When a baby is overdue, waiting can be torture. And I’m just the grandma!

Linnea and her husband Adam are excitedly anticipating the arrival of Baby #2 any minute. His nursery is painted and the newborn car seat is ready to be put back in service. My phone is charged and ready in my pocket. We are all standing by, giddy with anticipation and ready with a heap of love. The only one who has no idea what’s about to happen is their daughter Skylar, 18 months and blissfully unaware.

We all refer to Skylar as our miracle baby. Linnea and Adam knew ahead of time they might have trouble becoming parents and began researching the matter a year after they were married. As test results came in, the news wasn’t good. Doctors said there was “no way” a baby could be conceived without the help of modern medicine, so Linnea and Adam considered their options carefully, praying and sometimes fasting as they went along.

In the end, they decided to try IVF, an expensive, painful, emotionally draining process accompanied by weeks of waiting. Their IVF story can be found on Linnea’s blog, www.KissYourMiracle.com

I’ll never forget the sad day Linnea called me from their home in Florida, her voice so distorted by weeping I couldn’t even identify it as my daughter’s. The IVF procedure had failed.

Picking up the pieces and moving forward, Linnea and Adam decided to start over, saving and planning for a second try at IVF. They hoped to accomplish it within a year. But just as they were ready, both of them felt strongly God wanted them to wait even longer, a difficult word to receive but one they obeyed. Now we know, of course, that the Lord was looking at Skylar. Had they gone ahead with the second IVF, they would have unknowingly set aside God’s baby miracle.

Seven months passed, and Linnea and Adam were still waiting for God’s directive to do a second IVF, but Linnea wasn’t feeling very well. Exhausted by dinner each evening, she was queasy much of the time and wondered what could be wrong.

Then one afternoon Adam suggested the impossible by buying a home pregnancy test. Linnea was too nervous to watch the stick develop and stayed one room away. After a few interminable moments of waiting, Adam walked in, stunned by the result. “It’s positive!”

“Well then the test must be defective,” Linnea concluded. “Let’s go get another one, a different brand.”

That one was positive, too. So was the third test, performed in their doctor’s office two days later. And finally they believed it. A baby that no one could explain was on its way. It was God’s miracle, and their waiting was over.

Skylar was not an “easy” baby. Linnea’s word was “intense”, and the intensity has never lessened. But oh the joy she’s brought to all of us! Nelson lovingly calls her the family maniac, but without Skylar, all of us would have missed out on bushels of laughter and mind-flooding gratitude to God.

In the fall of 2007, when Linnea and Adam anticipated never having children, their mouths would have dropped open and eyes grown wide if someone had said, “Two years from now you’ll be delivering your second baby!”

But this is often how God works. We call out to him in desperation and frustration. We analyze our situation and see it’s not humanly possible for things to work out. We despair and grieve, sometimes railing at God in anger. We cry and say, “It isn’t fair!”

The Lord smiles at three things:

1. when we say, “I give up.”
2. when the experts say, “There’s no way.”
3. when his obedient children say, “Yes, we’ll wait.”

It’s at those times he positions himself to unleash a surprise beyond our wildest imaginations. For our family, Skylar is that wild surprise, and Baby #2 is wild-surprise-maximus!

There is no other explanation for these wonders except to say, it’s all about God. And whatever he has planned is always worth the wait!

“Who is like you among the gods, O Lord—glorious in holiness, awesome in splendor, performing great wonders?” (Exodus 15:11)

Is it possible to live without regrets? Probably not. All of us are pros at looking backwards and playing rounds of would-have, could-have and should-have. Regret comes naturally. The trick is facing forward to play the would-do, could-do and should-do game.

When I think of Nate, particularly of his last year as he suffered so much back pain and then cancer pain, I often wonder if he had regrets. I can’t imagine he did, because in my opinion, he suffered well, taking the high road and carrying his miserable assignment without complaint.

As for me, I have a bucket full of regrets and if-only’s. I try not to play those games, but sometimes they taunt me like a school yard bully.

I think often of my mom, who was a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky person who worked hard and had hundreds of friends. Her funeral was SRO, unusual for a 92 year old woman, the room (and hall and lobby) filled with a crowd of mourners much younger than she. They were people a generation and sometimes two behind her on whom she’d had a profound impact. She was young at heart and in thought, influencing lives of all ages.

