I like order, structure, harmony and resolution. I love the tidy way novels wrap up.
I’m not a fan of loose ends or messes.
So when I exited the elevator on the maternity floor to be with the 16-year-old girl I’d met at Royal Family KIDS Camp four years earlier, my heartrate spiked. Brecken* had no one to be with her for the birth of her first child. Someone from the group home had dropped her off. Apparently, some mandate prevented a representative of the state to be in the birthing room. Brecken had to navigate everything.
Alone.
The veteran OB nurse with seven of her own grown children looked me in the eye. “So how do you know the young mom?”
“From camp.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And why are you here again?”
Not sure exactly what to say, I shrugged. “God gave me an assignment.”
The nurse nodded knowingly. “You and me both. None of the younger nurses wanted the teenage mom.”
Being supportive became my primary role for the next several hours. Before the contractions became regular, Brecken chatted nonchalantly with some guy on her phone, clueless to the responsibility she would soon shoulder. As she gave him the play-by-play on the birthing process, the words coming from Brecken’s mouth would’ve made me blush at her age.
She was a child herself even if she was more streetwise than me. Starved for attention, Brecken tried to play grownup. Somewhere in her subconscious, I’m pretty sure she figured having a baby would fill the hole in her heart, guaranteeing someone would always love her.
When the time came to deliver the baby, pain racked Brecken’s body. I stood beside her, coaching her through the contractions, encouraging her. My own emotions were too tangled to process—sadness, heartache, worry, helplessness, fear.
And then came the cry of a newborn. And love flooded over me, bathing me in warmth and joy. The mess of body fluids and pain suddenly turned into a scene of indescribable beauty. I couldn’t help but think about the savior of the world entering the mess of our lives into a dirty barn surrounded by the stench of barn animals.
The Christmas story came alive in a hospital room with an unlikely girl and a tiny infant.
Love, the most powerful force in the universe, overpowered me. Spun from a father’s heart for his children, the depth and breadth beyond words . . . love wrecked me.
I came undone when I held little Kenyan.*
Getting messy came with a beauty this control freak never expected.
