 23 I see Asher’s entire birth written out before my eyes. First came the rest, the peaceful streams, the renewal of my strength (while I napped in the bathtub. lol). And then, once filled with His rest, His strength, His peace, I walked into the hard thing. I spoke to my fear and it fled. God was ever present. He never left. Then I experienced victory and finally JOY! My cup overflows, I am truly blessed. And the last verse I will probably never again be able to read without crying, “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord Forever.”
As often as I speak or write about God’s goodness and unfailing love in my life, I want to press on anyone who reads or hears these words and thinks that these things do not apply to you; Please know that I only share because GOD IS NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS! I am no one special. The only thing special about me is HIM! I believe in the power of testimonies. I believe that you can hear a testimony and declare it for yourself and it will be replicated in your life! I believe the Word of God is alive and active, that it applies to mine and your life today just as it did when it was written thousands of years ago.
I am now believing and declaring that all is not lost for the year 2020. That the Lord is closer than we can possibly imagine. Perhaps the darkness we are feeling is the covering of His almighty wing. We are still on the cusp of a revival, of a great outpouring of His Spirit, of a prosperous year of double portions!
Here is Asher man fresh out of the womb.
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