“Midwifing a Miracle” by Lisa Harper

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Some of you know my story and know I became a mom really, really, really late in the game.

I became a mom through the miracle of adoption the year I turned 50.

I think we have a picture of my daughter and I at Southlake.

Yeah, that's my girl.

No, she's amazing.

She's right there.

Um I told Missy this weekend was all about her because Mother's Day used to be really hard for me.

And those of you who are sitting here in the sanctuary this morning, and if you could be really straightforward, you'd say it's a little hard for me too.

Either you've lost a child or you have a prodigal child, or you've never had someone who calls you mom.

And that's hard.

I spent years uh trying to celebrate my friends who were moms, and of course, honor and celebrate my own mama.

But it was hard going to church, and more often than not, I'd run by Starbucks and I'd get the biggest frappuccino they had with whipped cream.

Like, why do they ask you if you want whipped cream?

You know, it's 2,045 calories.

What's a dollop of whipped cream on top of that?

But I'd get the biggest frappuccino I could get, and I'd get in my car, and I would just drive down these rural highways and listen to old 80s pop songs and cry because I thought I I I don't want to rain on the parade of my friends who have children, but this is just this is a hard day for me.

And I knew it was my fault because I was really broken in my 20s and 30s, very drawn to abusive men, scared to death of intimacy.

And I knew that was the consequence of the sin and the toxicity as a young woman.

But I just still grieved Mother's Day.

So to get to be a mom at the age of 50 has been an extraordinary gift, but it also keeps me reminded of the women who are missing babies today, or you may not even know where your child is, or you could have buried him in the last year.

And so I want to be really, really aware of that and also aware that in the economy of God, almost every time he uses the word mother, it's less about fertility and more about faith.

He actually refers to himself as a mother.

He refers to all of us as believers as family.

So yes, it's Mother's Day, but there's a theme of family, and we're all included.

If you've never had a peanut call me, I call you mama.

The first time I did was 2012.

The first time I went to meet Missy in Haiti, her first mama, Marie, had just passed.

And a long story of miracles.

I got woven into her story after her first mama died.

And I was so excited, I didn't know what to do.

I was almost levitating by the time I stepped off this old diesel bus into this rural Haitian village.

And her auntie was afraid when I saw how sick Missy was that I would say, no, no, no, this is gonna be a little too hard.

And so she shoved Missy toward my arms.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

I was gonna be that there for a week.

I wanted her to have time to get used to me.

You know, and I'm just this big pale stranger.

I didn't want to traumatize her.

And Missy kind of started to cry, but Fifi was just like, no, she just shoved her in my arms, and Missy looked up at me like, oh, help.

And I looked down at her like this is what my whole life has been leading up to.

Stick a fork in me.

I am done.

This is the most exquisite human being I've ever, and I still feel like that.

I embarrass her all the time.

But um, she didn't like me much at first, and she really didn't like me a couple of hours later because I introduced her to potty trauma.

I did not know that Missy had never used an indoor facility.

Uh Missy was potty trained, but in her very small, very primitive Haitian village, there were only three commodes to support about 1,500 people.

And actually, you didn't want to use one of these indoor facilities because the plumbing in her particular village was extremely primitive.

And they didn't have, do we have any plumbers in the house?

What are those valves called?

A P trap.

Is that right?

That kind of keeps the water going in the right uh place.

Well, they don't have P traps in Haiti, I think.

Am I right there?

Some kind of trap, some kind of valve.

In other words, when we go this afternoon to wash our hands, we know the water that comes to the sink is only water that's coming to the sink.

And when it leaves the sink, then it mixes with all the other waters.

But when it comes to the sink, it comes to us only for the sink.

And when we go to the shower, that water comes only for our shower.

It doesn't come from anywhere else, and then it leaks to everywhere else.

And the water for our potties only comes for the potty, but that's not the case in Missy's Village.

All the water mingles and tingles together.

And so sometimes you might take a shower, but that's not the water that you get.

Um, it's it's exciting, it's an opportunity uh to expand your faith.

I didn't know that.

