We were delivered on August 24th, 12:35pm, two newlings bleating hallelujah as we slid through the birth canal from California to the rest of our lives. We were between Las Vegas and the Virgin River crossing into Arizona when the phone call came. The hospital looked like a title company; the obstetrician, an escrow officer. The news was that escrow had closed; it was delivered, complete, fini, done.
It had been a long pregnancy of 17 months and four days. We were overdue. But 2112 Pioneer Avenue is now someone else’s responsibility and we are free folks to pursue a new life. The pregnancy had been long one and coincided with my memorization of Romans 7:15-8:31 (Message version), part of which says, “All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. And it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We too are feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for complete deliverance. But that’s why waiting doesn’t diminish us any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what’s enlarging us, but the longer we wait, the larger we become. And the moment we grow tired in the waiting the Spirit comes alongside to help us along….”
We have been delivered from our house and our practice, our children and our friends--our past enlisted in preparing us for the future. We grieve the loss of the familiar friendships, the tried, tested turf of “home.” The relationships that have mattered will continue on with us, just configured differently--more seasoned, mature, and able to adapt with the times.
This new life is as yet undefined. We can be sure that it is “not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike, ‘what’s next, Papa?’ I find that I breathe my way one Spirit breath at a time into the future: “when God lives and breathes in you (and he does as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered…” The labor that went into the delivery was painfully instructive, shaping our character in ways we had not imagined. But we are grateful now to be set free after 25 years and a few months in that particular address with that particular mission. Now both mission and geography change. God bless you for reading; and us in the living it out with a heart of love for the Father who gave us birth.
