God's perfect timing...

Timing. “What perfect timing!”, “Is the timing right?”, “My timing was off…”, “good timing”, “the art of timing…”, “not the best timing…”, “a sense of timing”. We abound with catch-phrases about timing. We’re a bit time-obsessed ourselves right now. We fly back to family, friends, FBC, air-conditioning, water-on-demand and Sonic Diet Cokes with LOTS of crushed ice in 10 days! Are we ready???? You bet!!!

We can’t get there fast enough to see our family, including the newest member who just couldn’t wait for our arrival to make his own…our sweet, precious little (6 lbs 4 oz, 20” long), Nathaniel Jack who was born Monday, May 25th at 5:26 p.m. Of course, we’ve seen pictures of him (he looks so much like Jeremiah did when he was born) and we were thrilled to get them. E-mail has been a wonderful blessing for us this year!

But as great as those pics are, nothing can replace the unique and spell-binding moment for this Grandma of holding the most magnificent miracle of new life wrapped in velvet flesh for the very first time. There is something that occurs and touches me like nothing else I’ve experienced in life when I get to caress, hold close and stare deep in to slate-blue eyes of a minutes-old grandbaby. Maybe it’s looking at a blank page future…maybe it’s the curiosity of looking at life so new there is not yet a past, maybe it’s the awesome beholding at the revealing of God’s latest, most-treasured creation. I think that must be what it is…a moment so precious, so rare and so intimate, a moment reserved only for a Grandma full of fiercely strong “Grandma-love” to be shared with and showered upon a long-awaited grandchild full of secrets yet to be shared.

I love my grandchildren more than I can express and I have been privileged enough to have been there for the births of each and every one of them. Every experience unique in its own right and yet every experience tied together with the common thread of that moment of magic when I first met my newest heart-throb whose life was still being measured in minutes. I have missed that with Nathaniel and on Monday, my heart broke over that. Still, I refuse to allow that to diminish the joy of this special grandbaby. And I refuse to be robbed of that special moment that God has gifted specifically to Grandmas like me.

Just because the logistics of geography, little Nate’s creative calendar and the “bad-timing” of airline tickets with a June departure date have delayed our “love-at-first-sight” moment, in no way do I think that won’t happen. Instead, the anticipation grows knowing that Nate and I have a lot to catch up on when we finally get to share our long-awaited alone-time…when we can have our Ear Time.

Unless you’re a Grandma who is absolutely silly over every single grandbaby, you might not know Ear Time. In my case, it’s going to be when this Grandma finally gets to whisper the first of a life-time of her praises reserved only for Nathaniel’s tiny, sweet ears and little Nate blinks back the promise of his someday-secrets saved for only Grandma’s ears. Magic moments so rich that Kodak could only dream of capturing them…God-blessed, God-created moments. I can hardly bear the wait until I get to meet my precious little Nate. I know it will happen just as his birth did…in God’s perfect timing.