Superior Sperm

Some recent health problems meant a referral by the GP to the local hospital for a scan.

It was supposed to be 'urgent', but NHS being NHS an appointment was not given for another 11 weeks. Yes, it's true, if there was something very wrong with me, I might be dead by now.

Unlike my other complaint about NHS hospital appointments, I was not given "an invitation to make" an appointment.

I had a letter on a Thursday one week to say show up at the hospital the following Thursday at 8.10 am.

Frantic phone calls followed to try to change appointments, make alternative arrangements to take son to school, etc. In the end I was trudging very early to the bus stop to make my 8.10am appointment.

I have not had the privilege to speak to a doctor about the scan as yet. The sonographers did not find anything sinister but were miffed to discover that I have an "abnormal womb".

Without going into details, the shape of my womb is such that I should not have been able to carry a baby to full term and should have been suffering miscarriages, etc, etc.

Son was seventeen days overdue.

When he got home from school and feeling none too happy about something (can't remember what it was) I told him: actually he shouldn't even be existing.

There was a look of shock on his face.

I explained it to him as best as I could.

Well, like all babies born, they were all once a superior sperm. Nothing less.

From Psalm 139

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

15 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,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

My confidence does not come from being pretty (which I am not) or clever (which some people think I am) or rich (which is a relative term). My confidence comes from the knowledge that in the sight of the all-powerful Creator God, I am "fearfully and wonderfully made".

He could have made me stronger and faster, but he didn't. The way I am was/is to him the perfection he wants in me.

Every child born, however deformed, is to God "fearfully and wonderfully made". Some translations of the Bible use the phrase "beautifully made". Not beautiful by human standards in the end-result perhaps, but beautiful in the process of being made, because God was involved in that process.

So my child, when you read this, remember, you are special.