Two Dates

June 7, 2018

“No babies are deliverable today.” So said the bishop the morning of the ordination service. Linda was home, nine months pregnant, while I was nervously slipping in and out of the plenary session to make regular phone calls to check on her. Cell phones hadn’t yet been invented in 1979, so those trips up the aisle to the foyer of the auditorium where there was an emergency phone connection were both frequent and nerve-wracking. 

“I’ll be there,” Linda reassured me each time I called. The afternoon session wound down, dinner was served, and the countdown to the ordination service had begun. “I’m coming,” was her constant refrain. Until about an hour before the service was to begin. Her last call was from a phone booth in the hospital. Our good friend and neighbor Ed Boring had driven her to the doctor’s office earlier in the day. Ed was in his late forties and happy to be escorting a very pregnant young woman, leading everyone to believe that he still “had it.” Two women from our church had then driven her to the hospital.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it,” Linda finally admitted. Turns out she was almost completely dilated. Ten minutes after calling me, Jessie was born. I didn’t know that, and not only broke speed limits trying to get to the hospital; I probably set some new speed records on those back roads from Houghton to Batavia. To no avail. Mother and daughter were calmly waiting for me when I arrived, not so calmly.

The next time I saw him, I told bishop Yeakel that he should stick to bishoping because he was a terrible prophet. Ordination for me had to wait till the next year, and for many years, I was the only member of our annual conference with two dates inscribed on the communion chalice each ordinand received. Later, a woman got two dates for having a heart attack the day of her scheduled ordination. I think my excuse is the more preferable.

Today, Linda and I had the privilege of celebrating our daughter’s birthday with lunch in town. That little baby developed into a woman of beauty and character who with her husband is teaching her children to be Christ followers and is leading worship at our church. She was, and is, worth having two dates on the chalice, and I am thankful tonight that contrary to the bishop’s prediction, babies were deliverable that day.