Everything was quiet. Marcus thought about the events of the last 18 hours. Lauren’s water broke at the restaurant, so everyone followed Marcus and Lauren to the hospital, relocating Noah’s graduation party to the waiting room. They called Lauren’s mom and her brother Eddie and they met everybody up there. It was one big family reunion/graduation party/slumber party. But it was no party for Lauren. Ten hours in labor and no progress. The epidural was effective, Lauren was okay—physically—and so was Micah. But he was content to stay right where he was. They waited and waited and looked at the monitor and watched the clock. Finally the doctor came and they wheeled her down to the operating room. They let Marcus come in and snap a picture of the great arrival. Micah swallowed some meconium, creating brief drama, but they took care of it quickly. They monitored his breathing and blood-oxygen levels and he was fine. Everyone from the slumber party took turns walking down to the recovery room to greet Micah and congratulate Marcus and Lauren.
As the afternoon went on they moved to their own room. For a long time Lauren held Micah and looked at him and talked to him. It took a combination of Marcus’ urging and her own exhaustion to persuade her to get her first sleep in 40 hours. While she got some rest, Marcus held Micah—Micah Samuel Redding—in his lap and rocked him in the rocking chair.
Everything was quiet except for the hum of the a/c unit. He watched the Weather Channel for a while but the big “H” was still parked over the South. Their laptop was sitting on the tray that goes over the bed. He held Micah in his left arm and reached out and rolled the tray to him. He arranged things just right and flipped open the computer. They had wireless internet access. Nice. He went to biblegateway.com and did a search for “children” in the Old Testament.
This scripture caught his eye, “He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (Psalm 78:5-7).
He thought about his grandfather. He just missed his great-grandson by a few months! Grandpa Sam passed his faith on to Marcus’s dad who passed it on to Marcus. Now it was Marcus’s turn to pass his faith on to Micah.
So he brought up the gospel of John and started reading to his son, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”
More about Marcus Redding’s journey of faith next week.
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