Angels

My daughter Freida is an angel. But I don’t mean it in the way it’s usually meant. I mean God has used her to speak into my life from literally the moment she was born. 

As I'm writing this, she is turning two years old today. But two years ago today my life looked very different, and God wanted to do something about it. Freida’s original due date was June 8th. Which was important to me at the time because two years ago on June 15th the band I was in had a big show headlining an Ohio festival that I was bound and determined to make it to at all costs. And so I thought, she’ll be born the week before and then I’ll have plenty of time to still make the show. 

But her due date came and went and she didn’t come, and the whole week went by and she still didn’t come. And the morning of that big important show, I remember waking up determined that I would still try to go, even though she could come any minute and I would be over an hour away with probably no phone reception. 

All day I thought about still trying to go, finally it got to be late in the day and I reluctantly realized it wasn’t going to happen. We were set to take the stage at 10 pm that night. My wife went into labor with Freida at 10 pm exactly. 

A year before that we had played the same festival and I drank myself into a stupor, I couldn’t drink enough to numb myself to the realization that the more I got what I thought I wanted the less I felt fulfilled. I remember it being one of the lowest moments of my life and feeling the farthest I’ve ever been from God. One year later God was using that same scenario to pull me back towards him.

What happened from there was Freida was born into the world around 2 am that night, and I got to look into her eyes as they opened for the very first time. The show went on without me. The band played an incredible set, and it dealt a devastating blow to my ego, and made a huge crack in the foundation of the idol I made out of my music career. 

I’d like to say that I got the message right away and I surrendered that very next day to God’s new plan for my life. But it took many months of wrestling with God, trying to continue down a road I knew he didn’t want for me, and clinging to MY plan for how I thought MY life should go. Mercifully he is always patient with us and always faithful to us. Like the perfect father and wonderful counselor he is, he has to let his children learn their lessons the way they need to. But he always customizes the delivery to what he knows we need. 

For me I needed a meteor to crash into my life and hit me at full speed to stop me dead in my tracks, and put my heart into a position of humility and submission where I could hear God speak. Nothing short of that would have done it. Freida was my meteor, sent straight from God, right at the appointed hour, at the appointed moment of my greatest need. 

Her life is a constant reminder to me that God is always speaking to me, in every moment and every circumstance. And it’s all meant to give me the opportunity to see and say “not MY, but YOUR will be done.” 

So thank you God for Freida Louise, and thank you for being the kind of God who never stops coming after the hearts of your children that you love, no matter how hard they try to push you away. You are forever faithful. Thank you <3