A Labor of Love
Birth is beautiful, but it is gruesome. Birth is sweet, but it is painful. Christmas season for believers is all centered around celebration of Jesus's birth. You can easily find handfuls of nativity scenes with the serene, baby Jesus all wrapped up in a manger. We sing songs of joy and exclamation and excitement that the Savior has been born. I think, like many of us, when I picture Jesus's birth I imagine this comforting, angelic, and tender moment, but then I became a labor and delivery nurse and realized that night was quite the opposite. I've seen multitudes of births. I was shocked to see how frightful it actually is to deliver a child, it is not for the faint of heart to watch. I've seen the looks of fear and intense pain on mothers faces as they push and bring forth their newborn into the world. Yet, despite the gruesomeness of the actual birth the moment t
