Of stirring the passion

I have been exploring my passion lately. Actually, it has been a journey of the last 18 years.

The cost to step on this path was high. The price required being willing to reenter my childhood and name the things I lived for what they were. This is deep work indeed; and it continues.

But out of it is birthed a woman who lives fully alive. My calling, my vocation, my expression of gift; all of these flow from this place.

Midwifery is my first love. It combines my calling to walk with women as they heal with my commitment to facilitate good or physiologic birth. It allows me to invite women deeper into their story. I am One who calls women to find their voice, and to trust their body. 

This fall, I accepted a position to teach clinical adjunct in the community college system. In other words, I put back on my nurse hat. I had some fear about this, as I have changed a lot since the days I was a hospital nurse. Birth center bridged nursing to midwifery; but I wondered about reentering “the system”.

It has been delightful! I love the opportunity to teach. I know that is part of my blood, perhaps a gift from up the generational line. I love the light in the students eyes as they put something together, or understand the physiology. I love phrases like “I feel fully alive in this area”; words that will point them down a path that engages their passion. I have a great deal of fun role-playing in simulation. And I don’t mind being in the hospital in a neutral role. I am making relationships and building bridges between two parts of birth that often don’t see each other with respect. And I am able to help provide for my family in this season of our journey.

At the same time, the midwifery clients are finding me as the mamas realize I am practicing again after a long journey of strengthening my body following the car accident. 

I am able to enter birth spaces, with my arms out and my hands palm up! These are movements that the doctor said would never be possible again. I love having my hands on bellies and feeling the babies communicate to me again.
How will all these things fit together? There is one who is big enough to know those answers. As I watch the intersection of passion and gift I can only say that God is weird. And good. 

And so I am curious. And grateful. 

To passion. To gifts. To living life fully alive! 

May it be so.