On the first day of Advent I awoke to a call at 3:20 am that I should come to
the hospital because my daughter was being taken down to deliver Lila—my first
grandchild! I had been first alerted to her early arrival two days before
when Rachel's water broke, but not much labor. I arrived in Birmingham seven
and a half hours later (it would have been sooner but there wasn’t a direct
flight!). And then...we waited. We waited on Lila’s lungs to respond to a
couple of steroid shots (she was three weeks early). As we waited, we halfway
watched football and occasionally made small talk about subjects other than
Lila’s birth; but mainly we carried on just wishing, wondering and thinking we
could plan for the time that Lila would arrive based on the medical advice we
were given. All we could think about was
what we were waiting for, our baby girl to come into the world.
While waiting on Lila, a code blue was called to her room; then the number was changed to the room next door. We Grandparents huddled and prayed for the baby hoping it wasn't ours but doing the only thing we could do while we waited. Now we were waiting and shedding a few tears and offering more intense prayers. The waiting got rocky at this point. We didn’t know, and we had no way of finding out for sure. My devotional thought for the day was: received a faith as precious as ours (2 Peter 1:2). In those moments of not knowing if our 3-week-early baby, whose mother's water had broken 40 hours earlier, was in trouble, I had a faith as precious as ours. My sister-in-law texted me that she was praying; she didn’t need to know the inner struggle at this point, but I was so grateful for that text that confirmed a precious faith. As time went on with no news, we were able to confirm that our baby was just taking a few hours to push out into the world so we waited with deeper relief. I decided to write my Tea Time for Your Soul for Advent 2 while I waited.
While waiting on Lila, a code blue was called to her room; then the number was changed to the room next door. We Grandparents huddled and prayed for the baby hoping it wasn't ours but doing the only thing we could do while we waited. Now we were waiting and shedding a few tears and offering more intense prayers. The waiting got rocky at this point. We didn’t know, and we had no way of finding out for sure. My devotional thought for the day was: received a faith as precious as ours (2 Peter 1:2). In those moments of not knowing if our 3-week-early baby, whose mother's water had broken 40 hours earlier, was in trouble, I had a faith as precious as ours. My sister-in-law texted me that she was praying; she didn’t need to know the inner struggle at this point, but I was so grateful for that text that confirmed a precious faith. As time went on with no news, we were able to confirm that our baby was just taking a few hours to push out into the world so we waited with deeper relief. I decided to write my Tea Time for Your Soul for Advent 2 while I waited.
I was literally writing this post
when my son-in-law walked out, tears flowing down, to bear the great news of
her healthy birth and healthy mom and beautiful baby. The wait was over. It wasn’t four Sundays of Advent, rather a 40-hour
journey, but it was filled with all the ups and downs and mundane moments of
life.
This most recent experience of
intense waiting challenges me and reminds me that waiting is what my life with
God is all about. I’m challenged because
I have never had the experience of not being able to get His return for me off
my mind as I did waiting on my first granddaughter. I’m reminded that waiting is what life is
about. I’m grateful that God was with me,
steadying me in the wait as He does every day that I wait for His return. I want to learn to wait in the same way Paul
did, thinking about it every day as he revealed to Timothy and all of us in 2
Timothy 4:8: Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the
Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but
also to all who have longed for his appearing.
Advent re-orientates our souls to
what our lifetimes are all about—waiting.
The gift of Advent is an annual practice of waiting.
Thanks for this. So happy for you and the entire family. Wow - Rachel was 7 years old when I first met you. Hard to imagine! Anyway - this was a great encouragement to me today, as I wait for news to unfold on many, many things.
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