a Birthday and a Book Review

Today my firstborn turns 10.  For a decade, I've been rocking, holding, hugging, teaching, guiding, correcting, laughing... playing games, cutting sandwiches into quarters, taking temperatures, sweeping crumbs off the floor, and loving. 

On that day ten years ago, December 8, 2002, I could not imagine my life today.  I wasn't even attempting to think of the future.  I was focused on birthing my son, waiting and laboring the twelve long hours from when I felt my first contraction in the wee hours of the morning until he was delivered later that afternoon. 

We can draw a comparison to our lives before Christ.  Weighed down with sin, in the midst of our painful aching and stretching, the longing and waiting... we are not looking forward.  We are simply waiting to be delivered.

I was recently given the opportunity to review the book by Born to Deliver by Kathy Brace (with Natalie Wickham).  Kathy is a midwife and I've always been drawn to those kinds of books (A Midwife's Story, anyone?  Or Baby Catcher, perhaps?), but this turned out to be not one of "those kinds of books" at all and beyond what I was expecting. 

This is the story of Kathy, daughter of divorce and loneliness.  As a teenager and  into adulthood, she looked for anything or anyone to fill the hunger in her heart.  She hoped having a boyfriend would make her feel loved, but boy after boy, man after man left her feeling used and empty.  She had multiple unexpected pregnancies and struggled though life as a single mom.  She eventually married, but even having the life she always dreamed-- a husband, home, and family-- didn't fill the void.

I've been floundering lately to find a book that holds my interest.  After the string of memoirs I flew through this summer, I hit a wall.  After a real disappointment, I struggled to find anything that was too good to put down.  I never quit reading-- I'm always in the middle of something-- but I wasn't reading anything I loved.  When I began this book, though, on a busy, busy Thanksgiving weekend, I couldn't stop.  The story was riveting! 

I love the double meaning of the title. Currently practicing midwifery, Kathy believes God has called her to this purpose, this ministry of delivering babies into the world, but she also believes that ultimately she herself was born to be delivered into the arms of a gracious and forgiving God.