I was lucky enough to spend every Saturday evening with mom during the last year of her life. We’d eat, watch TV, play games, laugh, pray, and make plans for the future. One Saturday we found ourselves talking theology. She was in her “Genesis Phase,” digging deep into the first few chapters of the Bible for several months straight. Somehow we got onto the subject of living life without regrets (probably talking about Eve).

I asked mom, “How about you? Do you have any regrets?” This woman had won awards, taught the Bible, led committees, entertained thousands, evangelized neighborhoods, tended to the elderly, babysat unnumbered children, made friends in high places and lived life to the fullest.

She didn’t answer my question right away but seemed lost in thought. Finally she responded. “My whole life is one big regret.”

I couldn’t believe my ears, this coming from a woman who was the role model for hundreds. “What?” I said. “You’re kidding!”

Words of praise rushed from my mouth like water from a fire hose, and I spent the next ten minutes listing reasons why she shouldn’t have any regrets. She continued to look out the window and shake her head just enough for me to notice. I changed the subject, hoping to pull her from the doldrums of the moment. Today I regret filling the air with compliments. If I’d asked for more of her thoughts, I might have learned something.

Mom died in 2005, and I’ve had five years to reflect on her comment. I think she had gleaned so much about the Lord in her studying and praying that she genuinely knew she hadn’t measured up and never could. All the would-haves, could-haves and should-haves she might have accomplished couldn’t even come close.

She had long ago stopped comparing herself to other people and what they’d accomplished, and by then was comparing herself only to Jesus Christ and what he’d accomplished. In her judgment, she’d been “weighed in the balance and found wanting.” (Daniel 5:27)

The fact that I had made a major effort to talk her out of her somber self-assessment proved the shallow depth of my own spiritual understanding. Mom had been attending God’s school of wisdom for 92 years and was finally at the head of the class, but I was trying to coax her to the back row. Examining her life and “landing low” was her arrival at genuine humility. God was nodding his approval and making big plans to lift her up

“Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” (James 4:9-10).

When Nate and I got married in 1969, we owned next-to-nothing but had high expectations for future possessions. For a while we were content with hand-me-down furniture, dishes and linens, but when Nate got his first lawyering job, we felt our ship had come in.

After saving for seven months, we went shopping for a few pieces of furniture to outfit our small apartment in a second story Chicago walk-up. By the end of that day, we’d ordered eight items, one being an enormous executive desk for Nate. It had a black leather top, deep drawers for file folders and attractive oak detailing. A high-backed, black leather chair on wheels made the set-up look downright regal.

This was a desk that should have been shipped to the White House, not an old apartment on the north side. The salesman must have been chuckling on the inside as we signed the papers and wrote the check.

For a year or two, Nate sat behind his impressive desk whenever he worked at home. Eventually we moved to the suburbs to raise our family, living in three houses over 37 years and paying extra to have the giant desk moved to each new address. Four men were needed to maneuver it, and house design determined where it could be placed.

As time passed, Nate sat at his desk less and less. He preferred working from an old couch just off the kitchen, near the coffee pot and all the action. Watching his stately desk sit unused for years, I finally asked if I could store household items in its drawers. Nate had long since separated himself from the fantasy image of becoming a big shot and was happy to let me take it over. Our little kids used its foot well as a fort and the swivel chair to play spinning games.

When it came time to move to Michigan last spring, my goal was to empty the house of half of all we owned, including the contents of every cabinet, drawer, closet, the garage and our furniture. After all, we were moving to a much smaller cottage that was already full.

I was enthusiastically giving away, throwing away, doing away with our belongings at a fast clip when I came to a screeching halt in front of the mega-desk. After trying to coax a resale shop to take it, trying to sell it at a house sale and asking all the friends we knew if they might want it, moving day was fast approaching, and I was in panic mode. We asked the new owners if they could use it, but they had no interest. Donating it to charity didn’t work, and finally time was up.

The day before we moved, I called the movers and asked if they wanted it. Fearing they’d say no, I pictured myself paying someone to haul it away as junk. I asked myself, “Why did we ever buy this monstrosity?” Our foolish visions of grandeur had deteriorated into a major predicament, and in the end, the desk had become a burden to carry.

Finally the moving guy called back and said, “I’ll take it, provided it’s free.” He and his crew came the day before the move and hauled it away, along with its chair. I thanked them for the favor.

Pride comes before a fall, and thankfully it was the desk that fell… from high regard. It had become like a museum piece plunked down in the middle of a playground, not good for much of anything. Although we paid a hefty price for it, in the end we could barely give it away.

”Jesus said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions’.” (Luke 12:15)