Before having my first baby, I felt a strong aversion to the impending loss of composure awaiting me in the delivery room. This idea of my body turning itself inside-out was hard enough to face, but imaging a process that forced me into such distraction that I would willingly cast aside my personal dignity was too much to concede. When push came to shove, however, holding onto my modesty sank to the bottom of my list of priorities.

By the time I was in transition — where the final stages of dilation create such dreadful pain one can entertain the thought that dying might be better — I sat on a birthing ball completely naked with my arms draped over the side of the hospital bed. My head hung between my shoulders and I moaned in each contracting spasm and dozed in the short reprieve between. I had lost all pretense of dignity. I did not care who saw my body or heard my vocalizations by this point, just as the mavens who had come before assured. I swam in the pain; it invaded every sensation and all my effort was channeled into surviving the relentless deluge.

The process of birth has some parallels to suffering, in that, pain — physical or emotional — can lay waste to our carefully constructed sense of propriety. They both require abandonment of the formal self to endure enormous vulnerability. There is a divergence in the metaphor in my experience: dignity is restored postpartum to a degree that it feels like almost nothing has happened, while deep suffering hollows out pretense entirely leaving behind only an outline. There are forms of suffering that share the same volatile impact as a water cannon. Every protective layer is peeled away and only the frail parts remain unshielded. There are no manners to conjure even in the wake of such events. Eventually the human spirit reignites, but there is resistance to pretending all is well. Honesty transcends, naked, raw, and unvarnished. There is no going back.

My three year old’s Leukemia diagnosis disfigured everything, nothing more so than my faith. I am a Christian, a believer in Jesus. I was also raised in the church and at one time lived out the very empty formulaic motions of being devout. I believed certain things because it was tradition and I did certain things because it was part of the culture. I prayed without emotion and I read scripture like it was a mathematical algorithm. It seemed right until I was faced with ineffable suffering. All my Christian behaviors were insufficient in this saga of transition when my capacity was stretched to the point of entertaining that death would be better (I was not suicidal but I welcomed an astroid smashing into us). There was little in my faith that gave me any comfort or stability. The manifestations of Christian propriety collapsed under the weight of Leukemia. All that was left was my frail and very exposed self.

In the epilogue to Leukemia, I reflected that I had lost all pretense in general, but notably with God. During the deepest and most perilous parts of the tribulation I was angry at Jesus and desperate for Jesus in the same breath. I was blind with fury at the circumstances — the loss of control and the destruction of what I had envisioned the future to be. I shook my fist and screamed at God. Those days were dark and I hated every minute. I fumed about every travail. My nostrils flared and my body shook with indignation. I stomped and pounded and cried out. I groaned and repeated over and over, “I cannot do this.”

I did not pretend to be grateful for my circumstances when I was the most upended by them. I did not disguise my agony by wrapping it in the deceptive and dismissive theology that all things happen for a reason or God never gives us more than we can bear. In the end I gave birth to honesty — with God, with myself, and with the world. It was freeing. Transcendent honesty remained when the pain abated and I regained composure. While I feel more upright and repaired, I acknowledge that God and I are not casual anymore. In fact, I see nothing as I did before, not in faith, not in myself, and not in the world.