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In this week’s SojoMail, midwife Julie Dotterweich Gunby talks about it — and other terrifying Advent questions: A lot of begging happens at Christmas. There are pleas in the toy aisle and hints left open on laptops. But no one begs to be in labor. Not even a woman who is pregnant. Unless, of course, she is at the bitter end of her pregnancy. Pregnancy is as awkward as it is mysterious. At its end, two people inhabit one body in a taut reality that cannot be sustained for long and finally comes to a breaking point. God has built this grace into the world: That we might come to the point of wanting, calling out for what might devastate us. As the book of Romans puts it, “All creation groans as in the pains of childbirth.” In Godly Play, a Montessori-based curriculum used to teach Christian spirituality and scripture, children hear about Mary’s last days of pregnancy like this: “Mary was about to have a baby. It is very hard to walk when you are about to have a baby. Sometimes she could not take another step. Then she rode on the donkey. It is also very hard to ride on a donkey when you are about to have a baby. When she couldn’t ride another step, she got down and walked.” Midwife Jana Studelskaadopts the word Zwischen, from the German for “between,” to describe this state. It is a time between times. One foot in her old world and one foot in a new world as a mother, she is balanced on the knife edge of pregnancy. A woman who has entered the time of Zwischen says, “I am just ready,” with a restless, bodily frustration, an ensouled pain that gets into her words.
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