Please forgive this note from someone you just met and were only briefly introduced to, but I think I would regret not telling you this.

You mentioned in your conversation with your friend Rachel today that you just turned 18 and that you had a baby when you were 16. You said you had given up your baby for adoption. You were surprisingly honest about the reasons behind your decision, among them not being prepared to care for a baby. And how you’re not close with your parents anymore because they didn’t want you to go through with the pregnancy.

Being on the fringe of the conversation anyway, I had to turn away as I was close to tears. About 7 years ago after a seemingly unending ride on the fertility doctor merry-go-round, I was coming to grips with the possibility that being a Dad may not be God’s plan for me. It was very hard.

On September 25, 2000 at the point of being physically, emotionally and financially drained we got a phone call from a stranger in Spokane, Washington. She knew my wife’s sister. She called to say she heard about a woman in her area who was pregnant with twins and was going to give them up for adoption.

It was such an impossible pipe dream that I got angry. We had a license to have a dog. But nothing that said we could foster parent, let alone be adoptive parents. Yet with a “we have no chance but I’ll write one anyway”, I emailed a biography to the family. In closing, I said, “Bottom line, we want these babies to be where God wants them to be. If it’s with us, we will be thrilled and humbled.”

On October 4th we met with a social work agency who agreed with us. There’s no way we’d have these babies because everyone else who wants them will already be certified to adopt. So we took an information packet and settled on the fact that it would take at least a year to get through the process.

Three days later on October 7th we got a call saying that the birth Mom had picked us. Seven couples wanted the babies. All of them were certified to adopt but us.

The babies’ due date was December 8th. Not much time but at least a couple months to try and get ready. Ten days after the call to say they picked us, I was sitting at a Sonic drive-thru waiting for my Cherry Flurry when my cell phone rang with a bizarre area code. It was the birth Mom’s sister. In a chipper voice she said, “Just wanted you to know my sister’s water broke. The babies will be born tonight. Can you get here?”

In the history of freakdom, no one has freaked out more than me in that moment. Six hours later we had my wife on a plane to Spokane. The babies were born the next morning. They were preemies, born seven and a half weeks early. Annie Quinn was 3 pounds 9 ounces and Emma Elizabeth was 3 pounds 14 ounces.

We went from zero kids to 2 kids in 23 days.

The entire experience has been like riding a wild tiger. You can’t steer and you can’t get off. It’s been the wildest adventure and only God could put it all together.

I share this with you because you need to know and understand as best you can that you, Allie, are a hero. You had a choice to make and you chose life. And even at your young age you made an extremely difficult and wise decision. You will never comprehend this side of heaven the difference you have made in the lives of countless people you will never meet.

Every person who is touched by your daughter’s life; by her smile, her laugh, her talents, her caring, her acts of kindness, and later the fruits of her labor in her chosen field; every person whose life is better because of your daughter….is better because you chose life.

There are no words to describe the joy and delight that my children bring to me. That I have the privilege of being their Dad, the privilege of watching them grow, is because their birth Mom chose life. My life is changed forever because of Annie and Emma. There are no words to describe the depth of that emotion, either.

I wanted you to know that in my mind you are ten feet tall. A hero. I am terribly proud of you. Thanks for making an incredibly wise decision. Even if you didn’t understand the consequences at the time, you have blessed the world by what you did.

Please accept these thoughts with my deepest respect.

God’s biggest blessings on your life -

Todd Thompson 

“For you (God) 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, and my soul knows 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 down in your book before one of them came to be.” – Psalm 139:13-16 

It was quite simple in construction. A base platform mounted on a center spindle containing sealed and well greased ball bearings. As for handles, they were simple, too. Just a burn your hands in summer, freeze your hands in winter bare metal bar. They all started out new with shiny paint but after a season or two of being grabbed and jumped on, always ended up back to a dull gray primer color. No seat belts, no safety harnesses and no warning stickers or disclaimers to ward off litigation in the event of injury. Just an old fashioned self-propelled joyride.

