Last week, this “guy” named Bill Sergott–who I’d seen around the internet before–left a comment on my post, When Your Child Wonders What Age To Have a Baby, Ask Facebook that took by breath away. Within the first paragraph I could tell that he was witty, intelligent (Hello, String Theory), as well as a loving and honest dad.
I asked him to guest post and he agreed. I am honoured to have him here today. Bill is father to three tweens, wife to Teresa, pastor of an urban church in Wisconsin (Adullam Vineyard), and a Green Bay Packers fan.
There was one condition to Bill’s agreeing to guest post. That I would do the same. So, I hijacked his blog entitled “Heresy of the Month.” I mean, how could I say no to heresy? Anyway, I got a bit more personal than I usually do here and wrote a spiritual memoir of sorts. Click here to go read it. For what it’s worth, I cried (good tears) while writing much of it. It’s as honest as I can be.
But first, before you traipse over to Bill’s blog, read his beautiful tale about the birth of his first child. And then comment. Please.
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In the cool, spring darkness of her safe and Noah-adorned room, I looked down at the angelic face, as she slumbered in total peace and security. She simply knew her world was right and good. All was the justice of God, and she was dwelling in the courts of the Lord. Her mother was in the other room, completely unconscious from the ordeal of the day before.
It was a difficult labor with this, our first child. We took all of the classes. We had the requisite birthing plan. All was in place. Why did not a single one of our plans work out? We had been repeatedly affirmed by the staff in the O.B. wing of the hospital. “We have never had a couple that was so educated on the whole process. It’s really refreshing!”
I was at ground zero, seeing and smelling more of my wife than I ever intended upon declaring “I do!”. There were fluids, slop, and, oh my GOD, the SMELL!! I mean, I got this, right? Right? I can catch whatever comes out, right? Not only catch this thing, human, animal, mineral, or whatever, but actually raise this child to adulthood. After all, I was a youth minister in a large Catholic parish. We had 600 middle schoolers and another 600 high schoolers, all in our youth programs! I was better at handling people’s kids than they were! I can surely handle one, right?
That child did not come out. She was stubborn even then. Suddenly, after 13 hours of labor and 2.5 hours of my brave and saintly wife’s attempts at pushing and pushing, heart rates were skyrocketing, blood pressures were dropping, gowns were being put on me, my wife was screaming, “NO!!!” The doctor took me aside and asked me to break the news to my determined, Cuban fireball of a wife that she cannot have this baby vaginally. It was getting too dangerous. I laughed and asked the doctor if he had any medical power of attorney forms.
“For Teresa? She’ll be fine. Besides, you guys already did those on the intake…”
“Not for Teresa. For me.”
The C-section went well, and I watched the whole thing. I always pictured it as a very sterile, precise, and scientifically pure process. Nope. They drugged my wife, and then sliced her open. The doctor looked more like a construction worker than a man of science. He roughly pushed aside organs and guts, buried to his shoulders in my wife’s body. He scooped my new little girl into his sure hands, and unceremoniously yanked her out. “It’s a girl!!”, I told my wife. Always claiming the last word, she replied, “See, you were wrong! I told you it would be a girl!” She turned her head, vomited all over the floor of the O.R., and then passed out.
My wife was unconscious. My daughter was covered in gore and screaming on the table. They were sewing my wife’s body closed and working to regulate her blood pressure. Nothing was as I had pictured it. It was gross. If men had to bear children, the human race would die out. Blood, sweat, guts, horror, fear, pain, panic, horror, vomit, and human waste. Really, God? This is how we, who are fearfully and wonderfully made, come into the world? Really?
Torn between my worry for my wife and the cries of my baby girl, laying alone on the table, being ignored for a moment by the medical staff tending to her mother. I tore myself away from Teresa and went almost robotically to this slop-covered wonder. I had read all of the C.S. Lewis Narnia books to her, while she was in the womb. I took her tiny hand in my finger. I said, “Hello, baby girl. Remember me?” Instantaneously, her screams stopped, and simultaneously, my wife’s blood pressure regulated. She was closed and clean and waking up. Baby girl was trying to open her eyes to see me, turning her face toward the voice she new so well. I was, in that moment, irrevocably in love.