All I knew was it was a hundred and twelve degrees the first day I visited Haiti.

I was like, Jesus, if you will give me a Slurpee, I will be a missionary in anywhere Africa.

I j I was sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna, just stuff stick to me.

And then they burn their trash there.

There's just all these things I thought.

I have never been in a place so hot, so loud, and so stinky for a first world person.

And of course, I'm not thinking Missy's grown up here, she's okay with this.

I'm just doing the white people first world thing, and I'm just sending her all this water.

And after a while, I thought her belly is distended, she probably needs to go to the potty.

So I said, baby, come with me.

I'm gonna take you to the potty.

Now I'd already taken her inside once and I'd given her a bunch of candy because I wanted her to love me.

And so I'd already given her candy and suckers.

And so when I said, come inside with Mama Blah, white mama, she thought, oh, I'm gonna get more of that sugary stuff.

So she toddles inside the little mission house with me, and I keep telling her to come down this dark hallway, very little electricity where she was from, and she's getting a little more wary.

And then I get into this tiny primitive bathroom, and Missy began to go, mm-mm, mm-mm.

And I thought, well, a bunch of my friends, a bunch of y'all with toddlers, they don't like potties either.

Because if they don't have that child safety seat, you know, they can fall in.

And so potties are scary for toddlers.

And I thought, oh, that's just normal potty phobia.

My friends, toddlers and in Nashville have the same thing.

Again, I didn't know Missy had never seen an indoor potty.

And so I get her tiny, tiny self.

She was only about 19 pounds at that point, even though she was two and a half because she was so hungry.

I get her tiny, tiny self on the potty, no child seat.

So I had to hold her bottom to keep her from falling in.

And I knew that in Creole, and forgive me, classy people, this is a little trashy and non-churchy, but I need to go here.

Um, the word pee pee in Creole is the exact same word as pee-pee in English.

So I thought, well, she'll know what my expectations are.

And I said, baby, I just want you to pee pee.

And she kind of looked at me like, this white lady is a nutter.

And then I was like, No, no, it's good, it's good.

I want you to pee, pee.

And you know how you watch just that kind of look of comprehension cross their face.

And she was like, We?

And then she scrunched up her face.

You know, sometimes babies will do that because they just want to please you, wrinkled her nose, and I can tell she's just about to do what I told her I expected her to do on that broken porcelain throne.

And right about the time Missy started to do her duty, I heard this odd sound I had never heard before, kind of sounded volcanic.

And about three seconds after that horrible rumbling happened, a geyser, a geyser of dirty water.

Shot up Missy, just shot up Missy.

And it was so much water and so much water pressure, it hit the tiny ceiling, crashed all over me, and began to fill the floor of this tiny primitive bathroom with we're just gonna call it exciting water.

And I was wearing shorts and flip-flops because it was 112 degrees.

And so Missy, I grabbed her, she just is screaming because she thought the toilet tried to kill her or eat her.

And so I grab her and she has both her little arms around my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist, she has her face in my neck, and I am slip-sliding in that dirty water, and I wasn't sure I could catch my balance.

There was nothing to hang on to, and I'm kind of panicked, and I thought, I can see the Insta reels, big, large, pale woman, crushes, precious little Haitian infant.

I thought I'm gonna kill her.

I'm like, help us, Jesus, help us both, Jesus.

And she's screaming, and I'm kind of screaming, and then I realized, oh my goodness gracious.

This is the very first time Missy has turned to me for comfort.

This is the very first time she's wrapped her arms around me that she has her hands in my hair, that she has her face in my neck.

And I said, it's okay, baby, it's okay.

I'm right here, I'm right here, it's okay, baby, it's okay, baby.

I'm right here, I'm right here.

2012.

I've been her mama officially now for 13 years, and I will always look back on that cantankerous commode with fondness because it's the messy brokenness of that commode that led us to our first miracle, which is Missy trusting me.

And I've learned as a really old mama who's made a lot of mothering mistakes, wow, messy and miracle actually aren't opposite ends of the continuum relationally, usually they're kissing cousins, whether you are a mama, or whether you're a daddy, or whether you are a brother or a sister, or whether you just had a mama.

