She was born exactly two years and two weeks and two days after her brother. This time I was prepared. I knew not to expect her on my due date – which was good considering she was almost a full two weeks late. By this time we had moved from Colorado to Kansas and so my mother had agreed to come and help out. When she arrived, she took one look at me and announced, “Oh, this will be a while. You’re not nearly miserable enough to be at the end.” As usual, she was right.

But eventually I was miserable enough. It was a Sunday night and we had been to our house-church that afternoon. I should preface this next part of the story with this: this was a church made up of predominately college students. We were one of the few (as in two) families in the church. One of the young, single, (and not very sensitive) young men approached me. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I just have to tell you that being around pregnant women really makes me uncomfortable.” What do you even say to that? I was getting ready to tell me him exactly what he could do with his discomfort when a girl standing nearby, sensing the volatility of the situation stepped into the conversation. She was fairly new to the group and I knew her only a little. “Sharon, isn’t it? I just wanted to tell you that if you need anything, you can call me. I could come watch your little boy or whatever you need. Here’s my phone number.” I should pause here to say that that woman became one of my very best friends-for-life and befriended and mothered not just this baby, but all of my first four. Her name is Lori and I am deeply grateful for the part she played in my life in these years.

Which takes us to Sunday evening. That young, single, and insensitive guy, (who was also our good friend until his unfortunate comment earlier in the day) had stopped by to see Paul about some church business. The two year old was in bed, my mother was reading in the living room, and I had gone to lie down, exhausted from the day. Before long, I wasn’t feeling so well and my body remembered before my mind, that this was the same pain from two years ago. So I set the plan into motion. I told Paul to send Bill home since I obviously wanted to be sensitive to his comfort or lack thereof. My mother would stay with Sean, and Paul and I would head off to the hospital. Here is where the plan went awry.

Bill said that if it was all the same to us, he might like to come along for the ride and my mother wondered if there was anyone we might call so that she could also be at the hospital (my guess is she couldn’t tolerate the idea of Bill welcoming her grandchild into the world before she did.) Which is how we ended up calling Lori Phillips (a girl I barely knew) to come and stay with Sean so that Paul, my mother, and Bill could all be at the hospital – and even as I write this I wonder – What was I thinking??!!

Through the night, Bill and my mother kept each other company in the waiting room. This time Paul was allowed to stay with me (we had made a lot of progress in two years). Sometimes my mother would come in and sit with me and give Paul a break – I suspect it was so that she could get a break from Bill as well. I drew the line at Bill: he would remain in the waiting room.   And then came transition: or the “hold my hand don’t touch me” stage of labor as we affectionately call it  (see post entitled “Valentines and Birthin’ Babies” ). I grew agitated and unhappy and snapped at my mother: “I can’t do this. You go get Paul and tell him to get in here because I am done with this. I can’t do it.” She was happy to leave. Paul’s greeting to me as he walked into the room was, “You are never going to believe this??!!! Guess who is in the waiting room??!!! You’ll never believe it!” I assumed the only reason he would bring this up now is because it was somebody that he knew I would really care about (Robert Redford comes to mind though what he would be doing in Lawrence, Kansas is beyond me.) So I gritted my teeth and managed,

“Who?”

“Bill’s dentist!! His wife is in the room down the hall. Small world, right!!!?”

“ARE YOU ^&*%$## KIDDING ME??!!!

And the only thing that saved him was that the nurse said, “We should get you to the delivery room.”

This was Paul’s first time to the dance and I have to say that having him there made all the difference. When my first one was born I remember being wheeled into the delivery room with bright lights, masked faces, and I felt so alone. Paul was amazing and throughout I knew that this time I was not alone. This time was different – we were there together and we were a team. I had no idea how the next hour would unfold and how desperately I would need my team. I pushed and pushed and pushed and with each push I knew I was pushing this life into the world and I felt powerful and strong and invincible. Paul was encouraging and cheering me on. The nurses and doctor were cheering.  Everyone was cheering! One really hard push, another and another and then the doctor said, “One more push and we’re going to have this baby here!!”  And I pushed and the baby was here and then the cheering stopped.  It was quiet. Too quiet.  And then it got noisy and the doctor was barking orders and the  nurse who had been at my head hurried to join the doctor and they were all moving so fast and the doctor asked for something and a nurse dropped it and he swore and they ran to get another one and they put something down my baby’s throat and I kept asking what was wrong and why wasn’t she crying and I could hear Paul praying, and the tension in the doctor’s voice as he gave instructions to the nurses and they seemed to grow ever more desperate while the two of us watched this helpless little baby turning bluer and bluer, her eyes huge and her mouth opened wide, struggling to draw air into her little lungs. It was clear they were losing her.

