Well, I have four big ones...... ages - 26, 24, 21 and 18
For those of you who like a story, pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee and read on....
For the rest of you - feel free to pass on to the next thread and be blessed...
For those of you who have stayed....
You may have noticed that there is a bigger age gap between our third and fourth child than between the others. This is because our fourth child was a pleasant surprise!
Our three eldest children were born before my wife and I became Christians. Three years after becoming Christians, our fourth child was born. With the first three children we only chose a name for them usually several days after they were born, but for this child, we were determined to make sure that we had a name before the birth. Now that we were Christians, we also thought we should ask God what He wanted her to be called. I went away to pray and seek the Lord for a name. I returned to tell my wife that I thought the Lord wanted us to call the baby "Ralph". Her response was "Ralph!! I think you've got that wrong - you'd better go and pray again!". I dutifully went to seek the Lord again, and returned to my wife saying "I apparently I mis-heard. The Lord wants the baby to be called Ruth not Ralph!". This event took place about two months after the pregnancy was declared. I should perhaps add at this point that I had never seen the birth of any of our children, neither had we determined to know the sex of any of the children before they were born.
The story continues....
About a month before the due date for the birth, we started to panic a bit because we did not have a boy's name. We started to spend time looking for a suitable boy's name until it suddenly dawned on me - if God had given me the name for a girl, why did we need a boy's name? Surely, the child would be female. At that point we no longer pursued looking for a boy's name.
The story winds forward to what was eventually to become the date of the birth.....
That day I had agreed to visit my wife in hospital at 2.30pm. I also had three young children that needed to be looked after whilst I was away so I arranged for a good neighbour to look after them whilst I was on my visit.
My wife was in an ante-natal ward by herself (this is an interesting point, but I'll let you decide why later on). My wife was pretty well "out of it" - I'm sure you mums out there will appreciate why. Not much converation passed between us, because she quite understandably had her mind on other things. I was beginning to wonder when it would be acceptable for me to leave, recognising that I had a baby-sitter at home looking after three young children whilst on the other hand not wanting my wife to think that I was abandoning her. I had decided that 4.30pm would seem to be a good time to make my exit - by now it was about 4.10pm.
At about 4.20pm, I was beginning to think how I might make an acceptable exit, when my wife told me (as best she could) to go and get the nurse because she thought the baby was coming. When I found the nursing sister, she claimed that it was impossible as they had loked at her about 30 minutes previous (which they had) and assessed that the baby was nowhere near due and probably not for at least a couple of hours. Anyway, she decided to come and take a look - more to humour my request than anything else, I think. When she examined my wife, she gave a surprised response - I remember her words to be : "My word, this baby is on the way". With that, our dughter was born, right in front of my eyes - the first one I had seen, and my wife was still in the ante-natal ward, she had not been taken to the labour room. Whilst seeing the birth was great, there was one more thing that to me was more important - at the time that Ruth appeared, I heard the Lord whisper to me "I wanted you to witness My creation".
Ruth is indeed a gift from the Father.....
Next post, I'll tell you a Ruth incident...