When you’re a grade schooler the merry-go-round is just another fun piece of jungle gym equipment. Yet it was really an unknowing exposure to the laws of physics. The mass x acceleration stuff. As even the beginning rider soon realized, the speed of the merry-go-round was in direct proportion to the force exerted upon it. If you were the lone 2nd grader taking a solo ride you grabbed hold, hunkered in your 7-year old shoulders and pumped your little Levi legs as hard as you could to get it started. It moved, slowly at first then gradually gaining momentum. A couple times around the circle now you’re past a trot and starting to run. The bottoms of your Keds are beating the circular trail of rock hard dirt, pounded into pavement by a million pairs before you. Now it’s not work anymore. You’re running as fast as you can. Instead of getting the merry-go-round to keep up with you, you’re trying to keep up with it. Your sweaty hands still have a grip, but just barely, until that moment when you jump…..and land on the platform, throw your head back and watch the world spin.

It’s a great ride. But like all great rides, after a few times the thrill isn’t what it used to be. By yourself, you can only get it spinning so fast. It can and will go faster when you’re a 6th grader. But who wants to wait four years? Then you figure out that there is more than one way to make the merry-go-round go faster.

Get somebody bigger than you to spin it for you.

They spin, you ride. What a deal.

For many kids, the somebody bigger was often their Dad. And the first time you raise the idea to your Dad that he should spin while you ride, he would kindly oblige. But Dad, being older, has a better understanding of physics than you do. They know their mass x acceleration has considerably more oomph than your mass x acceleration. So they spin you. But not very fast. They’re being safe. They don’t want you to lose your grip. They don’t want you to fall off. After all, how would that look? Dad knows that if you come home bleeding with a playground road rash Mom isn’t going to be understanding when she finds out you got G-forced off the merry-go-round by your own father. So Dad is cautious.

But you; you don’t like caution. You want speed. If you wanted slow you’d spin it yourself.

Faster. Make it go faster.

You can see the look in His eyes. He’s smiling. But like a governor on an engine his pace stays constant.

Faster, you say. You want to go faster. “C’mon Dad! Make it go faster!”

You’re not sure if he changed his mind or if you convinced him you could handle it or if he just got weary of hearing you plead for speed. But Dad finally responds. He throws his weight into the next grab and pull and release and before you have time to think he’s grabbed and pulled and released again. And again. And again. Each time thinking the merry-go-round speedometer has topped out and then realizing with a white knuckle grip as the blurred image of your Dad flashes past that you were mistaken. You catch your breath and an involuntary scream escapes your throat as you feel the thrill you knew was there to be had.

This is new territory.

When you’re your own power source, you’re always within yourself. But this is something different. The power source is beyond you. Your head is thrown back and the world is whirling. This is the thrill you couldn’t get without the help of someone bigger doing the spinning.

It all happens in a flash. A micro burst of excitement. And a sudden fear that your grip isn’t what you thought it to be. A second guessing of your wishes. Your plead for speed becomes a cry of “No! Slow!” You’ve never figured the merry-go-round as something you wanted to jump off yet you’re now entertaining the thought. But you’re relieved of coming up with an escape plan when Dad stops the spinning. He sees you’re at your limit. So he stops grabbing and pulling and releasing and lets the momentum spin itself out. With every slowing rotation he comes clearer into focus. You got what you asked for. A speed you couldn’t attain on your own. You just need someone bigger to spin you.

The merry-go-round. We’re all on it. For some of us it’s barely moving. It may even feel like it’s stopped. For some, it’s spinning fast. It feels like we’re losing our grip and we’re about to fly off. For others of us, we’ve gotten the speed we’ve been pleading for and though not regretting, we’re rethinking our request while marveling at the power of God and His ability to spin our merry-go-round. In September of 2000 I was standing on my merry-go-round looking at God, alternately crying and cussing and pleading for speed after years of futility in my desire to have children. One grab and pull and release from God and I was spinning in stereo with twins. No kids to 2 kids in 23 days. I don’t regret for a second my repeated requests for speed, but I confess a new respect for God’s ability to answer prayers and deliver unimaginable blessings. That’s something good to remember in times of darkness and uncertainty, when life looks scary.