So I think that covers all of us.

Miracles usually follow messy when it comes to the human heart.

And sometimes he's calling us to stay the course when we wonder if it's gonna take too long.

I want to look briefly at a story in the Old Testament about two amazing moms this Mother's Day with terrible names.

Exodus chapter 1, verse 8, and it'll be on the screens if you didn't bring your Bible.

Exodus 1:8

Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph, and he said to his people, Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.

Come and let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply.

And if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.

Therefore, they set task maskers over them to afflict them with heavy burdens.

They built for Pharaoh store cities, Petom and Rheumzes.

But the more they were oppressed, I got that from my seminary professor, because I've spent so much money trying to get a doctorate.

So I write the phonetic pronunciation next to it.

I wanted somebody to gasp.

That was good.

Y'all were gonna say Ramses, weren't you?

It's Rayomzes, if you do it correctly.

And I just I paid about$10,000 for that word.

I wanted y'all to know it.

Most of them I've mispronounced, but that one I had written in my Bible, so I did it correctly.

And sorry, I felt myself spit on you.

And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel, so they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field, and in all their work, they ruthlessly, now this may not be as close as the other one, but in Hebrew I think it's pear wreck.

Ruthlessly in Hebrew is always connected with violence.

So what we're being told here is they weren't just given a blue-collar job, they were beaten on the job.

So the Hebrews worked before the sun came up, and the Egyptians told them that actually God was the sun, they called him Ra.

Can you imagine how confusing it was to have been told by their grandmamas and granddaddies that God was good?

And the Egyptians said, actually, that's God, the one who beats mercilessly on you as you work outside making bricks in the Middle Eastern heat.

And then when you go back to your houses after 18 hours of hard work, there's another God who comes up and he's a snake and he wants to kill you.

So that's the condition they were existing in.

Brutal condition, a lot of violence.

Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shifra, and the other Pua, how many of y'all are, let's just say 35 females, 35 or under?

Let's say 40.

We live in a different 45 or under, and you're a woman.

Okay, you possibly will have children.

And so I just want to give you a big sister word.

Y'all all are so cool, Gen X or Y or Z or 12 or whatever all y'all's generations are.

I can't keep up with it.

But a lot of y'all uh to name your kid's biblical name has been trending, I've noticed.

Don't don't name your baby girls Pua.

Yeah, that's just rough.

I mean, you might as well start saving for counseling now if you name that baby girl Pua.

That is so rough.

Unless you're Hawaiian, do not name your daughters Pua.

You're never gonna get one of those little bicycle license plates at Galveston.

It's gonna be so sad.

So these Hebrew midwives, and most Old Testament scholars tell us they were not midwives to the Hebrews.

They were actually Jewish women who were midwives.

And in this era of ancient biblical history, ancient redemptive history, there are a few other qualifications we need to remember about a midwife and their culture.

A midwife was a woman who could not have children of her own.

Biblical antiquity books written from that area.

Historians from that area will tell you, midwives were women who did not have families of their own.

Otherwise, they wouldn't have the time to take care of other people's children.

So lots of other historians will tell you these are Jewish women from the tribe who's being beaten and experiencing violence and subjugated, and they're also lonely because they don't have children of their own.

They just get to midwife other people's babies.

And Pharaoh said to Shifra and Pua, When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on a birthing stool, if it is a son, you shall kill him.

But if it is a daughter, she shall live.

So Pharaoh in this Egyptian culture, Pharaoh was considered the one true God.

And Pharaoh tells these Jewish women in his employee, here's the deal.

I am now telling you that I want you to participate in genocide.

And so every time you go to assist one of your neighbors who's giving birth, if you see that head come out and you know, oh, this is a boy, I want you to kill him.

Pro-choice didn't start with us.

I want you to abort that baby.

I want you to kill that baby.

That's the edict that he gives these Jewish midwives because this Pharaoh, like most of them, if you read your history, was a narcissistic nutter and he wanted power and money and control.

