Page 138 - Push Back

Chapter 13

The previous post that spoke of the church’s avoidance of pain, relating it to the subject of
childbirth where so many women today are encouraged by obstetricians to use spinal blocks, pain
medications, and even to give birth by caesarean section, struck a chord with many female
readers of the blog, eliciting some insightful responses. Following are a few of the comments
received.

Dear Pastor Herrin,

Your series Push Back has been a real eye opener. Yesterday I read an article about how gay
rights activists use the African-American civil rights movement as their inspiration, they were
influential in keeping a well-known gospel artist Donnie McClurkin from performing at the 50th
anniversary of the March on Washington because he is vocal about how God delivered him from
homosexuality and that it was a sin. The boldness and unapologetic way he stood up for Christ
and your recent posts have ministered to me. I have struggled with a sodomite spirit since I was
a child. I was exposed to pornography by my birth parents starting at the age of 2 and I was
molested by a church member's relative when I was 7. Because of the pornography and
molestation I became promiscuous at an early age. I struggled with lesbianism until Yahweh sent
my Godmother to teach me the Biblical teachings of Yahweh and I admit I caused her great pain.
Even though she didn't birth me in the natural, she birthed me in the spirit.

Your series Push Back has been especially forcing me to grow and deal with some things in the
spirit that I have avoided because the pain has been so great and I have tried to avoid my issues.
When I gave birth to my daughter, my gynecologist was a lesbian. I wanted to give birth
naturally, but because my daughter was two weeks late I was induced. I had an epidural because
I didn't think I could handle the pain. After my epidural, I developed a fever of 102 and had an
infection which led to my daughter's heart rate going high which led to my cervix swelling shut,
which led me to have an emergency C-section. When my daughter was born she had a fever and
had to be on antibiotics for 2 days. I was unable to breast feed her because I was on antibiotics
and pain medication because of my C-section. Afterwards, no one told me that I lost a lot of
blood during my C-section and that an epidural puts your bowels to sleep. I didn't have bowel
sounds or movement for six days. My colon started to die and I became extremely sick. I had to
have emergency surgery where they found 4 perforations in my large intestine, they found that
parts of my colon had died and other parts were starting to die and was leaking bile into my
stomach. I spent 6 days in ICU (including my 29th birthday), I had to have an ileostomy (which