A Tapestry of Hope

The Drummer-Who-Wanted-12-kids is a young man, probably mid-thirties, fair of face with a goatee. (Pun unintended.) He struck me as extraordinary for it was uncommon to find a young man eager to have twelve children.

Standing high above the congregation, he looked vulnerable and alone. He spoke of many things that morning. He quoted many scripture verses, shared many stories, some his, some not. As I sat at the far back contemplating the man and his message, one word resonated  across the hall. 

H-O-P-E

The message he bore was like a toothache that wouldn't go away. As I lay awake in the wee hours of this morning, my thoughts gravitated towards him - again. The man who spoke of repentance and hope was a man in pain.

He wanted twelve kids. I was contented with one.

For a long time, I had wanted to share my story. Yet I held back on this one. The timing which had never been right before seemed ripe now. Not allowing second thoughts to hinder this enterprise, I took a leap of faith and stepped into the story.

But where does one begin?

I was an adopted child extracted from one branch of a family tree by another branch of the same lineage. My mother was technically my aunt. She and hers, me and ours, were idol worshipers from the get-go. 

When I was this high many decades ago, I had expected to become an idol worshiper just like my family members until the incident with The Strange Book (read here). From there, I survived the roaring hormones of the teenage years, declared that I'd be a Christian to a horror-stricken mother, got married and  discovered my heavenly father. (read here)

At this stage in the story, I was a young Christian wife eager to start a new family. It wasn't working out. Two years into the marriage, we were still childless. 

THE POWER OF PRAYER

My anguish grew as the days became months and then years. Then, I learned about the Power of Prayer.

I started a prayer ritual, speaking at length from the depths of my soul, detailing the despair and loneliness of growing up in a family torn by pride and prejudices. I grieved for the sense of belonging I never had, and implored my Heavenly Father to put right something which had begun so wrong. Twice a day, six times a week, I persisted with this ritual, giving time for the message to traverse the spiritual realm into the presence of Providence.

Then, not knowing how my Heavenly Father would communicate His intentions, I *flipped the bible. 

*(This was a practice which had since been discontinued when I later discover its folly.)

At the first flip, the following text sprang to attention.

• The LORD knew that Jacob loved Rachel more than he did Leah, and so he gave children to Leah, but not to Rachel. 

Background story: Jacob is the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham. In  order to avoid the conflict with his brother Esau, he escaped to his maternal uncle Laban who had two daughters. He was deceived by Laban into marrying the elder Leah and had to labor for an additional seven years to wed the younger Rachel.

This bode ill for me so the fervency of the prayer ritual was increased and more lamentation entered its fray. Justifiable claims were argued until the cows came home twice over and again. Appropriate beseeches were presented in well thought out words woven into a tapestry of Hope intended to leave some impression on a loving Heavenly Father.

At the second flip, the following text sprang into my vision.

• The days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed.’

I was cold with foreboding at the dire implication of this text. This will not do, I thought as my prayer ritual escalated to a new level. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Our needs are basic in an ever changing world, I thought as I meditated on my prayer. I focused on the same tapestry but the colors and hues were intensified that it might reflect the raw potency of my appeal.

At the last flip, a compassionate text met my anxious gaze.

• Then God remembered Rachel. He listened to her and opened her womb and she conceived and gave birth to a son.

Finally, a revelation. "Open up my womb that I may conceive"  became the new keyword in my prayer ritual. I kept this up for the next couple of months and ... my son came.