And the Hebrews were growing as a family, and he was afraid if they got any bigger, there would be a coup, and that would jeopardize his power and his cruel authority.

So he says, kill the baby boys.

And y'all, they knew if they didn't do what Pharaoh said, that they would be killed.

Very commonplace in their culture.

So this is a massive risk.

If they don't do what Pharaoh says, their human boss, then they are at the risk of losing their very lives.

Sometimes I think living in a first world country has messed us up as Christ followers.

Because it's just not that hard here.

It's just not.

Even with all that you've been through, if you have attended Gateway for more than a year, that's hard emotionally.

But we aren't afraid that somebody's gonna kill us when we walk into worship.

I worked for a large peer church ministry when I was in my 20s and 30s called Focus on the Family out in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

And the hardest thing I had to do at Focus was somebody had told Dr.

Dobson that the line between a woman's big toe and second toe is reminiscent of cleavage.

And so if I wore sandals or open-toed shoes, it would cause men to lust.

I'm not the sharpest tool on the shed, but even then as a kid, I thought if some man struggled with lust, I think my sandals are the least of his worries.

But that was, I'd wear pantyhose and I couldn't wear open-toed shoes.

And one time, just one time, somebody keyed my car because some people in the town thought focus had taken a conservative political position.

That's the giant grief I've experienced.

I'd wear pantyhose, uncomfortable shoes, and I got my car keyed.

I've never worried if I would lose my life for being a Christ follower.

Why do we even need faith if it doesn't get hard sometimes?

Isn't faith about things that are unseen?

Why do we need faith in Dallas if the hardest thing we'll face today is if we actually get in Hippophysita?

Sometimes I think, man, if we had a little more heart, I bet we'd be a whole lot more holy.

But the midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh.

That word feared God means respect.

Wouldn't it be cool if our faith in God outweighed our fear of everything else?

That's the way these chicks are walking.

But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.

So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this and let the male children live?

Listen to this.

This is a hoot.

When people tell me the Bible's boring, I'm like, no, you're a lazy reader.

This is awesome.

If you read this redemptive history, it's a hoot.

This is so much better than Netflix.

They said, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and they give birth before the midwife comes to them.

They ain't no little skinny Kito Manjaro women.

These Hebrew midwives, they're vigorous.

They're stout.

They are big.

They shoot those babies over the birthing stool before we can get there and kill them.

And this is a tiny bit of liberty in the Hebrew, but it's close.

I just love that they got, they're vigorous.

They're vigorous.

We can't stop the baby boy before it comes out.

What kind of faithful husband is that?

I mean, they weren't like, okay, how can we keep him happy and still be faithful to God?

And how can they're not equivocating?

They're like, I'm all in, baby.

Kill me if you're gonna kill me, but my faith in Yahweh, everything else pales next to that.

You can give me stink eye, you can give me the sword, but everything else pales next to my faith in my God.

And I don't know what's gonna happen, but as long as I'm with him, it's gonna be all right.

And it's like the disciples said in Acts, I love this.

It says, they were honored to be dishonored for the sake of the gospel.

They were honored to be dishonored for the sake of the gospel.

I got to be on a plane recently with a woman who uh works in adult entertainment.

And she was telling me about what she did, and she said, and and when I'm doing my adult entertainment, I also do spoken word poetry.

And her spoken word poetry was a certain, uh, a very particular, I want to be careful with the pumpkins in here, a very particular intimate type of spoken word poetry.

And she said, What do you do?

And I said, kind of the same thing.

Basically, I do a lot of spoken word, and it's about intimacy, but it's about us and God.

And I ended up having the most beautiful conversation with this woman because she got kicked out of a church.

And what she was told was basically, you're not good enough to be in this family.

And I said, I'm so sorry.

That's not the gospel.

And she talked to me about being at a party and falling.

And she really wanted to fall.

So it was part suicidal, part accident, but she fell from four stories up on a concrete.

And she said, Lisa, when I landed, you know, a lot of my friends abandoned me because they were afraid they'd find drugs in the apartment, so they didn't even come to help me.