As I looked upon her face in her bedroom at home, the memory of that horrific and scary event faded in the darkness. I looked at my brand new little girl. I studied the curve of her face. I lightly touched her tiny, perfect nose. We named her Grace. She was evidence that the Lord was still in His Temple. Grace is free, but it sure isn’t cheap. I brushed my seemingly unwieldy, rough fingers lightly through her feather-soft hair. And I was overcome. I wept. Uncontrollably. “God. I don’t know what I am doing! Why would you give me something so perfect? You know I just break everything, right? I am so overwhelmed. I am so selfish. Now I have this life that is totally dependant on me. Why? I’m not worthy of this at all!”
I had it all wrong before. I had convinced myself that all I had to do was not be like my heroin and cocaine addicted, alcoholic father. I mean, he abandoned us. If I just stick around, I am already better. Wow, was I unprepared.
This girl, with whom I was so in love, would radically change my whole life. It is because of her that I went back to school. It is because of her that I became a pastor. It is because of her that I have the guts to write. She has made me redefine me, with the guidance of Jesus. I no longer am defined as “not my dad”. I am defined as a child of God, who has been trusted not only with this little girl, who is now a young woman of 12, but also Eli, who is 10, and Maggie, who is 8.
I can really screw up fatherhood. In fact, we have a running fund for future therapy for our kids. I fail at fatherhood all the time. I can’t define myself as father. I can define myself as God’s kid. He has trusted me with three of his other kids. No matter what, my beautiful, talented, brilliant, brave, sarcastic, and entirely weird kids are God’s, just like their dad and mom. Grace’s birth taught me that none of us can adequately prepare for what God has for us, and life is always much messier than anticipated. But, you know what? Together, we do pretty well. And I am still overwhelmed, but I am also still in love.
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What have you been both prepared and unprepared for?
Definitely a post from the heart. I’m on my way over to your blog now, Bill.
Thanks for reading. You are in for a treat with Leanne’s post. She’s awesome!
Wow. Heart-bracingly beautiful. Thanks for the introduction, Leanne. Looking forward to checking out your post now and devouring more of his!
Love.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Bill, thanks for sharing this with us! It’s so true that “none of us can adequately prepare for what God has for us, and life is always much messier than anticipated.” God’s had me on a grace journey this summer. I’ve always known in my mind about grace because I’ve been in church my whole life, but it’s transferring to my heart now. Life is messy, but grace makes something beautiful of it.
Sounds like you are on a pretty intense journey, yourself. Grace is always borne in guts, gore, and poop. As scary as all of that is, God seems very much in control. It’s almost as if God designed it to be that way…
Thanks for reading!
This is wonderfully real and powerful. Thanks so much for telling us this story – so true, so gritty. Much like all of life, if we’re open enough to live it to the full. Those emergency C-sections are about as gritty as they get – so glad yours had a happy ending. Your kids look like great people – and that’s the greatest thing we’re ver called to do, isn’t it? Help our kids become all that God designed them to be – therapy funds and all! Lovely writing – thanks.
Very warm and sweet comment. I am very blessed. Thanks!
Amazing post. Our kids do strange & amazing things to us when they come into the world. My little guy turned two as of Saturday, and while I haven’t slept longer than 5 hours every night for two years, I wouldn’t trade him (or a night’s sleep) for the world.
My eldest is 12, and I still don’t get sleep! I have just resigned myself to a lack of sleep being my lot in life. When they are 35 and married, I will stay at their houses some nights and just randomly wake them up periodically. Revenge is sweet.
Wow, way to open the flood gates on a Monday morning. This certainly helps put everything into perspective. Beautiful post.
God has been bringing me face to face with the humungous gap between how much control I perceive I have over life, and how little I actually have in reality. No matter how planned, neat, clean, and predictable I’d like life to be, life always busts its messy self out of my categories, boxes, and constructs. Each time, I am undone. Seems like that may be exactly where God wants me.
It was a wonderful post. It brought me to tears and reminded me of my emergency C-section with my only child. Thanks for posting it.
