When birth stories don’t go according to plan, we can look ahead in hope to Christ, our true Deliverer—who will one day free us from all effects of the curse.

The world expects us to use our pregnancy and childbirth decisions to fight our way to the top and revel in our own glory. But all of it—from conception to growing belly to crowning head—was designed to display the radiance of Jesus. He’s our only boast in childbirth.

It took me 14 months and a second pregnancy to admit I had a traumatic birth. Nearly a year and a half later, I finally realized what had been hovering over my shoulder like a black cloud, a haze enveloping me ever since the birth of my first...

I think our deepest fears are faced when we experience trauma. In the moments between my body beginning contractions and finally meeting my son, I came the closest to my mortality as a person I had ever been. Traumatic births bring the fragility of our existence front and center...

But there is hope. Coming to us through the very same process we are struggling through, the very process God cursed: Mary carried Christ for nine months, laboring, groaning, and finally delivering our redeemer in a barn.

God used the curse, to break the curse.