And she said, there was a white man who bent over me when I was bleeding out.

And she said, When the ambulance got there, he disappeared.

He took care of me the entire time until the paramedics got there.

Do you think he was an angel?

And I went, Probably.

And she said, Will you feel the scar on the back of my head?

I said, Yes.

She said, Can you feel the shape?

And I couldn't really, but I tried to feel it.

And she said, It's in the shape of a cross.

Do you think God was speaking to me?

And I said, Oh, I know God was speaking to you.

And we have a deal.

She's gonna come to church with me if I go to one of the underground bars that she does.

Exciting, spoken word poetry in.

And I thought, you better bet I'll go there.

Won't be any worse than a toilet spewing all over me.

Miracle came out of that.

Y'all, we have this God who says the risk will always pay off if you do it for me.

After they say, We didn't follow you, Pharaoh.

We followed Yahweh.

Listen to the listen to the return on their investment of risky obedience.

Verse 20.

So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very strong.

And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families, he gave them families.

The word there in the original text is bait.

And Ba'it is used elsewhere in the Old Testament canon to describe not just a family, but a home.

Not just a home, but a temple.

Not just a temple, but a dynasty.

When you stop and think about these unlikely women to celebrate on Mother's Day who became moms late in their life, you got to kind of back up and look at the meta miracle, not just their personal miracles, that after years of taking care of everybody else's children, midwifing other people's miracles, they got babies of their own who called them mom, but back up and look at the meta miracle.

Because they said we won't kill the baby boys that these Jewish mamas are giving birth to.

Do you know who came the next chapter after Shifra and Pua?

Moses.

Moses came after Shifra and Pua.

And God sent Moses, a baby boy, born to a Jewish woman who ended up being raised in Pharaoh's household to lead our great-great-great-grandmamas and granddaddies and then some out of captivity to lead God's people.

When you look at redemptive narrative, God almost always has hard next to beautiful.

He almost always has miracles for us to midwife that are so much bigger than we have the faith to pray for.

I can't help but wonder how many of us are in danger this morning of miscarrying a miracle because we've decided the labor is too hard or the labor is too long?

How many of you have quit hoping that your prodigal is going to come home?

How many of you have quit hoping that your marriage is going to be restored?

How many of you have quit hoping that adult child is going to come back to faith in Christ?

How many of you have quit hoping that your boss is going to come to faith in Christ?

How many of you have quit hoping that your mother-in-law will finally stop treating you like her son could have done better?

Is there anything in your life right now that's really hard?

And you found yourself wondering recently, do I have the capacity to carry the weight of this?

Because the labor it's going to take to birth this miracle is going to be long.

This is going to be a broad-shouldered baby.

This one's going to be hard in my experience, and I will confess, I've made every mistake known to motherhood.

It is purely by grace I'm Missy's second mama.

But in the 13 years of being her mama, I've found the most beautiful stuff I get to experience.

Always starts with hard.

Hard isn't bad.

Hard is our creator, redeemer going, you don't realize how broad your shoulders are.

Your shoulders are broad enough to carry more glory than you have the faith to pray for.

And y'all, that's on all of us.

Again, it's more about faith than biology.

We've got a couple more verses where I want to land.

One comes from 1 Thessalonians 2, 7.

Paul uses the mother noun to describe all of us.

So if you don't have any estrogen flowing through your veins, you are not off the hook when it comes to midwifing miracles.

Paul says, as apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her children.

That's not a feminine imperative.

That's all y'all.

That's if you're in Christ, we're called to mother because the verb is about nurturing, it's about creating a safe environment, it's about protecting.

So it's not just the women in the house who are called to mother when it comes to the family of God.

It's all of us.

God Himself in Isaiah 66 says this as a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.

And you will be comforted over Jerusalem, which means that as God's image bears, we're made in his image, he says, I will mother you.

That means we're hardwired to midwife miracles with the heart of a mother.

That's family.

That's a family of faith.

It's just so many of us have not been parented well, that we act like orphans instead of sons and daughters when it comes to what God has called us to.

