It seems like a few moons ago, when we were sitting around waiting for our baby boy to arrive, thinking about timing and life and Valleys of Postponement and even the perfectly timed birth of Jesus. And I’m pretty sure I told you at some point while we were busy waiting, that I had a feeling there was good reason to trust a God whose timing is much better than mine.

As is often the case in the stories of our lives, I didn’t know at the time exactly how the Lord was working things out.

We were expectant, and even hopeful that our second child would arrive early. As his due date approached, we started to think it would be neat for him to be born four days early, on Valentine’s Day, and when that passed we started to think of reasons why other days leading up to the due date might be nice. And eventually we were busy thinking about which days after the due date might be nicest…but I was pretty much to the point that I thought any day would be nice.

After Baby Blake’s arrival, we shared the news with family and friends (of course), and HH’s folks made their way down for the two weeks we’d planned to spend together right after the little one arrived. As we sat down to dinner on one of their first evenings with us, they had some news to share, too. It turned out that on Valentine’s Day, my first day of choice for the baby’s birth, my father-in-law had a heart attack.

He had a quadruple bypass well over a decade ago, and the doctors think that some plaque broke away from the lining of one of the arteries and created a blockage.

But what happened next was nothing short of miraculous.

When pressure built up because of the newly blocked artery, one of the clogged arteries that had been bypassed in that surgery, back in the mid-90s, opened up and started working again.

The doctor wasn’t sure if Dad was religious, but he was sure someone upstairs had been looking out for him.

At the dinner table I quietly wept as my mind took in the possibility that Dad could’ve not been sitting there with us, making a toast to the birth of this new baby boy. I thought about how differently things could’ve been had Blake come early and had they been travelling down to see us and meet the baby when the heart attack happened. They wanted to wait until after Baby Brother came and they were safely here to share the news with us. Dad had time to recover in the hospital and at home before they made the trip down.

The more I think through the alternative scenarios in my mind, the more I see this little one’s arrival as absolutely Perfect Timing. And for so many moments of those two weeks we enjoyed right at the start of this little life, I silently thanked God for what almost wasn’t — what could’ve not been. How that picture up there almost didn’t get taken. How different this arrival could’ve been.

And while I knew we could trust God for His perfect timing, I just didn’t realise how perfect His timing could be.

In every circumstance, to God be the glory.

xCC