Coming Home
For a long time I’ve wondered why I am stretched seventy five miles up and down US 287 from my work in Wichita Falls to my church in Decatur. Along that stretch of highway is my childhood hometown and toward the south end is where we lay our heads at night. Shane works in Decatur and while I don’t have a town in which I know most of the people anymore, Decatur is the closest one to it. My parents are in Bowie but my roots there aren’t fresh anymore. I don’t belong to wholly to one community, I am fractionated into four.
I am someone who is wired to connect—and I really mean connect; I would not be opposed to becoming pen pals with the new friend I met in the grocery store when they asked me where to find the peanut butter. I love people. I love going deep with people and getting to the nitty gritty of life with them. If midwifery care doesn’t do that, I don’t know what does.
My heart longs to serve my own community. While that’s hard to define living out in the country, I know it’s not the transient military community of Wichita Falls, which comprises most of our birth center clientele. Don’t get me wrong, my life has been deeply enriched by knowing military families but the long term connection is challenging. That season is ending and a season of becoming a part of my own community again is starting.
The Wichita Falls Birth and Wellness Center has been my home away from home for four years and it’s really hard to imagine not being there. I love my office, I love my coworkers, I love what we’ve been able to accomplish there. But it’s too big for me. We have about 55 clients on our roster at any one time (newly pregnant to six weeks postpartum). This is great for business but I want to get to know each family, to remember their previous birth stories, to be able to recall all the partners’ names and where they work, to know each family’s quirks and desires. I just can’t do that in a part time capacity.
In order to serve my local area in a more intimate way, I’ve decided to leave the birth center. It’s so hard to type those words.
My plans right now are to enjoy life off call, which hasn’t happened much in the last eleven years of birth work. Taking my phone to the restroom and planning family events around the possibility of me leaving for a birth is exhausting. I have a lovely home birth client due in November and I’d love to have a few more here and there. I would love to find a place to use my midwifery skills and if I dare to dream it would be a place that doesn’t mean routinely leaving the house at 2am. I’m trusting God knows where I belong and will use me where he wants me.
Shane says I need to look at my stretched out life from a different perspective; that I need to realize I’ve touched the lives of people all up and down the highway. I know that he’s speaking truth because those lives have touched me, too. Many thanks to all of you who have invited me into your lives. Now it’s time for me to go home.