It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not yet and not here. They were driving home for Christmas, and the baby was not due for another month. But Diane started into labor while they were still on the road, on Christmas Eve. Two states separated them from the families that awaited them, and another state separated them from the hospital, doctors and nurses who had provided all the prenatal care and who were supposed to be assisting with the birth. It was too far to go forward, and too far to go back. So, they just followed the blue hospital signs on the freeway, and here they were.
“What was your due date?” the strange doctor asked in a foreign accent.
“January 30,” Johnny answered, as he looked down at his young wife gritting her teeth through another contraction.
“You’re supposed to breathe, honey. Breathe,” Johnny said as the well-trained coach that he was.
“Shut up, Johnny. It hurts!” Diane growled back at her husband.
“Okay,” the doctor interrupted. “It looks like you’re through that contraction. Let me say a few things before the next one begins. First, you made a good decision to stop here, and not try to make it on to your family. This baby is not waiting until January 30th. It may be early, but there seems to be something going on. I’m not sure what just yet. There’s some bleeding, and the baby is in distress. I think it would be a good idea to get this little person out here where I can provide better care.”
Something is going on! Bleeding! The baby in distress! These were not the words they were expecting to hear at the birth of their first child. Panic gripped two young hearts.
“Is she going to be okay?” Diane squeezed out as another contraction began.
“Probably, but I can’t be sure yet,” the doctor answered. “That’s why we’re going to go ahead and take the baby. I don’t want to wait for things to move along naturally, especially since this is your first. It could take a lot longer than I’m willing to wait.”
“Just do whatever is necessary to keep my wife and daughter healthy,” Johnny told the doctor.
“I certainly will,” the doctor said as he went out the door of the hospital room.
“Come with me,” the nurse said to Johnny, “and we’ll get you scrubbed up and ready to meet your daughter.”
Johnny started to follow, and then he said, “Can I use my cell phone in here? I need to call our families. They’re expecting us home tonight, and obviously we’re not going to make it.”
“I’m afraid you can’t use your cell phone in here, but there is a phone just down the hallway that you can use,” the nurse answered.
Johnny hurried to the phone that the nurse had pointed out to him. After he put in the numbers, a voice at the other end answered, “Hello.”
He could not help himself. The sound of a familiar voice was almost more than Johnny could bear just that moment. The words froze in his throat. His emotions roared around inside him.
“Hello,” the familiar voice said again.
“Dad,” Johnny managed to squeeze out.
“Johnny, is that you?” his dad asked.
Johnny was trying with all his might to pull himself together to get the words out. But he had never said words like these. These were vital words – life and death words. They were stuck deep inside him, and he was afraid to let them out. It was almost as if he could just keep the words inside, then all those things he so desperately feared would never happen.
“Johnny, are you guys alright?” his dad asked in a much changed tone of voice. “Have you had an accident?”
“No,” Johnny managed to answer. “We’re alright. We haven’t had an accident.” Then after another long pause, Johnny said, “Diane is in labor, and the doctor seems concerned. He said that something’s going on. There’s some bleeding.” Then, like a dam bursting, the worst of the news came bursting out, “Dad, the baby’s in distress!”
“Are you at the hospital?” his father asked.
“Yes, but not our hospital,” Johnny answered. “We were about half-way home when Diane started having contractions.”
“Tell me where you are, son,” his father said. “We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
“Call Diane’s parents too, okay?” Johnny said.
“Of course,” his father said.
Johnny did the best he could to tell their families how to find the hospital where their grandchild would be born.
As Johnny started back to Diane’s room, he stopped to compose himself. A Christmas special on a nearby television set caught Johnny’s ear. “Do not be afraid,” a person was reading from the Christmas story, “for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”
“Do not be afraid.” “Good news of great joy.” The words swirled around in him like flakes of falling snow, the words glistening with happiness and promise. The beauty of them quieted his soul. The hope they proclaimed covered his fears like a blanket of new-fallen snow covers fallen leaves.
