Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Bitter and The Sweet

The fruit of the tree of life is sweet above all that is sweet. I am so grateful for Eve and her role in women's lives. She was willing to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (which was part of the plan) so that we may know and experience both the bitter and the sweet, for we could not know the sweetness of the sweet until we had experienced the bitter of this life.
There are many ways to relate this to the childbearing year. We have the sweet fruit of the conception process which then brings the bitter of morning sickness, tiredness, heaviness, food pickiness, etc... But WITH IT we have the sweetness of knowing that we are in the process of creating life, feeling the baby move inside of us, feeling it's unique spirit and body develop in us, and the positive of loving certain foods that we may not have fully appreciated before. When labor comes along, we get the bitterness of the pain of childbearing, but also the sweetness of experiencing the divinely designed process of giving birth. In a natural birth a woman gets to experience the bitter (and yet sweet) cup and then see and feel the life and joy that comes from that miraculous labor of love. The Postpartum experience is also a bitter-sweet experience. We experience the bitter of sore nipples and then the sweet of giving the nourishing milk that baby can suckle. The sweetness of the baby nursing and receiving the magic milk that God made for you to give it.
We experience the sweetness of the hormones peaking and the endorphin high that comes right after the baby is born, but then experience the bitter of the hormones coming down and lack of endorphins, unless we begin exercising ASAP after birth - and keep it up. That is when we experience the sweet again - when we start exercising the body AND the spirit! We must fill our lamps. Every day. This is SO essential to our survival in the postpartum period. If we can exercise our minds as well that would be even better. Just anything that challenges your brain and keeps it thinking and solving. There IS hope. Doing these things is not just possible, it's what God will help you to do if you ask him for help in doing it. The efforts may be bitter, but the results will be sweet!!!