High on a Hill

My lover of American History Maria reminds me this is the month Nancy Lincoln and Mary Ball Washington birthed wise sons, Abraham and George. They had no fancy medical facilities. Their blessed, labored events happened at homesteads on lowland banks of creeks.


February, 28 years ago, God birthed my first son on a foothill of this blog's backdrop. At the time my beloved hubby and I lived on the edge of the Indian plains just inside Nepal. Due to our mission’s services to the King, our village had hydroelectricity. Our village hospital, though, was no place to birth our first baby.  As the due date neared we moved to the nearest mission hospital where an American couple on furlough lent us their apartment.

4, 475 feet above sea level Tansen town was certainly “high on a hill.” In fact its hospital compound stood at a higher elevation. Since I did not have my baby in January, well, I was encouraged to walk those heady hills.

We had to trek down one day to the town. The government wouldn’t extend my visa beyond the March 3rd expiration date on my passport. There were no house phones, cell phones or Steve Job created epiphanies. In a land just stumbling onto watches and radios, we had no quick electronic faxes or fixes. Despite his early efforts at renewal, MBH was empty-handed and anxious.

Days before the birth we finally received renewal forms that could be processed by Tansen’s Chief Deputy Officer. Behind a massive colonial desk sat a young officer. I stood at peace as baby tumbled in me. The young man looked confused.

As my beloved did his engineering best to explain our needs, I saw his brow furrow. Did God really want us here for three years? Besides our fellow classmates only had two years for their overseas commitments.

The young man summoned an older man in Nepali suit coat and Topee hat. Dual lingual the elder patiently guided the young man and us. That day we wrote two letters, one requesting the CDO to “attest” to my signature, the other, for the CDO to sign stating that he “attests” to my signature and that my pregnancy kept me from signing a renewal at the American Consulate.

Amid folks who surmised Australia as that “village over another hill,” God gave us this gentleman. While we composed our letters, we learned that he had a similar visa snafu in Thailand. He’d been to the States as well.

MBH and I hoofed a goat’s trail back to the compound. When the trail thinned and a new path started a meter over my head, instead of turning back, I hoisted up. Two February mornings later, I think that broken path was God’s providential push to experience bouncing joy.

On your broken paths and furrowed times, look up to let God give you joy.