In the beginning...

As it was in the beginning...

The call came Thursday morning. “Mom? Michelle’s water broke and we are on the way to the doctor’s office.” Mama and I were in Weaverville running errands, getting ready for three of our grandsons who were spending Labor Day weekend with us. As we drove home after visiting with Margaret, a friend of ours who is under the weather, another call came. “Mom? We are on our way to the hospital.” And so this beginning began.
I called Michael and left word. I called the girls and gave them the news that another baby boy was on the way into the world to join our family. Many calls later, a plan was in place and that afternoon I drove to Charlotte to be with Adam and Michelle. Michael came after work and we laughed and labored with Michelle as she did the body work necessary for birth. As transition approached, we all left the labor room so Adam and Michelle could finish the task at hand. At 2:01 Adam called us caught between tears and laughter to tell us Rowan Reilly Hester had arrived. With Michelle’s cheeks and Adam’s nose, dark hair and rosebud mouth, another doxology of creation was sung in Presbyterian Hospital early Friday morning.
No matter how many times I see a newborn baby, I am always swept away by the sheer magnitude of the miracles that are required for the creation of new life. Even in this age of scientific understanding, there is such a joyous happenstance in the bodies of new babies. How did Rowan get Adam’s nose... the Hester nose... and his mother’s cheeks, the Reilly cheeks? Where did that mouth come from and how did the child of two blonde parents end up with such dark hair? In that tiny little bundle resting in his mother’s arms is a whole person who will unfold and grow with his parent’s help. As I look at pictures of our son holding his baby son, my eyes and heart shed tears of joy for his happiness, for the family he and Michelle have created.
I watch the family trio and see echoes of a long ago family, a new child born in a barn with loving parents and a future neither of them could fully imagine. As it was for Mary and Joseph, so it is for Adam and Michelle. All we can do is love our children, give them the best of what was given to us and hand them over to the safekeeping of the God who gave them to us. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen, amen.