I was there to hear your borning cry...

“I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old...”Michael and I were given the gift of being present when each of our grandsons were born. As they entered this world and our daughters became mothers, the call of the baby’s borning cry was answered by our tears of joy. Four times now we have stood by and felt the earth shift as a new life of promise and past remembered has joined our family. We count fingers and toes, marvel at the completeness of the baby package, hold the tiny bundle of blanket and baby, laugh and cry at the fulfilment of the turning wheel of life contained in this small body. We have lived long enough to see our children’s children and like the Psalmist, we give thanks for this blessing.
The boys are ages six through two now, bundles of energy and sound, full of emerging personhood, as different as night and day but all descendants of the Hester Pounders Calhoun Minter gene pool with Maguire Schwartz (fathers) genes for splash and dash. What a miracle mystery life is. I watch them in wonder. Matthew is full of questions and confessions, excited about snakes and science. Mason, the teddy bear, loves the farm, the tractor, the mule, the cows and Junie B. Aidan has his mother’s quicksilver smile, man hands and is a future ice hockey star. Mead is a laughing flirting boy, walking and exploring his world at a breakneck speed. Raising a child will break your heart many times over and laughter helps heal the cracks. This process helps you become the tender Heart of God.
As the confirmation class stood in front of the church Sunday, I remembered many of them as small children in the Sunday School classes I taught. Each of them has grown up in body and their souls have stretched out tall to match their expanding height. Their lives are full of struggles and sorrows, joy and accomplishment. Their parents have walked with them through lonesome valleys and high mountaintops. They hold our futures in their hands. Our church and our world needs the gifts these children have to offer.
Our family is entering a new valley with one of our grandsons. He will probably end up with a new adjective attached to his name this week. We have been weeping with our daughter, wiping up our tears and marveling at her tough mother love. She is marshaling all the resources she can find for her young son, collecting teachers and advocates for him, gathering strength from her faith and her friends for the journey that lies ahead. We are hearing the borning cries of a new life, one we would not have chosen but one that is here nonetheless. Our confirmation class in the goodness of God is begun anew as we share this news with friends who are family.
Good thoughts are not enough. We are praying. We are praying for courage and strength and laughter amidst the tears for our daughter and her husband as they face this new parenting challenge. We are praying for the other children like our grandson whose mothers are hampered in their struggle for their children by language and educational limits. Most of all, we are praying for our funny, smart, loving, joy and pain in the neck grandson. We pray that he and his parents will emerge from this time of trial in a fiery furnace refined and strengthened. I believe we were not the only ones present for his first borning cry nor or we the only ones present now. God was there then, God is present now and God will be present in all the years yet to come. I believe these prayers will help God’s energizing comforting Love flow to him and his parents as they travel this unfamiliar road.
I stood Sunday morning and tried to sing one of my favorite new hymns. Tears flowed down my face as the simple words sank deep into my soul. “I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old. I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold. I was there when you were but a child with a faith to suit you well. I’ll be there in case you wander off and find where demons dwell...When the evening gently closes in and you shut your weary eyes, I’ll be there as I have always been with just one more surprise.” God is always with us as we are born and re-born, in joy and sorrow, in health and sickness, in the days and nights of life, valleys and mountaintops, life and death. Thanks be to God for his continued confirming presence, our beginning and our ending, our pastpresentfuture, source of blessing and resource for all that is beyond our ability to control. It is enough. It is well with our souls.