Yeah. It’s strange how even our plans and goals, as healthy and good as they may be, are still burdens that we have to release in order to make room for life. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Really wonderful. I had the same emotions – unworthy, overwhelmed, etc – when my first was born. The love you feel for your child is so amazing, it’s hard to explain.
Beautifully written.
Yes, that love is intense. There is also the incredible paradox of human love, especially for our children. Our love is so intense, it can drive us to want to cling to our children, define our children, and control our children. All of it is out of a desire to protect and shelter. But then, even our love for our children becomes and incredible weight, keeping us from freedom. Christians call that idolatry. I am not preaching to you, Annie. 😉 Your comment just made me really think about my struggles, still, in letting go of control, when that is the very thing that allows life to flourish.
This is lovely, and surely does explain how we are not parents, but stewards of what already belongs to Him. I’m excited about checking out your blog.
Meant to leave the comment below as a reply. Sorry!
Thanks for reading. We are stewards, not owners, of everything. I say that to myself multiple times a day. I need the reminder that it is all God’s. Then I handle all of Creation and all blessings, with awe, wonder, and humility. Or, at least I try… 🙂
An absolutely beautiful story – gory smell and all! So wonderful to read you here, and to know how your child inspired such great stuff.
Amazing isn’t it, how such tiny creatures can bring the biggest changes?
They do! I remember how everything changed. We had trouble getting pregnant at first (not in the sense of not knowing how, but just a very small window of fertility each month), so we were married for 5 years and working professionally together. It was always just Teresa and me. We did what we wanted, when we wanted to do it. Should we take a week and go see your family in Atlanta? Yeah, let’s go this weekend!
I remember those days fondly. Now, with kids, there is no jumping in the car and going for a week anywhere. Wait, Eli has his baseball tournament. Piano recital for Grace. Cello and dance for Maggie. Teresa has play rehearsal starting next week. I have a conference to speak at the week after. OK, maybe next summer…
But, you know what? As fun as the freedom and spontaneity was, I also remember our lives being much more selfish, lonely, and empty. I’m not saying that everyone who doesn’t have kids is that way, but, for us, the trade off for the richness and depth of our love and lives has been more than worth it!
Wow man. I almost don’t know what I could possibly add. The metaphor and experience is personal and powerful. More people need to see this reality of the struggle and muck of life and faith. We’ve turned too many aside for too long by pretending to be perfect and pretty. You’ve got it right.
Amen. Amen. Amen. We sit in our clean, well-lighted, technologically sophisticated, comfortable church worship spaces, and we can’t find Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is in the dirt and filth, the messiness of human life. Until we realize that Emmanuel means “God with us” in EVERY sense of the phrase, we will always miss the Sacred. Incarnational love seems to me to be all about “in the flesh”. Therefore, the only place to truly find the Sacred is in the Profane.
Thanks for commenting. I love your writing, so it’s a real thrill for me to get your feedback!
Overwhelmed and in love: a perfect summation of parenthood. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading and commenting! Your comment was a blessing.
Beautiful story, Bill. Wow.
To hear this story told through ‘dad’s eyes’ gives us ‘moms’ an insight that we wouldn’t normally get.
Thank you for sharing.
I was terrified of fatherhood. In some ways, I probably still am… 😉 Thanks for reading!
I love your description of the birth. My husband and I have four-month-old twins, and these are my husband’s first children. I have adult children so I knew what to expect but I guess nothing can really prepare the novice, eh? I wonder if he experienced it the way you did. Interesting perspective! – Jenny
By the second and third one, both were VBAC deliveries, I was an old pro. Teresa and I were much more relaxed and at peace. I think the first one being so scary and intense made the other two much easier for both of us. She simply demanded to be allowed to rest, so that baby could move down, and I sat around talking theology with the doctors. I caught them, cut the cords, and gave them all their first baths. Really cool times.
Lovely and profound.
Parenthood has been so much more challenging and beautiful than I could ever have imagined.
I’ve had to surrender so much of myself and yet. I’ve gained more in return.
Blessings to you and your gorgeous family. Lucky, children, all.
Thank you, Julie, for your kind words.
