Two Dates

 June 7, 2022

“I’ll be there!” So said Linda on my next-to-the-last call. It was before cell phones, and I was at Annual Conference, every so often running out to the phone in the foyer of Wesley Chapel for an update. I was waiting to be ordained in the evening, and Linda was nine months pregnant. Bishop Yeakel had given me his word that no babies were to be born on this day, but strangely enough, never did say whether or not this word was from the Lord. Apparently, it wasn’t, because on my next call, Linda said, “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” Bishop Yeakel was a better bishop than prophet.

Of course, she wasn’t. She was on the hall phone in the hospital, gowned up and ready to deliver, which she did, ten minutes later. Of course, I wasn’t apprised of the immediacy of the delivery, so I hopped in the car and drove like a maniac so I could be there for the birth of our daughter. No ordination for me!

I should have known my luck wouldn’t hold out. Nate was born in the middle of the biggest flooding the area had ever seen; Roads were closing behind us all the way to the hospital; we got most of the way there when a flooded road halted our progress. The local volunteer firemen took her across the swollen river in an army duck, while I found a place to park our borrowed car. When I finally made it through myself, it was to spend the next 72 hours bagging sand by day and sleeping on a two-seat hospital couch by night.

Matthew’s birth was without incident, except for how quickly he came. I think the obstetrician must have played football in college, because he had to catch Matthew like a wide receiver.

We have faded newspaper accounts of the flood of ‘72, only memories of Matthew in ‘74, but Jessie’s birth is forever engraved, not only on our hearts, but also literally, on the communion set which was the Conference gift to all the ordinands. Mine is the only one—the ONLY one—with two dates engraved on the chalice; the date I was supposed to have been ordained, and the next year’s date when it actually happened. We had one extra participant that next year. As Bishop Yeakel intoned, “Take thou authority…,” Linda stood beside me, holding in her arms the reason for the two dates. And now, every time that chalice is raised in thanksgiving, I have double reason to give thanks: for the gift of salvation in Christ, and the gift of my daughter 43 years ago today.