And we decide I'm not sure if I have what it takes to midwife that miracle.

A woman came up to me at a conference Saturday, week ago yesterday.

I was there with Karen Harmon and Dr.

Irene Fambrough, and it was a conference in Nashville where we had all these academics come in, and then a lot of women in ministry were learning from these seminary professors, old and New Testament academics, brilliant people.

And so I'm running part of the conference, and my main goal was I just don't want to mess this up.

You know, I'm gonna mispronounce something in Greek or Hebrew or say something stupid or accidentally heretical.

Let me just steward this as best I can and not mess this up.

And we had just done a panel on stage with all these brainiacs, and I thought, okay, I didn't just totally fumble the ball, went okay.

Now let me go get some sugar and drink uh Celsius, and then I'll go back and do something else.

And a couple of women came up to get book signed from some of these academics, and and one of the women looked at me, she looked at me about my age, and she said, Do you remember when you committed to adopt a little girl who, uh the daughter little girl of a little girl who gotten pregnant when she was 16?

And I said, Yeah, I remember.

For so many years I thought I didn't have what it takes to be a mom because there were just so many mistakes in my backstory that I felt like my mistakes had put a lid on my destiny.

I had some Christians tell me I wasn't good enough to be a mom.

I had a Christian in my small group tell me you need to go to the National Humane Society and adopt a dog because I know you want to nurture something and you're pretty good with pets.

So I had a lot of shame when it came to mothering.

It wasn't until I was in my late 40s that I trusted God enough to step into the adoption pond.

And I told a social worker, if you've got a kid who doesn't have a shot at a mama and a daddy, I believe that's the way God wrote the story, but we live after the fall.

But I said, if a kid has a shot at a mama and a daddy, that's awesome.

But if there's some children who don't have a shot at a mama and a daddy, and they're gonna die in an institution or die because they don't have access to clean water, then I think a verbose, fluffy woman in Middle Tennessee would be a better option than institutionalization or death.

And so I got matched with a precious young woman who was a hardcore crack addict and a prostitute.

And after I committed to step into that story, which was hard and miraculous, I got a phone call from a pastor.

And I didn't know him, I'd never met him, but we had been at a conference together a few weeks before, and when he got home from the conference, he found out his daughter, who was 16, was pregnant.

And it just shook the rebar of their family because they're in a tiny little town, and he knew there'd be a lot of stigma about her and possibly a lot of stigma with their church because of very small, uh, not my state, not in Tennessee.

We had met at a conference.

And he said, Lisa, I just was doing laps around my church, asking God for wisdom, and he dropped your name in my heart because he'd just seen me at this conference.

And he said, I think you're supposed to adopt our daughter's baby.

I think you're supposed to be Eli, and this little girl is gonna be Samuel, and we're supposed to give her to you.

And I said, No, sir.

I said, My heart doesn't resonate with that.

I think you and your wife are supposed to shepherd this baby, and I know your daughter's just a little girl, but if y'all love her well, she's gonna grow into a great mama.

I said, This child is supposed to grow up in your family.

This is your destiny, this is her DNA.

She doesn't need to be raised by somebody who didn't give birth to her.

I said, Y'all can do this.

Well, he resisted and finally he said, I looked at your calendar, you're gonna be right near our town in a couple of weeks.

Would you at least meet with my wife and daughter?

And I said, sure.

And so I met with his wife and daughter, little pregnant 16-year-old, beautiful and scared to death.

Mama loves her daughter, but the mama was just, you can tell, just kind of shaken by the whole experience.

Wanted to do the right thing, wasn't sure what the right thing was.

And this beautiful 16-year-old kid, pregnant, visible, showing, pushes a sonogram toward me across that little table at Starbucks.

And she said, I think you're supposed to be my little girl's mama.

And I said, Baby, I'm not.

I said, You're gonna be your mama, and you're gonna be a phenomenal mama.

God is gonna give you everything you need to raise this child well, and your parents are gonna help you raise this girl, and this is part of your family's legacy.

And she just couldn't quite receive that at that point.

