24th
GRIPTION
WORD OF MY BREATH
“This is NOT working! I can’t get any GRIPTION on this bed at all!” I insisted, as I reached the peak in another contraction at the Fresno Community Hospital Labor and Delivery Room on August 10, 1987. My weary coach and husband, Jeff was trying to figure out what I was talking about, but after 8 years of marriage, he had gotten used to my inventing words when I was too frustrated to abide within the limits of the Webster’s New English Dictionary.
We were delivering our second child VBAC, (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean), and at the time, this was a feat, because only 2 Obstetricians in town would even let me attempt to be a candidate for a natural birth after the 1980 Cesarean delivery of my first son, Joshua. There were many obstacles to the undertaking, set up by the Obstetricians, having to do with the duration of the stages I was limited to in laboring, pushing and delivering, so time was of the essence, and even in the middle of a painful contraction I was acutely aware of it.
It was my dream, my goal to have this baby naturally. I was determined to get my body into the best possible position to accomplish that objective, and as far as I was concerned, the mattress in the delivery room was my antagonist. When the nurses suggested I try different positions, I obliged. I turned on one side, then the other. I sat up as far as I could. Nothing seemed to work. Then one recommended I attempt to climb up onto the breakaway part of the labor bed and deliver the baby on my hands and knees. Now, I know that this sounds odd, but after hours of labor, my deadline looming, and that goal of natural birth foremost in my mind, I was all for it. Up I went, and with all the gription I possessed, I connected with that birthing mattress, and a few contractions later, Sarah Jordan Lee was safely delivered into this world, dream realized and goal accomplished. Mattress demolished, but baby realized.
Since then, I have employed that word ‘gription‘ many times, because it has been the one needed for the situation. There are things in this life that you need gription to hold on to, or they will slip through your fingers without your realizing that they have gone; friendships that have grown distant, and before you know it, you’ve lost contact. Or, family members who, because of some mutual offense, you have distanced yourselves from each other. Both of you don’t want to apologize or forgive at first, and then after time passes, neither of you can figure out how to approach the other to make the first move, so no one ever does and there is never any reconciliation. That is a loss of gription that should have never occurred.
There are life dreams that need gription to stay in our hearts and achieve realization. If we don’t hold fast to our dreams, they can be stolen out of our souls by the thief of distraction, or spoiled by nagging thoughts of discouragement, or vaporized by the fog of doubt.
Find out what is important to you. Decide what is worth fighting to hold on to, before it slips through the cracks. Then make the conscious decision to put some gription on those people you love, those dreams you want to see come to pass and don’t let go, no matter what-even if you demolish all the mattresses on the Labor and Delivery floor, or even if YOU have to be the one to make the first move and say, “I’m sorry.”
It is THAT vitally important.
“Be holding fast that which you have, in order that no one takes your victor’s crown.” Revelations 3:11