However fast or slow your merry go round is spinning, God wants you to know that He is your “someone bigger”. He isn’t spinning and leaving. He’s in control of your ride. And far from being a playground policeman who wants to kill your fun and stop your adventure He wants you to throw your head back and watch the world whirl as He spins your merry-go-round with His divine purpose.

“Great is our Lord and mighty in power; His understanding has no limit.” – Psalm 147:5 

“I’ve come that they might have life and have it more abundantly” – Jesus (John 10:10)

Six years ago tonight I was working in the Kid’s Team Shop at America West Arena. It was a Phoenix Coyotes hockey game. I was standing in the middle of the store when my cell phone rang. It was Sara. She was screaming. I couldn’t get what she was yelling about.

“Slow down! I can’t understand you! What’s going on?”

“They picked us!”

“Who picked us?”

“They picked us! The birth Mom and her family! They picked us!”

She rattled on, something about a December 8 due date. But to me it was all Charlie Brown teacher “wah wah wah, wah wah wah” in my head. I hit the end button on my cell phone, stared at the green backlit screen and realized my life had just changed.

October 7. December 8. Two months. Two months till twin babies. After years of waiting and multiple disappointments hoping for one child, now two babies in two months? This is fast.

Ten days after the phone call in the Team Shop my cell phone rang again. This time I was sitting at a Sonic drive through in Tempe waiting for my large Cherry Flurry. A strange area code on the caller ID. It was the birth Mom’s sister. In a chipper carefree voice she said, “Hey! Just wanted you to know my sister’s water broke. The babies will be born tonight. Can you get here?”

Get here? It’s only October 17th. What happened to December 8th?

Fast just got faster.

We were two first-born, organized, step by step, we love sequence, A + B = C, don’t throw me a curve ball, I like things in order kind of people. I had a DayTimer. Sara had a DayTimer on steroids. I guarantee she had nothing written down on October 17th that said, “get phone call at noon, twins to be born today, take leave of absence from school, fly to Spokane at 6, stay for a month.” Nope. The only plan that was in place was God’s plan. And that’s precisely the point.
 
In my journal I wrote, “This experience is reminding me once again, perhaps as never before, that DayTimers and Palm Pilots are, at one level, high tech human tools of denial. They may keep us organized but they also fool us into thinking we have some measure of control over the events of our lives. Being smart and making decent decisions gets us a little further down life’s road. But rarely, if ever, do we begin our DayTimer moments acknowledging that God could throw our 7-ring into a divinely appointed tailspin. We don’t like to admit the reality that God controls everything and we control nothing.

Certainly there is something to be said for time management. Stewardship extends to time as well. Yet when God unfolds His plan, the DayTimer is the first casualty. We learned that this last month. Everything that has happened to us in the last 30 days has been upside down, backwards, premature, surprising, unexpected, unusual, unplanned… and all God.”

When we speak of “God’s timing” more often than not we think of it as far removed from the urgency of our circumstances. We tend to view God as a slow moving, deliberate deity. A divine curmudgeon who holes up in a big dark paneled office, seated behind a giant desk poring over every request, petition and prayer, taking them all under advisement. Compared to our desperate desire for progress, God moves with speed of a tired sloth. Or so it seems. We’re anxious for results and we see nothing from Him. God must not be listening or He must not care.

In retrospect, I think part of God’s purpose in having us endure long seasons of waiting is that we learn to cling tighter to Him. It’s in this season of waiting that we develop the grip we’ll need to hang on when God decides to go fast.

No doubt there are periods of our lives when God’s timetable is slower than we would like. But sometimes God goes fast. Really fast. Circumstances and situations where He accelerates the timetable beyond our imagination. And before you know it, you’re getting more than a taste of what you asked for. You’re drinking from a fire hydrant and God’s the one holding the big wrench.   

God isn’t always the God of “slow down and wait”. Sometimes He’s the God of “hurry up and go!” In the waiting and the rushing, He is working out His higher purposes for our good and His glory. Fast or slow, He’s always lovingly in control.

Can God go fast?

No kids to twins in 23 days. From a standing start.

Yep. God can go fast. Really fast.

How’s your grip?

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:11-13