“Do not be afraid. Good news of great joy. Our baby is going to be okay,” he thought to himself. “Our baby is going to be okay.”
Johnny rushed to get scrubbed and gowned so he could get back to share what he had heard with Diane. He fully expected her to be worked up into a full-blown state of panic. She had always been a person who was nervous and easily frightened. He called her the designated worrier for their family. He knew Diane would be terrified by what the doctor had said. So he prepared himself to begin working to calm her fears, but Johnny was not prepared for what he found when he returned to the birthing room.
Diane was lying quietly, her feet already in the stirrups of the birthing bed. A peaceful, relaxed smile filled her face.
“Have they already given you pain medication?” Johnny asked, since he could imagine no other reason for her relaxed state.
“Not yet. They’re getting it ready now,” she answered. “Why?”
“You’re so peaceful. I expected you to be really scared.”
“I know,” she replied. “I don’t understand it myself. Our baby is in distress, and I should be really terrified. But I’m not. I was just lying here thinking about the Christmas story. You know, where the angel says to the shepherds, ‘Do not be afraid, for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy.’ Thinking about that just makes me feel really peaceful. Am I a bad mother?”
“I can’t believe it!” Johnny said. “Those were the exact same words I just heard out in the hallway! Some guy on the waiting room TV just said those same words!”
“Really?” Diane asked.
“Yes! I was just coming in here to tell you what I heard, because I felt like it was some kind of a message from God that our baby is going to be okay.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” Diane agreed. Then she grabbed her tummy as another contraction began.
“Breathe,” Johnny gently reminded her.
And two young souls breathed in unison, in and out, in and out.
As her contraction began to ease, Diane said, “Johnny, pray for our daughter.”
“What? Me? I haven’t prayed since I stopped going to Sunday school in junior high.”
“You’re the birthing coach,” Diane insisted. “Do your job.”
Johnny smiled down at his beautiful young wife, and saw her smiling back at him.
“Thank you, God,” he began without taking his eyes off his wife. “Thank you for coming here to be with us, and for the reassuring words. Thank you for taking care of our daughter, and bringing her into our world safe and sound. Thank you that she is going to be smart and beautiful like her mom. And thank you, God, for her mom, whom I love more than my own life. Amen.”
The smile on Diane’s face grew big and bright, like that of a beauty queen when she accepts her crown. She said, “Joseph couldn’t have done any better.” Then another contraction called Diane’s attention back to the daughter that they were about to meet.
“Joseph? Who’s Joseph?” Johnny asked. Then he remembered his coaching responsibilities, “Breathe, honey. Breathe.”
They were breathing together through the contraction when the doctor returned.
“Alright, let’s get this baby out here where I can find out what is going on!” he said as he bent over Diane.
It seemed like an eternity to Diane and Johnny, but in actuality only a few more minutes passed before the doctor held their baby daughter in his hands. The whole room was tense though. Even the nurses were holding their breath as the doctor carefully checked the baby girl’s vital signs. Then he looked up at Diane and Johnny and said, “I want to run a few tests to make sure that everything is okay.” And out the door he went with their daughter in his hands.
Johnny bent down and whispered into Diane’s ear, “Do not be afraid. I am bringing you good news of great joy.”
“I don’t know, Johnny,” Diane said. “We only go to church on Christmas Eve. Do you suppose God would do this for us?”
“I don’t know either,” Johnny answered. “I just know what I heard, and this is Christmas Eve.”
“I want it to be true, Johnny. I have never wanted anything so much in my whole life.”
“Me too, Honey. So, don’t be afraid. I am bringing you good news of great joy.”
Another doctor came in to finish up with Diane. The nurses kept working quietly. No one said a word, except Johnny. Every so often he would lean down next to Diane’s ear and whisper, “Do not be afraid. I am bringing you good news of great joy.” Soon, Diane began saying the words along with Johnny. It became like a mantra to them. There was nothing they could do, except to just keep repeating the words they were given.
