Today marks the last day of Redeeming Childbirth’s launch week. What a journey it has been. Thank you for uniting with me to bring this message to the world. I have been so blessed to have some amazing women walking by my side, helping to get the word out. You can read their reviews of Redeeming Childbirth on the Blog Tour and more on Amazon! Thank you Ladies!
Amazingly, tomorrow marks one year from the first time I sat down to begin writing this book for you and for my Lord. Like a woman with child, I have had sleepless nights, nights of tossing and turning… feeling the burden of this message keeping me awake. A year ago, this message was just that… a burden. You see, God allowed my heart to grieve. He gave me the burden and the blessing of seeing what He saw among women in the church, among our culture , and what could be in future generations if we don’t change something now.
As I sat down to write, I knew nothing about how to “write a book” and had no idea what I was in for. As I sat down that first night to write, my fingers flew across the keys… not stopping, save for looking up a verse. I had made myself boundaries so as not to effect my family schedule… I promised them and myself that the bulk of my writing would happen at night. So I began at 9:30pm and wrote until 3 am. When I resigned for the night… I didn’t want to stop writing. The feeling I had being obedient to what God had been calling me to for so long was fulfilling a deep need within my soul. You know that feeling when you are 100% where God wants you to be and you know it, without a doubt? That was the feeling I had.
The first few months I just wrote, prayed, read scripture, studied theology and read my journals from the past 11 years of childbearing. As I wrote I felt God asking me to invite others to be involved in what He was about to do. So I began searching for like-minded women who might be vulnerable enough to share their birth testimonies with me and the world. Some were eager to share, others not so much. This was the laborious part of writing. Writing a book for the first time can be a hard task indeed, but I believe, incorporating interviews, compiling stories, writing, places stories within the right context, re-writing, editing, proofing, more editing, and more proofing…. make for hard, long work. Trying to please everyone when all you want to do is please the Lord. Learning how to “quote” people differently from writings to interviews… satisfying anonymous testimonies mixed in with those who wanted “credit.” But in it all, God was there. He was refining me, correcting me, sustaining me, and making me more aware to sins and the real issues we all struggle with. God showed me Himself, His truth, and I grew as I experienced Him in a new way.
My amazing husband sent me on a writing retreat to a lodge nearby for a weekend. While there I listened to worship music, I sang, I meditated on His word, and I wrote. Much of what I wrote was good, but it was raw. Little did I know those 18,000 words written that weekend would have to go through a refining process… the editing and re-write. During the drive home, I felt an exhilaration. I listened to music and the words from songs like these became my yearning, my prayer:
Aware by Salvador
You Are by ALM
In those moments, as I drove, as I wrote, as I delighted in God… I experienced Him. Music moves me. It always has. As I worship and sing the lyrics… I realize how powerful the messages are. They lead us to surrender. To truly worship Our God for who He is. What occurred to me was that the most popular songs of today have strong messages. They resonate with us, but often times when those messages are written about in books, when they become even more personal, we are so quick to disagree or throw them out. My prayer as I worshiped while writing, was that this book would move people as if a worship song were being sung.
Experiencing His Presence… now that is a hard thing to teach. Yet, it is the subtitle of this book. I could not find any other way to express or “teach” how to experience the Lord’s presence in pregnancy, labor or childbirth without simply sharing, vulnerably, what was going through my heart and mind during those experiences. In simply sharing a story or a testimony one can inspire others to dream of what could be or rather of what God could do. And it might even restore faith in some after having experienced a trauma. But how does a writer equip others to truly experience His presence? I can’t. No writer can. Experiencing His presence is something intimate between each individual and God. Whether you’ve been a believer for a day or twenty years, you can experience Him. And guess what, it’s not a contest!
My prayer is that Redeeming Childbirth would not be what you are reading most when you are pregnant… my prayer is that it would lead you through the scriptures, that the Holy Word of God might expose areas of sin in your life, and heal areas of pain and hurt. I pray that Redeeming Childbirth helps to create a hunger deep within your soul for more of Jesus. Not more of another book… more of Him. He is alive and living today and so deeply wants to have a deep communion with you. Just ask Him, surrender your life, and live!
I have been so blessed this past year as God has refined me. I am going to be taking a break to have communion with Him and my family, but we have some special guests visiting this week. So be looking for them.
God Bless,
Angie Tolpin
