Written November 2024

We had been planning a home birth. Gemma was my third and I felt fairly confident this time around. However, her birth happened so drastically different than we had planned. It went from a headache to emergency cesarean within hours. 

A week later I sat in the blocked off hospital room as we waited to see if Gemma’s heart would regain any function. I remember thinking at that point how consumed I had been with different priorities after my last two pregnancies. Mother’s often want to care for their bodies, help their bodies recover, and here I was a week after major surgery sleeping on hospital floors, standing for uncomfortable periods of time next to her bedside, walking about, carrying things, hardly eating or sleeping. My body did not matter in those few days. Only my daughter’s broken body mattered.

It did not matter anymore that I had been cut open, that I would be scarred forever.  In fact, as it looked like Gemma’s condition wasn’t going to improve, I began to thank Him for the cesarean. When we knew she would die, I thanked Him again for that terrible surgery. My body now bears the mark of my daughter’s life. A beautiful moment in time when we heard her healthy cry and saw her beauty for the first time. Forget the world’s standard of beauty, I thought. 

I remember telling those in the room with me “Where is the salt that I may rub it into my wound and be scarred for life with remembrance of her.” 

I now wonder if in the resurrection I will share these scars of suffering like my Savior. I now know why even in glory His hands and side bore the markings of his crucified flesh for the sake of our lives. Is this what partaking in Your suffering looks like?  My greatest joy and agony carved into my flesh for the sake of her life? I will take it. I ask Him for my scar to remain vibrant, and red, and bumpy, and thick, so that the world would see the worth of her short life. His scars are beautiful because of the story they tell, and now my own join with His to tell the story of a love willing to be sacrificed for the life of another. 

Yes, where is the salt that I may be marked forever by suffering love.