I climbed the last two flights of stairs to the eleventh floor and inquired shamelessly throughout the corridor for my friend, "the foreigner that's having a baby." After a few raised eyebrows, we finally found the right hallway. Hadiah and I peeked quietly into every hospital room, each one fuller than the last. I was growing impatient. We'd sat in traffic all morning after hearing the baby was small and the amniotic fluid was low. "Mom, you passed them." I spun around to see my four year old, gift in each hand, pointing with her chin to the doorway next to her.
Sure enough there they sat tucked in the corner of a very not-private room. I felt instant relief at the sight of my friend's smile. We made our way past the other patients and families and babies.
I held back tears at the sight of her huge belly. We chit-chatted about the events that led to her being admitted two weeks early and the crazy night she'd had the night before. But my mind was elsewhere. How many times had I told my husband in the early years of our friendship that she just didn't get me? That she didn't hear my heart? That she didn't really know me?
Now I look at her and can only think,
"Faithful."
She said hard words to me when there was no one else around to say them. She said kind words too and she said them all in love and in truth believing that He who began a good work in me would be faithful to complete it.
She's talking about the delivery room now. How it was the only free bed the night before when they wanted to admit her and the Father, by his grace, allowed her to see firsthand what labour and birth and delivery looks like in this hospital in this culture and language that is not our own. "What a gift." She says, "to know ahead of time." I can feel my mouth hanging open. She is super woman.
I make a conscious effort to close my gaping jaw and try to smile and nod. Her husband is slouched in the corner of the room looking a little bit more like I feel. "Deeply concerned" is how mutual friends who know them better than us had described him. And if ever there was reason, this would be it.
Hadiah is passing out the gifts now. The first ever card that she wrote all by herself and the few baby things we wrapped together earlier in the morning. I'm apologizing because I bought them all online here in our host country and I still can't really read and none of it was exactly what we thought it was going to be. Although my mouth is saying words, my mind is wandering again.
Back to those days when I thought she didn't know me very well. I remember standing on the balcony of our apartment on the 11th of 21 stories, sobbing into my iPhone 3 about how sick my daughter was and how worried I was that I was pregnant again. We'd only been in country for 3 months at that point. I was a wreck. We found out later that scarlet fever had gone through our city and that's probably what Hadiah had at the time. I hadn't slept in days. And I was pregnant. And also very, very sick.
I called because she's our team doctor. But I found myself pouring out my heart to a friend. She knew me better than I thought. And she knew Him. Him who really knows me. And I'm confident that the words she spoke were from Him for me.
We'd met only a couple times before that. After two and a half years of "trying" I'd recently joined the world of mothers just before we met for the first time. She was still childless then after almost 10 years of marriage. My heart broke for her and I began begging the One who gives life that the next time I was pregnant that we could be pregnant together.
It was her and her physician husband who pulled the plug on my having Hadiah overseas. I'd always imagined having all our babies overseas and I mourned deeply the death of that dream when our leadership denied my request at their suggestion.
"Faithful. Faithful are the wounds of a friend."
How were we to know then that Hadiah would be an emergency c-section and Benaiah would need emergency heart surgery following his birth? They didn't know either but they knew Him and He knew.
I look over at our boys quietly playing with matchbox cars on the two hospital arm chairs. Hers is two and a half and mine, almost three. We had a precious week of being pregnant together at the same time in the same city that was the answer to years of my asking, although neither of us knew it at the time.
I see evidence of His faithfulness every time I see her smile.
I wipe away silent tears and look back into her beautiful face. Beautiful not because of her delicate features and blonde hair, not because of the letters behind her name or the successful pediatric plastic surgeon to whom she's married. Not because she's a great mom or a great wife or a great doctor. Not because her mandarin is amazing or her impact on local people is far-reaching. But beautiful because of her heart.
Her heart that longs to follow Him.
Her heart that's so quick to speak of his faithfulness.
Her heart that challenges mine, "Follow me as I follow Him."
She's not perfect but she makes me want to be faithful to Him who is faithful to us.
She inspires me to walk worthy of that to which we've been entrusted, to fall more in the love with the Giver of Life, and to trust Him more with the life He's given me.
And somehow when it was all said and done, my stinker husband got to see that sweet baby first. He was delivering some stuff to them and it all happened a lot faster than anyone planned so I have yet to see her besides pictures on his phone.
But I hear she's beautiful, too.