Do names matter? Do we live up to or grow into our names? I don’t know. Maybe.

Somewhere in the pregnancy we had decided that if the baby was a girl we would name her after a woman in the bible, “a disciple named Tabitha” whose life was characterized by her kindness, generosity and service to the needy. When she died, the people in her village were so distraught that they sent for the Apostle Peter who happened to be in a town nearby, hoping against hope that he could do something. The book of Acts records it this way: “He knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, ‘Tabitha, arise.’ And she opened her eyes, and he gave her his hand and raised her up”.  And now,  early on that Monday morning of March 4, 1974, it felt to me like a voice spoke into that room, a voice heard only by the baby girl named after a woman who was raised from the dead: “Tabitha, arise.”

How overwhelmingly grateful I am that this child who almost wasn’t came to be in our family. She has filled our lives with love, with laughter, with care, with generosity, with joy, and of course, with stories.

We lived on the second and third floor of a big house in the student slums that had no air conditioning, so in the summer we slept with the windows open. Our neighbors were a houseful of college guys that liked to party late into the night and then crawl out their second floor window to sleep on the porch roof. Tabi’s crib was next to the window which meant that she (along with the rest of us) were awakened often during the night by the party revelers.   But the thing about her was that no matter how little sleep she got the night before, she always awoke at first light in a really cheery and talkative mood. And I always felt a wicked sense of satisfaction when I could hear her calling out the window at the top of her little voice, “Hi, guys!!! Whatcha’ doin? HI!!! HI GUYS!!!” until they crawled back through their window to sleep off the remainder of the party.

It was in that same house that she and her brother were playing one afternoon, he with a toy fire truck and she with an abandoned set of keys she had found. I suppose it was inevitable that eventually the metal keys would find their way into the exposed electrical socket, that sparks would fly, little fingers would get scorched black, that piercing screams would bring me running into the same room from which her brother was fleeing (expecting that he might be blamed for the incident), and this would be forged indelibly as one of her very first memories. Later I asked her why she had put the keys in the electrical outlet. “To see what would happen.” Of course.

We lived in that house the year that she so desperately wanted a tricycle for her birthday. A red one. With a bell. I tried to explain that there wasn’t a lot of money for tricycles right now and offered some other (less expensive) options. What I knew was that there was NO money for a tricycle. And while we fretted and worried, she prayed for a red tricycle with a bell. I knew that this was going to end badly,  and I was heartsick  over her impending disappointment. The house had a big front porch and it was on that porch on Ohio Street in Lawrence, Kansas, that God showed up  one March morning. Paul left for work and when he hit the porch he turned back, taking the stairs two at a time. “Tabi, come outside!! You have to see this!!” And there it was. A bright, shiny, red tricycle. With a bell. And tied to the handlebar was a tag which read. “To Tabi. From Jesus.”  She had prayed every night, we had said nothing to anyone, so…. where. . . And then we noticed the little girl standing  next to us with tears spilling down her face as she stared wide-eyed at that tag. “Oh no,” she cried.” What could possibly be the problem? Isn’t this exactly what she had wanted? Her bottom lip trembled. “Jesus was here. And I missed him.” 

And since that day I have always wanted to be like that little girl who yearned for the giver rather than the gift. We did our best to  explain to her that sometimes Jesus uses people to be his hands and his feet and that this time he had asked somebody else to deliver his gift to her. And maybe this is why, from that day to this, she has sought to be the hands and feet of Jesus to others – anticipating and meeting needs in an almost supernatural way. A sidenote:  it was not until two decades later that I ran across that tag in Tabi’s babybook and recognized the handwriting as someone who, for years now, has been one of my closest and dearest friends. Whether we called her Amy Oliver, AO, Amy Patton or just Amy, she has for almost 40 years been a part of our family’s stories and our lives. At the time I didn’t know know her well enough to recognize her handwriting.  I knew her then as a young, single woman in our church (who also had no money)  and who almost certainly, had no idea how far reaching her act of generosity would be.