I’m making my hubby read your post. This is our story — except we didn’t get to have more than one. So Hubby likes to joke that he “broke” me. Truth is — as you said — G-d broke him a little. Our little person stopped breathing andvi rushed into the ICU for emergency surgery. It was terrifying for Hubby who was, eventually, so grateful that everything turned out okay. So beautiful. And so nice to meet you.
Yeah, God breaks us. I often do church in bars and coffee shops. I don’t like church buildings. That way, people who are just there with friends can join in the conversation. I am a teacher, not a preacher, so I encourage lots of conversation, disagreement, and shared experiences. Anyway, last night, I was talking about how we always skip too quickly from the blood and guts of Good Friday to the celebration of Easter Sunday. We always hate the tomb of Holy Saturday. It is a day of despair and death. However, it is possibly the most important day in all of history. It is one moment when all human options have run out, and only God can act.
A friend of mine stopped me at the end and said, “Sorry, but I feel like Job right now. I feel like all of this is B.S. I don’t want to embrace death, and I don’t want to worship God.” He and his wife, who badly want children, have just suffered their fourth miscarriage. He wept, right there in front of everyone in the church. I then talked about how we all want to fix it. I don’t get it. But God is breaking them down. God is using the people in their lives to bless and love them, without trite, Christian answers. His wife is one of my worship leaders. She then started playing and singing “How Great Is Our God”, making the choice to declare God’s goodness in spite of circumstances. Everyone came around them and prayed with them both. It was very powerful. When our faith is weak, and we are undone, our community can be the hands and feet of Jesus to simply love us back into life.
I’m glad you and the baby were ok, and it is really cool to meet you. I am humbled by your story, as I am humbled every time I see God in people. Thank you.
Thank you so much for writing this. Life is indeed much messier than we ever anticipated. I reached a point recently where I felt like all my plans for the future were flipped upside down. Good friends commented on the perspective gained through troubles. I thought, thank you but I’ve got so much perspective right now I’m choking on it. But then I stopped choking, took a deep breath and found my faith deepened and my gratitude overflowing. Thank God for the messes, right?
As someone who has her own future therapy fund, I loved this sentence: “No matter what, my beautiful, talented, brilliant, brave, sarcastic, and entirely weird kids are God’s, just like their dad and mom.”
Breathtaking reply. Thank you so much.
Lovely post, Bill and you actually accomplished something I’ve been trying to accomplish all summer. I had the grave misfortune of opening and beginning to eat an ice cream bar right about the time I got to the gory bit. I did not finish the ice cream bar and my arteries and waistline would like to thank you. ;}
I almost bled to death when giving birth to my one and only child. I had blood transfusions and when I was strong enough to hold my baby, everyone flinched as I held her in my battered, tubed arms. I didn’t feel anything except for love and joy that she was healthy and unharmed. They kept insisting I wasn’t out of the woods yet and that I needed to sleep. I held my daughter for an hour and felt more alive and healthier than I ever had. Children are God’s gift to us, little miracles who don’t expect perfection from us, just love.
Wow! Thank you for sharing. It seems like intense and terrifying experiences bring a gratefulness and understanding more powerful than anything else in our lives. Maybe it’s because we are stripped of all of our plans, tricks, and tactics, and we are left with only trust.
I would love to say “you’re welcome” about the ice cream bar, but I could never celebrate the loss of an ice cream bar. 🙂
What an amazing post. I’m very happy to meet you, Bill, and I love what you have to share about the best-laid plans. I’ve never shared a link to my own blog in a comment but I’m doing it here, because I had a post about Grace a while back http://wp.me/s1mP7U-grace I like your ending better. Thanks for writing this & I’m checking out your blog now.
Thanks for commenting. I thought your post on grace was perfect. Life can really suck, but grace is bigger. I also loved your post on teenage daughters and texting. Brilliant writing!
