I wrote my first book in my third-floor office of Spencer Hall on the campus of Sterling College in Kansas during May and June 1991. Moving to Kansas from Portland, Oregon in August 1990 was a culture shock to me and my family, and I wrote the book to try to explain to myself some of the considerable changes that had taken place in my life in the previous years. Only when I was writing my second autobiography in May and June 2004 did I realize that the two were written exactly 13 years apart, and were in years of my life divisible by 13. I suppose those interested in numerology can tell me what that means, but it was not on my mind either in 1991 or 2004, I can assure you.

The following excerpt is the description of my emotions at the birth of my son, Will, on February 27, 1987. As with the birth of my daughter Sydney on May 13, 1982, I was in the delivery room with my wife. I placed the following account in a longer discussion of the way that the proclamation of God's love for me by Evangelical preachers in the late 1960s hit me very powerfully.

39 and Lost in America, pp. 12-13.

"[I must dwell on] the feeling that I had at that moment [the moment that God's love was proclaimed to me]. I was overwhelmed by it. It was not as if an ocean wave had gone over me. It differed markedly from the exhilarating sense of power, explosion and intimacy of sexual intercourse. It was not even like the sudden joy of winning an award or receiving the applause of a gratified audience. It was quite distinct from all of these. It was the sense of emptiness and fulness at the same time. It was the mingling of 'It must be true' and 'It is too good to be true' or even 'It can't be true' at the same instant. It was the simultaneous feeling that 'I've known this all along' but 'I've never heard this before.'

"The only time in my life that I have had a feeling remotely similar to this was at the birth of my son in 1987. The labor was relatively easy (doesn't that sound like a male?). First the head appeared, and then the tiny chest. I was hoping all along for a boy to go along with our daughter who was born in 1982, but I never shared with my wife how much I wanted a boy. Though the baby came out of the uterus fairly quickly, I remember it was as if time had frozen for me. There was the head and there was the little chest. What would it be? I remember the tightly shut eyes of the baby, the fine black hair, the bright red skin that was pulsating with blood, the elixir of life. What would it be? Would it be a boy or a girl? Would I show an equal amount of joy if it was a boy or a girl? These and other questions raced through my mind in the split second while the baby's head and chest were exposed. Then it happened. It was as if time had started again. The rest of the baby came out. I looked down at the baby. It was a boy.

"I remember my feeling and my words in that instance. I felt that same surge within, that sense that life had taken place right before my eyes. I felt a curious combination of responsibility and inability at the same time. Yes, I knew i was responsible for the child's being there. I knew it was my sperm that had impregnated my wife. I knew that I was the father. But, at the same time I knew that the baby was not mine. I knew that I didn't make him, that I really didn't give him life, that I really had no influence in weaving the sinews of his flesh and form of his body. I knew that the baby before me was both part of me but was not me.

"And then I spoke. I remember saying, firmly, calmly, clearly, 'Judy, it is a boy.' i was not firm. I was not calm. My mind was a bundle of screaming messages, a network of lightning impulses, a collection of jumbled emotions. I was overwhelmed. It was not so much that I felt my smallness or insignificance when compared to the wonder of life. I felt, rather, that I was contributing to life, that I was a part of life, that I was, even more, essential to life. I felt that had I not done what I did, life itself would have been somewhat impoverished and the universe a bit less splendid."

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