Two Fathers | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Two Fathers | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jeremy Kirby
07/24/06
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It all began on a moonless winter night, the darkness of the forest penetrating the entirety of his being. His lungs burned as he ran, inhaling the frozen air of the Alaskan night. He dodged this way and that betwixt the looming hardwoods that seemed to reach and grasp for him as though they desired to steal the very lifeblood from him.
She groaned and travailed as the labor of birth fell upon her frail body, sweat ran like a river from her burning face. Her hands violently pulled at the makeshift birch bed frame, it seemed her agony knew no end.
Soon was the time that the child would be born, the child that they’ve long awaited. Her eyes glazed over, she was closer to being an animal than a human being as she labored alone in this remote wilderness cabin. Somewhere far within her mind, beneath that despondent daze, memories unfolded, memories of a time long past, the last time in fact that she was hopelessly bedridden. Only thirteen years old and wracked with a deadly disease, one that ate at her body like a cancer. The Doctor said if she made it through this blight of disease she would never be the same. She would be internally scarred and would be never able to bear children, doomed to live a sickly life.
Her father being a Godly man, found that hellishly wicked diagnosis impossible to accept. Later in that dark night he walked underneath that cold northern moon, he sought ever so diligently, he searched the heart of God ever so meticulously. Then after a long while, the light of God dawned in his heart and he knew what he must do. He brought all the elders of the church to her bedside; they came with the healing power of God and the mighty hand of the Holy Spirit rested upon her. Merely two days after her fathers’ walk under the stars, she was healed of that disease that threatened her very life.
The sharp pains she felt as her body contracted, moving her miracle child towards a new life, jolted her out of her daydream and back into reality. She pushed and screamed, all the while praying that she wouldn’t have to deliver her baby alone.
His breath froze to his beard as he toiled through the knee-deep snow. He ran pulling his supply-sled behind him with clothes and necessary items for his newborn child. They were gifts and donations from the dear people at the Inuit village. He served as a missionary there, a two day journey from his home. This time a powerful urgency drove him back home, he knew his wife wasn’t due for another month, but he knew what he felt in his heart was very real.
Exhausted and sore he knew he must rest or he wouldn’t make the distance home to his beautiful wife. He jadedly made a rough camp at the base of a large evergreen and started a fire, the only thing that would drive away the wolves and mountain lions that dominated this area in the winter. So off he drifted to dreams of babies and fears of the wild.
At first light he awoke with a startle as the sound of an infant crying invaded his mind. So as quickly as was humanly possible he packed up and began his intense jog home. Three hours later, cold and wet, he made it home to his large cabin, but something he thought, was terribly wrong. There were fresh bear tracks in the snow and the front door was wide open. He blazed in with fire in his eyes and made his way to the bedroom, as he stormed in he found nothing, only a blood soaked quilt draped over the bed. He dropped to his knees thinking the worse and as tears started falling from his eyes he once again heard the cries of a newborn. This time it came from the bathroom, he ran to the cries and found his wife and his new baby girl. They held one another and cried tears of joy, joy to be together once again and in the presence of an impossibility that was made possible by the love of two fathers. The Father God who heals and protects, and an earthly father who knew enough to ask Him to heal his dear child.

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