Dearest Leanne, Bill… I comment here because it is an impossibility to comment on Bill’s site. Unfortunately. Both your pieces are deeply moving and I am particularly touched by an underlying synchronisity: albeit it a veiled one. My three girls vary in their biological fascinations: my eldest wanted as much info as possible and led to me seeking out a delicately informative video re the advent of baby inside a tummy: she was four at the time. For all her questions I dreaded her asking to ”watch” which I did not put past her intensely inquisitive curiosity. It never came to that tho she did pride herself on lecturing the facts of life as she discovered them to her entire kindergarten class. The question never occurred to my middle one: All she wanted to know was how the baby comes out the tummy on seeing a mohter heavily pregnant one day at her kindergarten. A pictorial dictionary for kids on human anatomy was enough for her to screech… “.. ‘eeeeuw! I am NEVER getting married!” even tho aged six she did allow a boy in her class to kiss her as long as he kept his lips shut!! WE never got as far as C-section. My youngest, ever the esoteric explorer of HOW couldn’t be bothered with mundane physical mechanics. Aged five she hit the ultimate home run: that profound state of awareness of being and non being: revolved on the fulcrum of a Birthday cake, no less: My eldest was turning sixteen. Conversation veered to earlier birthdays and my youngest got that earnest look on her face. And she blurted out… so I did not have cake then? I did not exist then? I said no.. ah she replied.. So, before, I was a nothing and then boom, I existed ? .. yes I said. she looked at me with big eyes.. “ma va!” ( go figure) came her Italianate reply and she gobbled her slice like there was no tomorrow. Since then her questions would challenge any biologist: again nought re male or female.. but instead.,.. how blood makes itself inside the baby’s body.. how do bones make itself as the baby grows inside the tummy and not least, when does the brain know to start thinking? … She leaves me stunned and in awe of how her perceptions reach beyond the visible each time and how lucky I am to find my deep freeze crammed with a myriad of experiments as she tests freezing every imaginable item in the most insane of mixtures. Her latest venture is growing Basil and de-limbing Barbie, all of which has me smiling, thinking.. there is a ” God “.
As for journeys and finding God in people and places.. I am not religious, attend no church and yet find myself drawn irrevocably to a journey that speaks of a certain grace and faith: Leanne, you commented back in March on my poem “the little principality of small immensities…” and it is the following section of the poem that brings me to the synchronisity:
city of whispers paved with streets
of no atrocities; speak to me of sky and
waterwinged flight: of birds folded
into their origami pages, watertight.
Walk me along avenues of your Dance
into Prayer courtyards of gifts and perfume
where, from the thickness of my upheaval
I’ll disabuse the tradition of heart and love
that evocates my melancholic ruin.
You write of being pulled to the edges from your place of safety: I have never known safety: my life has only ever been wrought of edges and extremes and it is from these liminal states that somehow the universe is pulled me toward some kind of centre: one I have been unable to fathom, until now… thank you for being so seminal to this part of my journey: your piece had me in tears too and not just because I am a child of Africa….
affectionately,
a different Renée 🙂
Incredible response. Thank you. I tried to fix the comment section of my blog last night. Not sure if I was successful…
Thank you again for your thoughts and your deep appreciation for all of the grace and mercy that is “out there” in our existence. Keep searching, doubting, questioning, and absorbing. You are wonderful.
I love finding new bloggers. Great stuff. You were more prepared then I was. We skipped the classes. We are 4 months in with twins. It’s a crazy ride.
Hey, it’s really good to meet you. I checked out your blog, and you are a great writer. I can’t imagine twins. You are my hero.
wow. I’m not much of a blog reader (well, except Leanne’s and Tamara Out Loud), but I just may have to read yours all the time because of the wonderful way you write. I found myself right there with you, and at the same time, I found myself back in my own labor room thinking similar things, about how am I going to care for this new, wonderful, slimy, crying ball of hunger when I was barely acting like the 25 year old that I was. For as overwhelming as it all was, there was always that saying that God doesn’t give us more than he knows we can handle. And no 10 years later, I’ve stumbled through Kyle’s life, and added his sister Kiran to the mix too, and somehow, so far, my husband, the kids and I have come out unscathed. Thanks for sharing your story, and for reminding me of mine.
Thank you so much for your kind words. It’s funny, because I am a disillusioned pastor who loves teaching and ministering to people. I am a disenfranchised Christian who finds Jesus completely compelling. I am a broken, angry man who has found nothing but love, healing and mercy.