Almost an hour passed before the doctor returned with their daughter in his arms. “So what are you going to name your daughter?” he asked. “Is she okay?” Diane demanded.
“Okay?” the doctor said, “She’s more than okay! She’s perfect! I have no idea what was going on before she was born, but she is healthy and perfect and strong too! For the last ten minutes she has had a grip on my thumb like you wouldn’t believe, and she won’t let go. So, I figured that maybe if I returned her to her mother she might trade me for you.”
The doctor was right. As soon as Diane took her daughter into her arms, the baby’s hand found some of Diane’s hair and gripped it tightly in her tiny hand.
“She is perfect,” Johnny said as he stroked the delicate wisps of hair on his daughter’s head.
“Good news of great joy,” Diane added.
Johnny put his arms around his family, and they held onto each other for a very long time.
Finally, Johnny stood up and said, “I’d better make some phone calls. Everyone still thinks our daughter is in distress.” Then reaching out and touching her tiny double chin, he said to her, “They don’t even know you are here yet. And that’s some good news of great joy that we had better share with them. Don’t you think?”
A big smile spread across the tiny face.
“Look at that smile!” he said to Diane. “What a beautiful smile! Honey, she looks just like you! That’s your smile! Thank you, God!”
He leaned over and kissed his wife. Then he kissed his daughter twice, and raced out of the room to the phone he had used earlier.
But Johnny was disappointed that no matter which family member he called, none of them answered their phone. Not even his elderly grandmother answered the phone. In growing desperation, he tried his brother’s cell phone number.
“Hello,” came the answer on the other end.
“Danny, where is everybody?” Johnny asked. “I can’t get anyone to answer their phones.”
“That’s because we’re all on the road heading towards you,” his brother answered. “We’ve got a convoy, man. And Dad’s up in front, and he’s got the pedal to the metal. I’ve never seen him drive so fast. Heck, I’m even having to work to keep up with him!”
“Well tell him to slow down. The baby is fine. In fact, she’s perfect. She looks just like Diane when she smiles.”
“That’s a relief! I was afraid she might look like you,” Danny joked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Johnny answered.
“Hey, I’m getting major dirty looks from the better half because I’m talking on the phone while I’m driving,” Danny said. “Let me hang up now, and I’ll try to catch up with Dad so I can share the good news with the rest of this road crew.”
“Good news,” Johnny said, “of great joy.”
Several hours later their family arrived – Diane and Johnny’s parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. Even Diane’s elderly grandmother had made the rapid, interstate trip, and of course she insisted that as the oldest family member present that she should hold the baby first. And she did.
“So what name are you giving to your little Christmas present?” her grandmother asked.
“Well,” Diane answered, “we had talked earlier of naming her after Mom. But that name will have to go to our next baby, because this one’s name is Joy.”
“It certainly fits, because she really is a bundle of joy,” her grandmother said. “But why do I think there is a story behind that name?”
“Because there is,” Johnny answered. “When the doctor said our baby was in distress, I nearly freaked out. We were in trouble and so alone. We didn’t know anybody at this hospital, and you guys were all so far away. It was just Diane and me, and she was in heavy labor and I was so scared I couldn’t function. I just barely managed to talk to Dad on the phone.
“And that’s what really scared me,” his dad added. “I’ve never heard you so frightened.”
“But that all changed after I hung up the phone,” Johnny continued. “It was like God stepped into our world. Diane and I both got messages that said the same thing, ‘Do not be afraid, for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.’ Immediately we both felt at peace. We knew God was telling us that we would hear good news of great joy, and that is exactly what we heard about our great Joy.”
Questions for Meditation, Discussion or Preaching
Copyright 2020. Robert D. Ingram, 32746 Jourden Rd., Albany, Ohio 45710 (dr.bobingram@gmail.com). Used by permission.
