It’s been a minute. Actually, it’s been 21,024,000 minutes since then. Forty years to the day since I had to lie down for 60 minutes every single day, for the next seven days, and count how many times the daughter in my belly moved. She was overdue, and my doctor wanted to make sure all was well in her dark little world. If she continued to move during that hour each day, we could let her stay there a little longer. If not, the doctor would probably have to go in and get her. But as is still her way, 40 years later, she knows when to make her move and when to stay put, and isn’t about to let anyone else tell her otherwise. Not a bad way to start a life.
We’ve all heard the expression, time flies, and for sure it does. Sometimes. But not those 60 minutes every single day of that week before her arrival. Time has never moved so excruciatingly slowly. Sometimes she would wait until the very last second of the very last minute to move. To signal that she was there. That all was well. And to let her momma’s anxious heart know that she was on her way. Just not quite yet.
That week of counting, forty years ago, is a reminder that sometimes it is best not to rush things. To force them into our carefully planned timing. Sometime, lots of times, life seems to know better than I do. More often than not, when I allow things to unfold as they will, things happen in ways I never could have imagined. As hard as it is to believe, time is on our side more often than not. When we are willing to wait, to be patient, to trust that things are happening even when we can’t see them, the rightness of the timing of things can astound us.
I wonder what is waiting to be born in our hearts? What miraculous new life is waiting to emerge, but isn’t quite here yet? Can we trust that whatever it is is on the way? That it will arrive precisely when it should, and not before? Trust me when I say, that kind of waiting, like I did twenty-one million and twenty-four thousand minutes ago is anything but passive. It is active. It is hard work. It is a choice, a discipline, and a practice. And we should prepare to be astounded. Like I was on that perfectly timed day when she was born.
