A Christmas Birth from Christmas at Harmony Hill

 

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you are having a wonderful and blessed Christmas week. As a Christmas special from me to you, here  is an excerpt from my Shaker Christmas story, Christmas at Harmony Hill. 

By the time the fog began to lift, Gideon’s company was in position. The men crouched down behind whatever cover they could find and waited for those in command to give the signal. Jake would be praying. Gideon hoped he was praying for him too, because prayer words didn’t come easy for Gideon. He was better at coasting along on the prayers of others. 

            Not that he didn’t believe. He did. What man could deny God while standing at the bottom of a hill knowing men at the top were ready to shoot him? A man who might be stepping over into eternity at the next sound of gunfire.

            Heather’s face rose up in front of his eyes. Back at her home, she was waiting too. For the baby. For him.

*****

            The pains grabbed Heather and shook her like a cat grabbing a mouse, squeezing life out of the poor creature but then when the mouse could bear no more, turning loose to allow it to breathe again. The pains took her into another world. A place where nothing was real except the pain. A wave washing over her and then receding and letting those beside her bed come back into focus.

Dear Sophrena kept dabbing Heather’s face with a damp cloth. She looked so frightened that Heather did her best to force a smile out onto her face each time the grip of the pains left her.

Brother Kenton was there too. He’d measured the time between the contractions and smiled with great cheer as he told her everything was as it should be. “Babies, especially first babies, are often slow to make their way into the world.”

When Sophrena grasped at the Shaker doctor’s sleeve in a panic when he said he must go tend to his other patients, he said, “Calm yourself, Sister Sophrena. The baby and the mother do all the work. We that are with her simply watch and wait. I will bring a calming brew of herbal tea for the both of you.”

He had brought the tea but whether it calmed Sophrena, Heather couldn’t say. It had done nothing for her. The pains mashed her down into the bed until at times she thought she might be pushed through it to the floor.

Float with the pain. She remembered Mrs. Saunders telling her mother that during her struggle birthing Jimmy. Breathe steady in and out and accept the pain. Don’t fight it. Heather tried, but the pain stole her breath until she had to gasp as black closed in around her.

Breathe. She kept hearing that word and she wasn’t sure it was in her mind or if Sophrena was whispering it to her. Breathe. Brother Kenton’s voice was there too. Breathe. Had Joseph told Mary that in the stable that Christmas night or perhaps angels had gathered round her to whisper encouraging words into her ears as the baby Jesus was born?

Heather slipped into a gray world of nothing but pain and the need to draw breath. Voices circled in the air above her. Her mother calling her in to supper. Her father reading the Bible on Sundays, his deep voice adding power to the words. Gideon’s laugh and whispered words of love. A soldier screaming in the night after a battle. Or maybe that was her screaming while Sophrena and Brother Kenton told her to breathe.   

*****

 Sophrena didn’t know when she’d been more frightened, but she was doing her best to hide it from Heather as she whispered soothing words to her. Words she wasn’t sure the girl even heard. Her suffering was worse than anything Sophrena could have imagined.

Brother Kenton said first babies sometimes came hard, but as the hours ticked past, the smile disappeared from his face. He too began to mouth silent prayers as he gently felt Heather’s abdomen.

“The baby is turned wrong,” he said. “A difficult way to bring a child into the world.”

“Can’t you do anything?” Sophrena asked.

“Nay,” he said, his face grim. “No more than you. Naught but pray.”

So they knelt together and prayed.

At last those prayers were answered. Brother Kenton brought Sister Doreen back to the cabin with him. “She knows about babies,” he said.

“That I do,” Sister Doreen said matter-of-factly. “Helped many a baby make his way into the world. Including nine of my own. I know the words to talk her through this and the ways to make it easier.”

She leaned over close to Heather’s ear and began talking so softly Sophrena could only catch a word now and again, but as if by some prayerful miracle, Heather’s body visibly relaxed. She began breathing in and out without gasping for air as she had been doing.

“Now, child, it is time. The Lord is going to help you push this baby out. Do you believe that?”

“Yes.” Heather murmured her first understandable words for hours. “The Lord is my shepherd.”

“And he loves you. And your baby. Now push, my child. Bring this baby into the world where you can hold him.”

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

            The pain was like a live thing. Heather tried to float with it, but it became a raging torrent throwing her against rocks and pounding her down under the waves of blackness. It conquered her. Completely. She surrendered to it, and when she did, she stepped beyond her body into a different realm.

            Her mother was there, reaching for her. “Am I dying?” The words rose from somewhere deep within her.

            “Nay, nay.” The voice pulled her back. Not her mother’s voice, but one she had to heed.

            The voice demanded she turn loose of the pain. Demanded she step back from the void swallowing her and do as the voice said. Demanded that she push her baby out into the world.

            A baby’s cry came through the pain. Her baby’s cry. The shadows had tried to swallow her, but she’d ridden out the pain. She’d come through the journey.

            Sister Doreen leaned over her speaking, forcing her to come up out of the waters and speak to her. “Sister Heather, awake for your child. You have done well. He’s a fine boy.”

            Heather tried to moisten her lips but her mouth was too dry. Doreen held a moist cloth to her lips. “Easy, child. The worst is over. You must keep breathing and heal. The joy’s begun.”

            “Joy.” Heather managed to get that word out. She forced open her eyes as the baby was placed in the crook of Heather’s arm.

            Heather peered down into the red face of her baby and love melted her heart. She peeled the blanket back away from his chin and he pushed out his tiny hand, fingers spread wide as he continued to cry, mouth wide open, small tongue quivering with his distress.

“Shh, little one,” she crooned as she stroked his cheek in a gentle caress. Her baby. Gideon’s baby.

He blinked and his crying stopped with her touch, and somehow more love flowed into a heart she thought had no room for more.

Had Mary felt the same looking down at the Christ child all those years ago? She had known her child was a miracle. She had spoken to angels and yet that first moment of looking at her baby, did she only see the miracle of a child she’d loved at his first quickening in her womb? Did all mothers feel the same? Each child a miracle after their trip through the valley of the shadow of death into a world of light and air. A world that might demand much from them.

As Mary surely hadn’t foreseen the path her son would have to travel, Heather could not know the future of this child she held. All she could hold onto was the moment.

Hope you enjoyed reading that. If you want to read more about Heather and Gideon, you can download the ebook versiona for the low price of  99 cents for a few days from Kobo. You can check other sites too, but before you download, doublecheck that you are getting the sale price. The Kobo special is only going to last for a few days. So, grab it quick and you can read about Heather and her baby and Gideon taking part in one of the last Civil War battles.

And again, Merry Christmas. Thank you so much for reading my stories and my words here. You all are the best.