Comfort Zone

Comfort Zone
Instead of assisting me through the delivery of our second daughter, my husband should have been at home battening down the proverbial hatches. To say she had a strong personality would be a vast understatement. Even during our nearly week-long hospital stay after her birth, the staff in the hospital nursery would call over the intercom and ask if we would like to come get our baby. She was being thrown out of the nursery!

Our trip home from the hospital was a major challenge. She began crying just as soon as her 7 pound body was placed in the car seat and kept it up until she was lifted out and introduced to her sister and her new home.

From that point on, travel with her was a study in patience and the ability to equip the back seat with a traveling road show. Her sister, a grandparent, a friend, a hitch-hiker (just kidding there) had to ride in the back seat with this strong-willed infant and sing, gesture, quack, crow, juggle. . . just to keep her entertained because when the “show” stopped, the crying began! There is no use to even pretend the driver was relaxed, enjoying the ride. It was always a frantic dash to an appointment and back again. It was never a meandering, relaxing ride!

However, through some means of growth coupled with a miracle, this infant grew into a beautiful, self-assured, capable, bright young woman. She is a college graduate, is engaged to be married soon, and holds a position of responsibility at a local hospital.

Still, given her own way as an infant, she would have never left the launch pad, so to speak. She would have spent her life in the same hospital where she was born. She would have never traveled, never known what was outside those walls because she didn’t want to be in an infant seat and confined in a car!

We are often like that with God. He has a plan, but we don’t want to stop being an infant. We don’t want to leave the place where we are at to go to the place we need to be in order to grow. Change frequently is uncomfortable, but if we would just look up, God often provides entertainment along the way and a wonderful promise of success at the end of the journey. So step outside those walls of comfort and be prepared to grow!