A Birth, A Cross, and A Crown

September 2, 1980, lives in technicolor in my memory.

The Day Before

I was a ministry student at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, and a husband, and a father. We had a two-year-old daughter, and my wife was extremely pregnant with our next child. We did not know the sex of the child, but I had a name all picked out if it was a boy—Benjamin David.

We were up in the air with a girl’s name, but it would come to us.

My classes were Monday-Wednesday-Friday and Tuesday-Thursday. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were my long days, with the first class at 7 AM and the last one letting out at 12 PM. Four classes!

Tuesday was an “easy” day. I only had two classes and got out of the last one at 10 AM.

I ran across campus at the end of the second class to the ground floor of one of two buildings that served as the “married dorms” to grab a bite of early lunch, which my wife had ready and waiting, and then I sprinted to the library to cram in a couple of hours of study and paper-writing before heading to work.

(A lot of Bible students get married and then educated—a dicey proposition at best—which is why there were two three-story buildings to house the poor fools. We were among them.)

Our dormitory apartment had white-washed cinderblock walls. It was comprised of a tiny living room, a tinier kitchen, a hallway, a bedroom, and a bathroom that was so small you had to go outside to change your mind. Thankfully, we didn’t have much furniture either, so it was not overcrowded, this little home-on-the-campus.

About 2:30 PM, I climbed into our blue 1969 Plymouth Satellite. It boasted a 383 cubic inch V-8 engine. That sucker ran like a scalded dog, walked all over the road like a drunken sailor, and slung oil like a careless child.

I loved that car. It had a certain temperament.

At 3 PM, I clocked in at Vermillion Walnut Company, where I worked the next eight hours with a one-hour lunch break making cheese-slicers and knife-blocks from Walnut wood. I was on the belt sander that night, putting a nice, rounded edge on the knife-block feet.

At midnight, I clocked out and headed home, bone-weary, and ready for what sleep I could snag before a big day of classes.

The Night of Labor

When I arrived around 12:20, Donya was in misery.

“It’s time,” she said.

I was so exhausted and naive, I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Time to eat, I say. What’s for supper?”

“No, Gene. It’s time!”

At 6:31 AM, after six hours of hard labor, Holly Rachelle was born without a name at Cox Memorial Hospital in Springfield, Missouri.

Our World Shaking

Our lives would never be the same. The world around us and the one inside us—the one we were crafting for ourselves, the one we thought we would occupy—erupted, ruptured, hemorrhaged, and forever changed.

I will never forget being in the birthing room, watching helplessly as the miracle of life played out before me, and the doctor handing a messy infant to the attending nurse. She took the child to a little table to clean up the mess of birthing. Then she said the words I have heard ringing in my ears for 42 years:

“Doctor, come here.”

Everything was not ok. Something was wrong. Our life was taking a dramatic turn down an unplanned road into unfamiliar territory and headed for an uncertain future.

Reflections 42 Years Later

This is what I wrote in my journal this morning:

Forty-two years ago today, our world was disrupted, turned upside down, and forever changed—thank God!
Though we have often wondered what life might have been like for Holly if she had been born whole, and though we have sometimes taken issue with God over it, I cannot help but believe He did it for us, not to us. He did it for her, not to her.
Crazy thing about being God: the “curse” is the blessing.
Jesus doeth all things well.

Suffering can make you bitter if you aren’t careful.

It is easy in your sorrow and suffering, when your road has been uniquely hard and you are certain most have no clue about it, to become bitter, to become resentful of the little pious platitudes that fall so glibly from the lips of the unaffected.

I have been so mad at times, so freaking angry, at the clueless Christians who dismiss everything with a “well, God knows what’s best” or “you got this.”

They come off like Job’s stupid friends. You know, when those guys first arrived to comfort Job in his losses, things were so bad, the air was so heavy, they just sat with him in silence. For seven days!

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.
(Job 2:11-13, KJV)

That is the best thing they did, for when they opened their chops, they started misrepresenting God and accusing Job.

Surely, he must have done something to make God so angry with him.

It was brutal. It was excruciating. And it showed how little we know of each other and how poorly we represent God in the world.

I cannot tell you how many times I have thought of this example and the careless things people have said to us. When I have as a minister or a friend entered a hospital room or a funeral parlor to try and comfort someone in their suffering and grief, I think about it.

“Just be still, Gene. And love them through it. Just be still. And love them through it.”

Blessed are the few who have done this for us—for her! And thank you from the depths of our souls.

And Crown Him Lord of All!

Forty-two years ago today, God improved the world by adding one incredible, indomitable, incorruptible spirit to it. He never bothered to explain Himself. He didn’t need to tell me why she must bear the Cross of disability. He was longsuffering, though. He didn’t flinch at my anger or ignore my pain.

And this Cross…this Cross has been a Crown—
a beautiful, elegant, bejeweled, brilliant crown of joy unspeakable and full of glory.

I celebrate her and Him! And you.

God bless you.