entering in: a birthday story

Probably to my daughter's relief, I'm not writing this post about her. Victoria is in it, she's a significant character, certainly, and today is her birthday. But there's more I'd like to tell, all of which I've told before, though not quite in this fashion.

Thirty years as a parent is a milestone, the thought of which doesn't slumber easily at 4:00 a.m., even though the cat whose meowing woke me is already curled by my feet snoring. Memories dance past of that Christmas morning on which I felt the first, real tuggy twinge and knew this was it. Tim drove me in his 1966 Ford Falcon (the same one he'll drive later this morning to work on things at the church), under brilliant blue skies, from Vancouver to the Portland hospital. Later there would arrive my parents and brother, we'd open presents in the birthing room, and then my labor would become intense, while Dad blasted Space Invaders via Tim's Atari in the waiting room and while Tim's three-inch TV on the bedside table played Barney Miller's theme.

This all came about, I ponder now, not because I invented an adulthood of marriage and family exploits, but because I entered into commitment and struggle, pain and process.

I couldn't have done any of it alone. There's never been a doubt I had help from above. The regular, ordinary doubt about what occurred has remained pretty constant -- doubt of myself, of my interpretation which is faulty at best. But that which made itself known to this failing being is that which comprises faith -- the acceptance of what is not yet seen and the surety of what is coming.

In purely human terms, however, I had help from the man I married, the man with whom I signed divorce papers before our fourth anniversary. The day we signed, we hadn't yet had children. I already lived with someone else. As divorces go it was more tidy than some.

But then it didn't happen. We couldn't make our divorce work, because that day we signed the papers we prayed. Tim asked me to. I grudgingly granted his request (I suppose I decided I'd give him a last gift). And then I was quietly amazed. Astounded. That afternoon I told the man I'd been living with I had to leave him, and I did, never seeing him again. I went home to my parents. Later that summer, Tim and I were back together.

I knew that while praying with Tim I'd been invited into something. I gained the strongest sense God considered our marriage a living thing, and He didn't want it to die. I'm aware I may have had a psycho/emotional reaction to something. There are likely a million possibilities. But the facts of the story remain: I had tried to do the "right" thing a thousand times before this, and I failed. Finally, firmly, I had left my husband, and that was that. It was, anyway, right up until the moment, two years before I gave birth to our daughter, when I accepted the invitation to enter in.

On Victoria's birth day (three minutes past midnight, December 26th), I still hadn't learned the whole story. I knew Tim was convinced throughout my pregnancy that we'd have a girl (no ultrasound confirmation back then). He had never wavered. When our baby was a couple months old he told me more about his doings the year I left him.

For a few months Tim stayed near Portland with his aunt and uncle (he'd just been hired by KPTV). I was out of the picture, back in Coos Bay with someone else. At first, Tim was stoic. All right, leave me, I don't care, this has been more mess than I asked for, anyway. Then he started praying. One time, as he prayed, he "saw" me pregnant. He knew then that if we got back together I would have a daughter. He was given no guarantee we could work things out. But he was encouraged to try.

I tell this story, this time, because I've been coming to see reality as something each person is invited to enter into (each in wonderfully differing ways), for the benefit of all. The most genuine stuff, of which tree-boughs sigh and bullfrogs croak and incoming tides thunder, is really all one story. Its endless variations sing repeated hardship and trial, but they encourage the sufferer to undergo them, to discover the surprising interactions. Like a gift on Christmas neither Tim nor I could have imagined, a daughter who would bless our lives. She would grow up to discover an odd church with onion domes and bells, a foreign land, and she'd invite us to visit. And the rest is another chapter, another verse, in a single tale, continuing.

gifts

For years we paid a little each month for secondary health insurance. My primary plan has a high deductible, so I hoped the secondary, supplemental policy would give me great help to pay my bills. While hospitalized I'd sensed those dollar amounts mounting with each blood draw and electrocardiogram.

The supplemental plan didn't offer me a cent. The evening I read the company's denial I groaned. I tried not to resent the people I'd talked to on the phone and worked so hard to please with all my gathered statements and doctor's notes. "Just send everything," they'd told me. "That's the only way we can determine your eligibility."

I did resent them, though they were only doing their job. All I could do was send a cancellation letter and try the next option, the messier one: dealing with every billing office, while applying for the hospital's financial assistance program.

We had received many promises of prayer from people far and wide, especially from our church friends, and this gave me real comfort. As church treasurer, I've observed generous, sacrificial amounts given by parishioners after they dedicated time to prayer for the needy.

For this reason, I wasn't super worried. I think, though, that I shrank from the reality of being needy; I preferred figuring a way out of trouble myself. And so I applied for jobs, being interviewed by the post office for holiday work. I wasn't hired. (Now, as rain pours and parts of Eugene flood, I wonder how long it would have taken me, had I been hired, to end up back in the hospital.)

Surprisingly, I enjoyed almost every conversation with medical office bookkeepers. Their work's not so different from mine, and I could commiserate when their computers did strange things. I managed to complete the hospital application, and then we simply had to wait to learn whether or not they'd reduce my bill. In the meantime, one church friend offered to organize a bake sale. I baked gluten-free brownies and brought them that Sunday, expecting a few other goodies would arrive and we might receive a few dollars. Every bit would help, so I was grateful.

People actually made a big deal of the sale, even auctioning off two pies. Money came in. More came from people just giving us checks. Just because. It added up fast. I was (still am) overwhelmed.

At Tim's parents' for our usual Sunday evening shared dinner, Mom H. told an involved story about how they'd been planning to help Tim's sister with a substantial bill. It turned out the bill was cancelled, and since they'd already subtracted the amount from their checkbook...She handed me a check. More overwhelm.

As you may have guessed, the hospital helped, too, reducing my bills by 40%. Most recently we learned that an Orthodox group's benevolent fund is granting me $2000.

My bills are pretty much covered. My heart, squeezed a few months ago by excessive fluid, now sings a merry, dark day tune. Slipping through puddles to the church bookstore for my volunteer shift, I anticipate strange things my computer may do as I enter numbers. I listen to volunteers working hard on the nave's messy renovation, and I compliment them on how great the church is really starting to look. They glance at the floor and shrug and tell me, "Well, it's all a process."