22. 3 Truths Every Christian Mom Needs to Remember When She's Still Afraid of Birth

You've read the books. You've taken the class. You've prayed about it more times than you can count.

And you're still afraid.

If that's you, this episode is for you.

This isn't an episode about the physiology of fear or coping techniques for labor. It's a heart-level conversation for the mom who feels like she should have more faith by now and doesn't understand why the fear is still there.

In this episode, I walk through three timeless biblical truths that I come back to again and again with the moms I work with:

• Truth #1: Fear does not disqualify your faith; the story of the bleeding woman in Mark 5 shows us why
• Truth #2: God doesn't promise control, but He does promise His presence (and what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego can teach us about holding a birth plan loosely)
• Truth #3: You are not the main character (and the freedom that comes with truly believing that)

I also share why I think the Bible says ""do not fear"" 365 times, literally one for every day of the year, and what that tells us about how God views our anxiety.

If you've been carrying shame about your fear alongside your faith, this episode was made for you.

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Transcript

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You're listening to Rise, a Christian birth podcast for encouragement, education, and biblical truth for birth without fear. I'm your host, Mana, childbirth educator, Dula, and Mom of Three, here to help you rise above fear and prepare for a faith-filled birth. Maybe you have read some books about childbirth, maybe you've taken some classes, you've been preparing all the ways that you can, and you still have that lingering fear in the back of your mind that you just can't shake. Today we are diving into some heart-level fears that many Christian moms carry when they're pregnant and preparing for birth. I feel like this shows up a lot of times as anxiety or like anxious symptoms like heart racing, and you know, you're lying awake in your bed at night just thinking, like, oh my goodness, what if something goes wrong? And it's not that you don't trust God necessarily. You might know on a cognitive level, like, okay, I know that God is in control, like I know that the outcome is in his hands, and you you trust that it's gonna work out, maybe in general, but you still have that voice in the back of your head that's like, okay, but what if something goes wrong? And maybe you're scared of the pain, like physically just going through that experience of giving birth, you know, pushing a baby out and having some discomfort. And if that's you, this episode is here to ground you in three timeless truths from a biblical perspective to help you process those fears and to have some hope. So I've seen firsthand how these truths can really kind of shift your emotional perspective. So if that's you, if you're just like, I want to trust God, but I don't know what if something goes wrong, or I'm still scared of the pain, or you know, I feel like my faith isn't deep enough or something because I still have all this fear that I'm hanging on to. If any of that is you, then this episode is for you. All of that is super common. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, it just means you're human. You know, Paul actually writes that God's power is made perfect in our weakness. You can bring that weakness to him. This is truth number one. Fear does not disqualify your faith. So I think we have this sort of false dichotomy of like if you're feeling scared or if you're feeling anxious, that that can't exist at the same time as faith. And the story that came to mind was the story of the bleeding woman, which is in a couple of the gospels, but particularly in the book of Mark, they actually use the word trembling. So the bleeding woman, you know, she's had this hemorrhaging going on for 12 years, and she hears about Jesus and she believes. She's like, if I can just touch his cloak, I will be healed. And she believes that and she has that faith. But in Mark, it uses the word trembling to describe her behavior. And then when Jesus turned around and started asking her questions, she was trembling while she was talking to him, and yet he looked at her and said, Because of your faith, you have been healed. I bring that up to kind of illustrate, like, okay, she had the fear, she had the trembling, and that super strong faith at the same time. Trembling and faith can coexist. You've probably heard in the Bible there's 365 instances of the Bible saying, Do not be afraid, do not fear, do not be anxious. I really believe that is because God knows us. He knew we would be like this, he knew that we would have all this anxiety and all this fear all the time that we're just holding on to. That's in there that many times, in my opinion, not because you're like the worst if you have fear or if you have any kind of anxiety that you're like not doing a good job or you don't have enough faith or something like that, but because he knew that this was something that we were going to need reminder after reminder after reminder after reminder, 365 times, like literally one for every day of the year, to trust in him. That's how much we need to be reminded to trust in him. So God is not surprised by your anxiety. I really believe that. Truth number two, God does not promise control, he does promise his presence. So the story that came to mind for this was the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They said, even if he does not rescue us from the fire, we will not bow. So without knowing the outcome, without knowing how everything was going to pan out and what was gonna happen, if they were gonna live or die, they knew who was with them in that fire. For them, it wasn't about 100% believing that they would be rescued. I'm sure they hoped that they would, but they were also