I have said it again and again. You just simply can not know what you have no knowledge of.
Ignorance is often bliss, not knowing something is often a very good thing. Ask Eve, she would certainly tell you that she was better off without the knowledge she gained from eating that forbidden fruit, that bite changed everything. Now, she did know what she had not known. And everything in her world and ours was affected.
I long struggled over the ‘curse’ that her sin brought on us girls. I still can’t wrap my brain completely around it but as I’ve learned more about the character and nature of our Creator God, I’ve come to know that He is not mean and nasty and does not get pleasure from ‘cursing’ us.
A particular phrase comes to mind tonight as I see photographs of a new great-nephew. I remember having told this new mother that she could not know what was in store for her. I know that her own mother offered words of instruction and admonition about what was in store but….you can’t know what you don’t know. The birth is over and now she does knows about childbirth, she knows about a heart bursting with awe and adoration, she has experienced the miracle of life and the pain of bearing it. And even though there is joy unspeakable right now, she has begun to know the sorrow of bringing forth children.
“…in sorrow, you will bring forth children.” (Gen. 3:16 NKJV)
I believe this phrase means far more than labor pains and the physical part of bringing forth children. I believe it reaches from the delivery bed to the death bed. I believe the joy mixed with the pain of those few hours of childbirth is only the beginning of the joy mixed with the pain of the next decades of years of child rearing, years that end only when we breathe our own last breath. Years of trying to prevent mistakes, trying to share what we learned from our own, and being ignored or dismissed in doing so, just like Eve did with her own Father.
Once we become mothers, everything changes. Everything is affected.
Once a parent, always a parent. And the deeper you invest yourself in it, the greater both the joy and the sorrow. How very complex it is. So joyfully painful, yet so painfully joy filled. The pain we girls feel in our bodies pales in comparison to the pains of emotion and mind involved in bringing forth those children.
Thankfully, we don’t know that pain all at one time. It is a life long process begun on that birth day….and it is worth every single pang. A thousand times over.