Much of my blogging has been about the first parts of each of those statements. Leanne made me focus on parenting, which has really put me in touch with the second parts of those statements in a new and unexpected way.
This is really powerful. We had a similar story. I think it is amazing what we can accomplish as people sometimes when we remember the big picture. I forget the big picture a lot!
There is that moment in every birth, when you reach the point of panic and doubt. There is a point where every laboring mother says, “I can’t do this! I’m spent. It isn’t going to happen.” Suddenly, she digs deep, and, hopefully, so does her husband. That’s when determination becomes the dominant emotion, and they begin to bear down. I think that comes in the realization that we are at the end. There is nothing more we can do. And this baby can’t stay in there. With or without us, this is happening. Then we can surrender to let God be in control. That is the realization of the big picture that you were so insightful in pointing out. We are not in control. We have done all we can do, and now God can do what only God can do.
Beautiful post, Bill. We never forget the births of our children, no matter how they came into the world. They’re a gift from God, on loan as it were, and it’s up to us to train them in the way they should go. What an awesome, humbling responsibility!
And that feeling has never left. Every day I am filled with awe, wonder, fear, and being overwhelmed. Such is the power of God in our simple parenting. Thanks for commenting!
This is a great post I truly enjoyed reading the softer yet still raw and transparent side of your writing. It’s expected to hear a mother tell birth stories, so to hear a father’s version and still be so full of awe and love is incredibly precious. Whenever I get caught up in those moments with my kids where I’m so in love I can barely stand it-I think what an amazing God we have to bless us with a glimpse of what He feels for all of us.
Amen. That is the dissonant surprise that comes with parenting! Thanks for reading and for your great comment.
Yep, babies definitely don’t come out all clean and pink and cute. Our daughter was born several weeks early. We hadn’t even finished our last birthing class. My wife had set aside her glasses for the delivery, so could barely see. Right after the delivery our daughter was whisked away to another part of the room for some extra attention since she was so premature. My wife asked, “What does she look like?”
In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have said “E.T.”
Thankfully by the time they brought her back to us, she looked much better!
“E.T.”. That’s awesome! I was so tired and hungry by the time we got to the pushing, I had to get some quick protein. I ate a little bag of peanuts. So, I’m holding my wife’s hand, standing over her, and saying, “Push. Push.”
“Honey?” she said.
“Yes, my dear? What do you need?” I gently replied, voice dripping with love and devotion.
“BRUSH YOUR F&@KIN TEETH RIGHT NOW!! THE PEANUT SMELL IS MAKING ME WANT TO PUKE!!!”
Ahhh….marriage.
Wow.
I’m drawn to stories of childbirth. I love to tell them, I love to hear them, I love to read them.
But to read such a brutally honest, yet loving account from a man….well, it just brings me back to WOW.
Thank you.
Tara
Thank you for the affirmation. I’m glad you liked the piece. Grace was born around 7pm. Because Teresa had gone through full labor, including pushing, followed by an emergency C-section, she was heavily drugged. I gave Grace her first bath, swaddled her, and then she was wide awake, ready to party. I just sat in the hospital room and held her, both of us looking at each other, for almost 2 hours, before she fell back asleep in my arms. That is my absolute favorite memory of the whole experience. We were still in the hospital with nurses and doctors nearby. I was still feeling confident and brave. The nurse kept asking me if I wanted to rest and have Grace go to the nursery. I just didn’t want to stop watching her. God, I love that kid.
Pardon me while I swear.
Damn. Now I know why you keep telling me to quit beating myself up for failing to be perfect. 🙂
Bill, I can’t wait to read your book.
What have I been prepared/unprepared for? Hospitals. I hid from nurses and passed out on a field trip to a hospital, so I was totally unprepared to live in the cardiac ICU for 4 weeks with a newborn baby. But somehow, I was prepared because I never even felt woozy there. {Could have been all the engorgement I endured.}
See! My gift to the world is to help everyone else feel like they are NOT as jacked up as they thought. 🙂 You’re awesome!