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Chapter eighteen
The Price
I’ve often considered it the best advice I ever received. Sister Green had a great idea when she told me I should have myself a baby. We just decided together that would be a quick fix for whatever problems my marriage might be having. Looking back, I wonder what we could have been thinking. But thank God we weren’t thinking that day. It was the day I put my order in for a black-headed baby girl.
It had really not crossed my mind before. Having children had been a distant thought since my mind had been cluttered with concerns of a more immediate nature. Plotting my day-by-day existence seemed to consume my every waking moment. Then suddenly my head was bombarded with an image of this baby girl that was sure to make it all go away.
I carefully planned her date of birth. I knew we had revivals scheduled in the mid-west during the fall. My intention was to have her just after Christmas. I didn’t want her birthday to be disrupted by the holidays, but I wanted it soon enough afterward that I could not go back to California during that time. I wanted to be home. This would insure that my baby would be born close to my mother.
My little scheming mind began to override any sense of reason. My heart began to swell with anticipation. It dissolved into utter joy the day I turned down the candy aisle at a grocery store and felt nauseous from the smell of chocolate. Things were right on schedule.
A trip to the doctor confirmed the answer to all my woes was set to arrive on January 10th, 1982. I mentally placed a check mark on the second notch of the stages in my plan.
We had been in the mid-west at the time and traveled the long three-day journey back to central California when I was about three months along. I wasn’t terribly concerned since I knew we had revivals confirmed back in my part of the country soon. However, as I was entering my forth month, things took an awful turn.
Tim heard of a church, about four hours north of where his folks lived, that needed a pastor. Since we were having a baby, he thought we needed a break from the road. I began to get really nervous when I heard him scheduling a weekend to spy out the land and see if we wanted to take this church.
We walked into a small sanctuary with around a dozen people in attendance. The building needed a lot of work as the concrete floor was exposed through the worn carpet. There was no parsonage to live in and the area had one of the highest costs of living in the nation.
I was getting a bit encouraged thinking the chances were pretty slim that he’d want it. If it really were God, that would be one thing. But surely Tim would have to seek the Lord on this one. It didn’t look like a positive move in the natural. But what did I know? I just did the laundry and planned the baby.
The service was average with no blue smoke or sounding trumpets. I was anxious to get alone with Tim to see what he was thinking. But to my surprise I overheard him telling the deacon in the back of the church that he would love to be their pastor. “What did he just say?” I screamed to myself in my own ear. “Are we not going to talk it over or even ask the Lord about it?” I wanted to throw out a fleece or two! I had to have a few dreams and an open vision! But he just said that he would come and be their pastor!
My entire plan was on the verge of being derailed. This was not a good thing.
I told him I didn’t feel well and needed to lay down in the backseat for the drive home. I really wanted to hide my face so I could cry like a baby. I listened as my own voice in my head began to scold; “You brought this on yourself girl! You worked up a little scheme and now it’s going to backfire on you!” It now appeared that I would end up in California for the holidays, too pregnant to go home. Then have a baby more than two thousand miles away from my mother where she would end up missing some of the most important moments of my life. I continued to badger myself and said, “To top it all off you’re going to have a big-o bald-headed boy!” There’s nothing wrong with bald-headed boys. That just wasn’t the plan. . .
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