• Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Book
    • Email
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Healing Blood

Apr 11 31 Comments

On Easter morning two years ago, I was filled with life and filled with fear. Newly pregnant and terrified of miscarrying, I made it a habit to check for blood every time I went to the bathroom. At seven weeks into my pregnancy, I no longer expected to find it, but I felt a strange sense of security and control in performing this routine.

But that morning, there was a smear of offensive blood where there should have been white. Filth where there should have been clean. Blood is the body’s healing agent, but instead of being life giving, it seemed to be taking the life right out of me.

I wept for the baby I thought I was losing, the tears falling hot and fast down my cheeks and over the curve of my chin. They continued to fall as I worshiped the Lord through it later that day. I knew the words I sang to be true, yet I struggled to believe them.

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, every fear is gone. I know he holds my life (her life), my future (her future) in his hands.”

***

One year later, on Resurrection Sunday, the baby I thought I was losing wakes me at 5:00 a.m. I nurse her, feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude that this is how I get to begin the day that felt so hopeless the year before. Again the tears fall hot and fast, over my chin and onto the blue floral pajamas my four-month-old daughter wears. The tears of gratitude are too sweet to hold back.

My little girl drifts off to sleep again, and I tiptoe to the bathroom. Expecting white, I am greeted with red, a frightening reminder that I am not yet healed and not yet whole. The trauma of my childbirth recovery is not finished, and I weep over the unwelcome blood.

***

I imagine Mary, mother of Jesus, at the cross: her feet aching and swollen from the walk through town and up the hill, her face tear-stained and puffy. She gulps down air as her body continues to heave and sob, heave and sob, and she eventually drops to her knees, scraping them on a rock as she hits the ground.

She doesn’t recognize her own Son; his blood, no longer red but an earthy brown, has dried and crusted on his marred body. The memory of his birth races through her mind, and she remembers what she shed for him—the fresh purple-red wave that ushered in his life. She’d cradled him against her skin, realizing she had nothing to clean him with then and she has nothing to clean him with now.

She can’t wipe away his blood. She can’t cradle him in the safety of her arms. She can’t save him.

He gasps a final breath. A soldier stabs him between two ribs, and a fresh wave of living red comes pouring out. Mary’s body begins to shake and she squeezes her eyes shut, her ears ringing as she buries her face in the dirt.

She doesn’t know yet that the blood pouring out of the Son she couldn’t save will, in turn, save her. The blood she couldn’t clean up will cleanse the whole world.  

For now, all she can do is hope that her healing will come.

***

As we approach Easter, I’ve found myself hoping that this year will not involve trauma or blood or heartache. That I’ll be able to worship my risen Savior without anxiety and with a sense of freedom and wholeness.

But before Easter we always have Good Friday; every Holy Week involves pain and trauma, blood and grief, injury and death. Who am I to try to escape it?

This knowledge quiets my heart: Easter is the story of salvation, the representation of all that was wrong and all that was made right. This most holy of holy days is the ending and the beginning of a great narrative, the light after the dark night of the soul, the being made whole after the being torn apart.

Regardless of where I find myself this Sunday—fearful and broken, or peaceful and free—I have to keep on learning and trusting that Jesus will heal me—he will heal us all—by his blood.

Easter is the ending and the beginning of a great narrative — and he will heal us all by his blood. Click To Tweet

Share the love:

  • Share
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Faith Tagged With: childbirth, easter, faith, freedom, God, Jesus, miscarriage, pregnancy

« Armchair Chats // March 2017
She Wants to Go Fast »




I'm so glad you're here. This space is all about encouraging women to live simply and intentionally, savor motherhood, choose gratitude, and find sacredness in the everyday moments. I hope you'll grab your cuppa choice and stay a while. I'd love to get to know you.
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
Do you want to be more intentional about how you mother and how you care for yourself?
Subscribe today for encouragement and support!


brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Disclaimer

Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

Archives

Copyright Brittany L Bergman © 2021
Blog Design + Development by Grace + Vine Studios

This website uses cookies to provide you with the best browsing experience.

Find out more or adjust your settings.

Brittany L. Bergman
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

You can adjust all of your cookie settings by navigating the tabs on the left hand side.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.