Childbirth Class for Parents of Prodigals

When I think of “fixing my eyes” on something I remember childbirth classes. It was there that those of us who could no longer see our toes and who had no clue as to what lay before us, gathered excitedly to learn how to have a baby. There we were taught that the key to enduring the excruciating pain of labor and delivery was to relax and breathe while we fixed our eyes on a focal point.

Our instructor taught us to find something in the room that would receive our concentrated attention throughout each contraction. I found the clock on the wall. The strategy was that as soon as the contraction began I would concentrate all my effort on relaxed breathing, and fix my eyes on that clock, my focal point. I knew that if I lost focused connection the pain would be too much for me. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Being the strong woman that I am, I soon found out that “not being able to handle it” meant I would resort to screaming uncontrollably. (I had such a shy, reserved personality that I always wondered if I would know how to scream if I was attacked. Yes, I know how.)

Meanwhile, while I obsessively focused my eyes on the clock, I also focused my ears on my husband’s voice telling me over and over again about the beach. “You’re lying on the shore, listening to the lulling of the waves, feeling the sunshine and the warm wind caressing your skin. You’re hearing the seagulls singing overhead and the children building sandcastles nearby.” He soon was putting everyone else in the room to sleep while I clutched onto his words like a lifeline.

Likewise, I have had times of agonizing pain as my children have struggled in their push toward independence. Such incomparably deep love for my child, and yet “Just get this baby out!” Much like contractions, I have experienced wave after wave of fear, guilt, anger, shame, grief, and sorrow.

I haven’t found a class on how to get through these contractions, but I have found a focal point that works better than a clock. 2 Corinthians 4:18 says “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

My focal point is to be the unseen… what in the world does that mean? I believe it means I am to fix my eyes (use all my strength to aggressively think about, as if my life depended on it, because it does) on God—His nature, His promises, His Word, His Presence, His power, His angels all around me, His tender love for me and my children, and His redemption of our lives. If I let my eyes slip down and my ears stop listening to His voice, I can’t handle it. I then am left with resorting to plan B… “B” for becoming an emotional wreck.

As I read 2 Corinthians 4:18 today I was captured by the part that says “what is seen is temporary.” Temporary things are changeable. They are movable and flimsy. What I see right now in the natural can be changed through prayer. So I must learn to look right past it to what is unseen and eternal, and pray in what I see.   “Jesus, please keep speaking to me, like my husband telling me about the beach. Keep me focused on the Unseen.”