able to say, like, even if we don't get rescued, we will not bow, we're sticking to what we know is right. And they stuck to their guns and they stood firm in their faith, and they knew who was with them in that fire. So I think trying to micromanage your birth plan or cling to a certain outcome to feel safe is not necessarily the way to go. I think birth plans are fantastic. I absolutely think you should have a birth plan in order to effectively communicate your preferences to your provider. That's what a birth plan is. It's a tool for communication. But if you are holding on to your birth plan super tightly, like this is how it has to go, and trying to control everything, I don't think that's necessarily going to help you curb your fear. I think that has more of a chance of leading to disappointment in unmet expectations if you have to veer from your plan in any way. So imagine if you could take that concept from Shadrach, Meshach, and Amednego and say, this is my birth plan, and I really hope that this is how it goes, and I'm I'm trusting in the Lord to be with me. And also, even if my birth does not end up going according to my plan, even if I have to change it a little bit or a lot, even if it ends up being completely different from what I'm hoping for, I still believe that God is good and that his presence is here and that he's gonna take care of me. Control is not the cure for fear. God's presence is the cure for our fear, okay? So we can do a lot of things to prepare for birth, but at the end of the day, what matters most is doing all that preparation and then also at the same time surrendering the ultimate outcome to God because it's all in his hands anyway. Okay, truth number three: you are not the main character, goddess. I think about Mary, Jesus' mother, surrendering her whole body and her life to God's plan. She said, Let it be to me according to your word. I mean, talk about your body being a living sacrifice. She literally was like, Okay, like here's my body. I'm giving everything up. There is a song I really like called New Wine. Actually, it was on my labor playlist, and it talks about being a vessel. There's a line that says, you know, make me your vessel, make me an offering. I just think that's such a beautiful picture of making your body into a living sacrifice. That's really what pregnancy is. It's like, okay, make my body a living sacrifice, use my body to have this baby and get this baby here. And and it's like it's not really all about you, you know. This is where I think faith-based birth prep really differs from some of the more secular birth prep stuff out there because there's a lot of, you know, woman as goddess, like your power is within you, you have everything that you need. And I even had someone comment on my birth video, something like God is a woman, and I'm like, oh man, that's so not the point, and not what I want anybody to get out of watching my birth video. I want people to watch and say, wow, God is good. I really love thinking about Mary's birth story and just this idea that as such a young girl, that she was able to just do what she needed to do and trust the Lord. I mean, not even really having medical providers giving birth in basically what I think of as like a barn with essentially just her husband there, as far as I know. And she said, Yeah, let it be to me according to your word. Like it's just really all up to you, God. Whatever your will is, let that let that happen. Let it be to me according to your word. I think that's really cool. And I think that translates to us in modern day as just remembering that like we don't have to be enough to do it. You don't have to be strong enough, you don't have to like have a high enough pain tolerance or anything like that. You just have to take responsibility, prepare however you can, and then trust God. Pray that his will will be done, pray that he will be glorified through your birth experience, pray that your faith will be deepened throughout your experience, and that he would use your pregnancy and your birth and your baby to glorify himself and draw you closer to him. And I really believe that he will if you pray that. So, our takeaways are bring your fear to God in prayer without filtering it. If you've ever read the Psalms, David is not holding anything back. He's very honest with God. God can handle your raw honesty. So bring all of that fear right to him. Even if you have to do it 365 times, he's not going to be surprised by that. So do it over and over again. It's going to be a process, and that's okay. Meditate on scripture that reminds you of God's presence and not your performance. You can, you know, use scripture-based birth affirmations, hang some scripture around your house. I actually have some scripture-based birth affirmations that I can link in the show notes. So definitely grab those. They're free. You could make your own. You could just pick out like one verse that you know is what you need to be speaking over yourself in your pregnancy and put it somewhere where you're gonna see it all the time. You could write out a very specific prayer about whatever is your specific thing that's keeping you up at night that you're so worried about and pray about it intentionally. If it's a long labor, God, I'm really scared of a long labor. Please, you know, comfort me. If it's your will, do not let me have a super long labor. But also, if I do have a long labor and that is your will for me, please help me to be comforted by your presence. Help me to rely on your fruit strength. And and you can pray that same thing every day. There's no limit on how much you can pray and ask for the same thing. If that's what's bothering you, that is what you need to be taking to the Lord. I hope that you will hold on to these truths and remind yourself of them when you're feeling anxious. Make sure you grab those scripture based birth affirmations from the show notes. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.