And she begged me, she said, Miss Lisa, I can't do it, I can't do it.

Will you please say yes?

And I said, Baby, I'll say yes, but you need to know I'm saying yes, knowing I'm not gonna walk this story out to the ending.

I'm just saying yes for a couple of chapters because I promise, I promise, I know like I know my name.

You're gonna be this baby's mama.

So I stepped into the story and they asked me to name the little girl, and I got more sonograms.

And it was a really, really sweet relationship.

And to be frank with y'all, I I started thinking, what would it be like to have this baby who's probably gonna be easy because her mama's healthy and she's had everything she needs, prenatal.

And I'm gonna have this baby too over here, and her mom is a hardcore crack addict, and we already know she's gonna have some pretty serious neurological issues, and I thought, maybe God's giving me like two for one.

And even though I'm old, I'm gonna have one of those little baby bjorns on the front and the back, and maybe that'll like somehow light some kind of pheroms on fire in my life, and I'll get a baby daddy after the fact.

This is like this could be epic.

I got my hopes up just a little bit, and then I got a phone call, and it was from the granddaddy, and he said, Lisa, I'm so sorry.

But the biological dad is incarcerated and he refuses to sign the paper.

And so we actually can't adopt her out.

We've got two options in our state.

One is for us to keep the baby, and the other one is to give the baby up to the state.

And I just, my heart kind of smiled because I thought God told me that from the very beginning.

I knew I was just gonna step into this story for just a little while, that y'all were gonna carry the glory and the hope of this child.

And I said that and we talked for a little while, we prayed, and then we got off the phone.

I've never talked to him since because I didn't, I didn't want to interrupt the miracle that God allowed them to midwife, and I just thought that could make it awkward.

But I cried when I got off the phone because that little bit of hope that maybe I'd get to parent a healthy baby, even though God had made it clear you're not supposed to be the mama.

So Saturday, Saturday, eight days ago, this woman comes up and says, Do you remember when you committed to adopt that little girl's baby?

And I said, Do I remember?

I said, I've prayed for that kid for 12 years.

And she said, Well, this is her.

And I'm her grandmother.

I'm the one who met with you at Starbucks.

She came to Christ a couple of months ago.

She got baptized two weeks ago, and I just wanted you to see the miracle.

And her grandmama and a stranger that got to step into their story for three months, we just sat down and cried over the goodness of a God who says, I weave the lonely into families, and I've called you to be part of that.

I've called you mamas and daddies, and brothers and sisters, saints, disciples.

I've called you to midwife miracles.

All of you get to make the family bigger.

Pastor Mark is gonna shepherd us as a spiritual father.

Y'all, I've never, I'm 61, I've never seen a time in America where we are more desperate for spiritual moms and dads.

I made a conscious decision when I was 40 years old, when I was really grieving, not having children of my own.

I sensed Holy Spirit say, you've got a choice.

You can protect your heart, or you can know your heart will be hurt, and you can step into the story of other people's families.

And you can love kids well even though they don't call you moms.

You've got a choice.

You can have a hard heart or you can have a heart that will absolutely decidedly be hurt.

But the hurt, oh man, it's worth it.

Relationships are worth the risk.

Family is worth the labor.

So I'm gonna ask y'all to stand.

And Pastor is gonna shepherd this, Pastor, in whatever way you see fit.

But my gut says that this Mother's Day Gateway is absolutely about celebrating you mamas, birth mamas, adoptive mamas, foster mamas, grandmamas.

But it's also about all of us mothering a lost generation.

It's about all of us going, really?

I get to midwife a miracle.

And so as Pastor Mark shepherds us as we close this family meeting, I do want to say, if you're here because of a mother, and that is all of us, would you please not give her a vacuum cleaner today?

I mean, at the very least, go by the grocery store and get her one rose.

They're$1.99.

But would you look her in the eyes, even if she wasn't everything you hoped she would be?

If she's still this side of glory, would you say thank you?

Would you find your spiritual mamas and say thank you?

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Mark, I think I just think some healing is about to take place with regards to families.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.