Baby Ezekiel

Before leaving for our overnight trip to the village, we prayed and asked God for a big request. Our purpose in going to the village was to work side by side with Daniel, a member of our national team who is also a nurse practitioner and runs a medical clinic in the village. He delivers many babies a month, and so our interns and I asked God for one thing: to see a delivery. Or in my case, I wanted to actually do the delivery. 

"God has answered our prayers!" I said when Daniel told me a woman had arrived to the clinic who was in labor and 2 centimeters dilated.  

One and a half hours later, I performed a second examination to find that she was nine centimeters with membranes still intact. I glanced at my watch. 3:39 PM. "Call everyone in here!" I told one of our interns, and she hurriedly found the other interns and brought them in the room. 

As they filed in, I opened my mouth to explain that when her water broke, her baby would come quickly, so we all needed to be ready. But all I got out was, "So at this point, things should begin to..." befofe she let out a yelp and I turned around to see the sheet wet and the baby's head crowning. I slipped on some gloves just in time to catch a little baby boy and welcome him into the world. 

"3:43! It's a boy!" I announced with a huge smile on my face and a rush of adrenaline still pumping through my veins. I vigorously rubbed his hairy head until he let out a sweet cry, and then we cut the cord and handed him to his mother. 

We walked out of the clinic in awe and wonder at what we had just experienced. The joy and excitement on all our faces was cleary visible and contagious. God had answered our prayer, and we got to be a part of the miracle of new life. 

"You should get to name the baby!" Daniel explained to us, as it is custom in an event like this that the special guests get to give the baby his name. 

Names in Burkina Faso are an important part of who you are. It's not just something that the parents like or that sounds good with your last name. A name is a reminder of a who you are, something that you can fall back on when times get difficult. It is something that says, "Remember your name and who you are." 

Just the day before we had studied Ezekiel 37 where the man of God, Ezekiel, sees a vision from God of a valley full of dry bones. God breathed breathe into them and they came to life. The dry bones represent the people of God who had said, "Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost." (Ezekiel 37:11) 

As a symbol of God being the life-giving, breath-breathing, hope-bringing God, we chose to give him the name Ezekiel. 

So we huddled in the small postpartum room around the mother and her newborn infant. "It is such an honor and joy for us to be here with you and your baby," I started. "We are here in the name of Jesus Christ, and we want to bless you and give your baby a name." Daniel translated my French into a tribal language that the woman could understand. "We have chosen the name Ezekiel. Ezekiel is a name from the Bible. He was a prophet, a man of great faith, and God used him to do great things." In the small, cozy quarters of the postpartum room, we circled around her simple metal bed with a thin plastic mattress and blessed her with the reading of Ezekiel 37. "God is the one who gives life and gives breath," I said. "When difficulties come and we feel like dead, dry bones, God gives us hope and renewed life. This baby is a sign of life and hope, a sign that he is with you and will not abandon you." 

We then prayed over the baby all together at the same time with prayers rising to heaven in English and French and Jula and Dagara. 

I went right away with Daniel to record Ezekiel's name in his official health record booklet. 

As I held little Ezekiel in my arms, I remembered how much I love labor and delivery nursing. I remembered the joy and adrenaline that I felt the first time I delivered a baby, and the same exact wonder and awe swept over me just like it was the first time. 

Each birth is a little different, but each one is just as miraculous as the others. They have these perfectly formed fingers and toes that only God could create in the middle of the womb. They have this amazing ability to transfer from a life in water to a life in air, and they miraculously know how to take their first breath and start blood circulating through their previously quiet lungs. Amazingly, they have the immediate instinct to breastfeed, and they cuddle up and bond with their mother because they have an intimate connection that has existed for nine months but is just now touchable. 

Each infant truly is a miracle and a gift. Ezekiel served as that reminder for me. A reminder that it is God who breathes into us the breath of life and offers hope in our valleys of dry bones.