So, funny story. In my last blog post, I mentioned in an early-morning letter to this babe just hours before he was born that his story was, indeed, a miracle-story. But more than that, it’s also a redemptive one. In so many ways, through so many tiny little details, God has used Jonathan’s birth to redeem some very specific moments. Replacing the not-so-good memories with the most tender and joyful ones.
When I was in labor with him, we thought one doctor was going to deliver him. But he didn’t come in time, and there was a shift rotation and the late night on-call doctor ended up being the one instead. The moment she walked in, her face looked familiar. “Is that…?” I wondered. But with the blur of being within two hours of delivery, I didn’t think too long on it.
When the time came, I pushed for twenty minutes. And in those resting moments between pushing contractions, Jonathan’s delivery doctor looked up at me and smiled. “Your makeup looks good!” she said nonchalantly and I laughed at the awkwardness of it all, me sitting there, feet in the stirrups delivering our second miracle-babe and she’s complimenting my makeup (which made me feel beautiful, in the most unexpected moment by the way).
A week later, a girlfriend was delivering dinner to our doorstep, asking about all the delivery-details and who the doctor was. When I told her, her head jerked up. “Isn’t that…?” she said. “You know, I wondered that same thing!” I replied instantly shocked and amused at God’s attention to the tiniest of redemption details.
Years ago, when we were four or five years into our family-wait and going through the exhaustive lists of tests, I had seen Jonathan’s delivery-doctor for an exam. She had looked over my chart and knew our early test results – the low percentage chance we had of getting pregnant on our own, and the problem with Josh’s swimmers.
“Are you going to divorce him?” she asked nonchalantly and I laughed uncomfortably in the awkwardness of it all, me sitting there, feet in the stirrups trying to figure out why I couldn’t get pregnant. “Absolutely not,” I had said, or something along those kinds of never-gonna-happen lines. And I quickly changed doctors and never saw her again.
I had recounted the story to my girlfriend at some point, including the doctor’s name, shocked that that sort of thing would ever come out of her (let alone in that kind of vulnerable setting). And she pulled her name out of her memory, so many years later, confirming that the two were one and the same.
“Isn’t that ironic,” I said. In that serendipitously-sovereign sort of way that God has about Him, He had redeemed that one, little, not-so-pleasant memory that I would have never thought would have been redeemed. Not that I needed it, per se. But He did it anyway. Because He is a God of details and patterns and restoration and redemption.
I had shared little snippets of our story as she wandered in and out of room 160, checking on my progress that night of December 5th. Maybe she remembered me. Maybe she didn’t. But I will never forget that the woman who suggested I divorce my husband and find a man who could actually give me a child ended up being the very same woman who caught our second tiny miracle right there in her hands.
Oh, the greatness of His glory.