Tabi could read by the age of four though I don’t think anyone taught her to do it. She just sort of picked it up by osmosis and maybe so as not to be outdone by her older brother. One day I asked him if he could recite the Bible verse we had been learning. He could. “A wise son makes his father glad, but a foolish son is a grief to his mother. Proverbs 10:1.” Tabi said she too, had learned the verse and would like to say it. I was ready to coach her but she put up her hand to shush me . She didn’t need any help. “A wise son makes his father glad. And a foolish son agrees with his mother. Problems 10:1”.   I have always felt in my heart of hearts that  Paul  preferred this translation.

We went through a phase when we decided that the kids needed to learn table manners. So once a week we would fix a nice meal, set the table with a tablecloth (okay, so it was plastic) and flowers (maybe they were plastic, too) and everybody got a full table setting of silverware at their plate (which admittedly is a little sketch to give even butter knives to three kids under the age of seven), put on some music, dress up in our nice clothes, turn down the lights, light the candles and try to get through the meal. The idea was that if you gave them a challenge they would rise up to meet it. And so Paul would say, “Tonight, Mom and I are so glad to be dining with such ladies and gentlemen.” And then through the meal would remind them, “Oh a lady doesn’t blow bubbles in her milk. . . A gentleman doesn’t eat his peas with his fingers . . . A lady doesn’t climb on the table . . . A gentleman says, ‘Please pass the bread’ instead of grabbing it out of his sister’s hand. A lady doesn’t kick her brother under the table.” Finally Tabi could stand it no longer. She stood on her chair and demanded in her most authoritative voice. “TURN ON THE LIGHT! I WANT TO SEE THE LADY.”  This lady would grow up to share  more characteristics with her father than either of his sons did.  She loved to talk cars with him and was the only one of the six who inherited his sense of direction. She was his constant football companion and spent many a Sunday afternoon watching the game with him (just ask her about her about Walter Payton, but not unless you have some time) and she shares some of his perfectionist tendencies.  And of course, she has those blue eyes.

It seems she has always had a job – since she was eight years old. By the time she was 14 she was an administrative assistant and handled the day to day of operations of an office with such skill and efficiency and maturity that when people met the person behind the voice on the phone, they were astonished that she was little more than a child. She saved her money and bought herself a car before she was old enough to drive. She did her research and she and her dad poured over ads in the paper until she found the right one – a stick shift no less.  She put herself through college, working full time and going to school full time and graduated suma cum laude from the University of Maryland. And all the while she continued to love and to serve and to care for her family and her friends and strangers – to be the hands and feet of Jesus.  Because she doesn’t know any other way to be.

She is a first grade teacher who, like all good teachers, does more than show up for her shift. She has loved so many six year olds over the years and taken them into her life, her heart and her prayers. She nurtures them, accepts them, celebrates them, challenges them and makes a real and lasting difference in their lives. I am in awe at how she continues to give so much, to show up and be present with them day after day, how she gives hours of her own time because there is no way to get it all done in the work day, and most of all I am in awe at how she loves them and just keeps showing up for them.

And of course you can’t tell her story without telling about the little people (some of them now grown big) who call her Aunt Tabi and who love her to the moon and back as she does them.  One of the best gifts she has given to this family is her husband Jason and together they have captured the hearts of these nieces and nephews and been the hands and feet of Jesus to them as well.

Our story would not be the same without her. And every year, on March 4, the memory of that baby struggling so desperately for breath comes rushing back to me;  I offer up a prayer of thanks to the God who spoke life into her lungs and who brought her to live out His grace among us;  and I hope she has changed her mind about the folly of agreeing with her mother. And I am so, so grateful for all of the ways that Jesus shows up through her.  Happy Birthday, Tabitha!