"My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place" (Ps. 139:15).
It wasn’t always this way. I can remember sleeping pretty much across America on our nearly annual family cross-country trips from Indiana to visit grandparents in Oregon. It was a good way to pass the three days in the car, especially across flat Nebraska with its endless miles of corn and wheat fields. I could sleep anywhere, anytime, and for as long as I wanted. But that was forever ago. Today I need my own pillow and, even more importantly, an eye mask and ear plugs. Some time ago, although I’m not sure when, I realized the horrible truth—I’ve become a “delicate” sleeper.
If it were only that, but it’s even worse. Noises now bother me in the daytime, too. There are days when the songs of the children in the kindergarten downstairs are sweet—like those spring mornings when they sing, “Saita, saita, turipu no hana ga naranda, naranda, aka, shiro, kiiro.” (This favorite song of all Japanese children translates as, “Bloomed, bloomed, the tulips have bloomed. All lined up, all lined up, red, white, and yellow.”) But more often than not, there’s a screamer in the bunch. His voice cuts through the sweetness like a fingernail being raked across a chalkboard. I love kids—and Japanese children are some of the cutest in the world—but this one needs to be muzzled, especially when I’m facing a writing deadline.
There’s also an orchestra that practices downstairs every Saturday afternoon. Actually, I think it’s only a string quintet, but even one instrumentalist would irritate me because the session tends to begin just about the time I want to take a nap. Even my earplugs can’t drown them out, although once, on a visit to India, I slept through the clamor of a family of monkeys that performed acrobatics on the verandah outside my hotel room. (On the other hand, my roommate was traumatized by those three hours.)
Nevertheless, everything was different on Wednesday. “Now we’re going to hear the heart beat,” Dr. Sakamoto announced. And there it was: thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump. Any words I might have said were immediately caught in my throat and my eyes filled with tears that trickled down my cheeks. Bernie, to my right, had the same reaction as we stared, transfixed, at the sonogram monitor that introduced us to our first grandbaby, scheduled to be born in Tokyo around January 31, 2008.
Three days later, I continue to be awed by the miracle of life growing inside our daughter. Remembering the high possibility that Stephanie would not be able to conceive, I can only praise God along with King David, who declared, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:13-16).
Thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump. It was a baby, alive and well, at twelve weeks and three days after conception. It was a most beautiful sound.
