I was going through one of the boxes of books that Mr. Sullivan is kind enough to bring by now and then and found a 1942 American Red Cross Home Nursing Manual. It was, of course, produced when we were engaged in total war against fascism, and were called upon to make significant sacrifices at home. The book, compiled by Lona M. Lott (R.N., B.S.), is a bibliophile’s equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife. In 390 pages (not counting appendices and an index), it contains information on, but not confined to: planting a garden, applying a tourniquet, building a potty chair, fighting mosquitoes, improvising a home shower, making a quarantine room in your house when a family member gets TB, recognizing when you or a family member needs psychiatric care, pruning fruit trees, preventing fallen arches, improvising home-made tooth-paste and shampoos, disinfecting the clothing of someone exposed to typhoid, folding clothes, making a bed with hospital corners, choosing a mattress, disciplining children, and properly applying cold and hot compresses.I thought to myself – wow, there’s a bulletin article in this – maybe even a Sunday evening devotional.
Two topics receive the most printer’s ink and editor’s attention in the book. The first is happiness. 164 pages are devoted to the topic HEALTH AND HAPPINESS IN HOME LIFE. The manual has a neat illustration of stair-steps leading to happiness. Each step is labeled with a quality indispensable to well-being. The steps are: HEALTH, SECURITY, SELF-EXPRESSION, and CONGENIAL COMPANIONSHIP. This so reminded me of the identical chart that was once used to teach the stair-steps to salvation: BELIEVE, REPENT, CONFESS, and BE BAPTIZED. I thought at first to compare those two lists, but that can wait for some future Sunday night.
The other main topic of the American Red Cross Home Nursing Manual (1942) is home delivery. There is a two page catalog of things needed in preparation for a baby to be born at home. In addition to the items one would expect to find on this list (clean sheets, a kettle for boiling water, sterilized scissors) were the following, unexpected items: 1 kimono, 1 4oz bottle of Castor Oil, 1 package of drinking straws, 1 substantial pile of newspapers, and 2-10¢ packages of new Nail Brushes. I think I know how some of those items were used. Some I can’t identify, and some (the drinking straws for instance) I’d rather not imagine the use.
This was the section that got me thinking. If a miracle is something especially accomplished by God, then child-birth is a miraculous thing. The life in us is the breath of God, and it is God who forms us in the womb (Genesis 2.7, Psalm 139.13). I thought of this, and of how dangerous it is, even yet, to give birth. I thought that this very book might have been held by some mom in rural West Virginia, or North Georgia, or South-East Missouri, back in 1943 – a husband on a destroyer in the Pacific, a son-in-law slogging across Sicily, and a daughter – just nineteen – ready to deliver at home. It’s all so…..precarious – still.
Last Sunday, after morning service, I was called to a local hospital to sit for a moment with a very young woman, and have prayer with her. At just 5 months along her son had died. She had delivered him, subsequent to his passing, and was holding him in the tiniest bundle of a white, receiving blanket when I met her. I was neither prepared for, nor worthy of the moment, and felt like an intruder. I had an instant appreciation of those, like Valerie Booth, who do this work every day, and an instant awareness of my own paralysis. He was, at barely 1 pound, perfect. The curve of his ear, the curl of his fingers, the dimple in his chin…he was fearfully and wonderfully made. “How can anyone doubt this perfect boy is a person?” I thought. I wanted his mother to know that he was a person, fully hers and fully God’s and that his spirit was with the Father, and would be eternally so, and I hoped I said those things in a comforting and convincing way. His spirit had returned to God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12.7). There was terrible separation on earth, but homecoming in heaven.
There was rejoicing that day in heaven, and on earth as well, because we had a home-delivery, a new birth at services earlier that morning. Sierra Woollard was born again, of Water and Spirit, as our family was gathered together for worship. There is a sweet-sad irony to all this that is more sweet than sad, and that, in the long run is full of Victory and reunion because of Jesus, and His birth, death, burial, and resurrection. I don’t know how, without Jesus, there can be any sweetness at all. Certainly there would be no Victory, no reunion. In the Bible, the topics of Happiness, and Home-delivery are the same topic.
And so pray. Pray for our expectant mothers, our newborn babies, our many new babes in Christ…pray for the young mom I met last Sunday, and for those souls who, week after week, refuse to be reborn…. But mostly let us pray a prayer of thanks to God for his love and for Jesus who makes us all as innocent as a new born, as a pre-born child.