by Kat Silverglate ©2025

Balloons tied to the mailbox. A cardboard stork in the yard, pink or blue or neutral depending on the response to the “I can’t wait to know” adrenaline rush showing up with increasing frequency since the positive pregnancy test. Cars arrive with an eclectic collection of gift-laden humans who have known one or both to-be parents in ways that make their presence important to the slightly terrified, mostly giddy, expectant ones.

Grands and grands-in-waiting. Sibs. God-, step-, stand-in, and/or adopted-parents. Real aunts and uncles and honorary ones who have been so integral to life that few remember the missing blood bond. Cousins (often our first best friends) and inner circles. Mentors, pastors, workmates, and the obligatory boss. Close friends of the almost- grands – sinners made saintly in their support of the couple who now stand on the front line of responsibility for a life made in God’s image.

When the shower games begin, attendees humor hosts by participating in activities that  shift dialogue from chit chat to expectations. Will the due date become a forever birthday or an epic story? What best attributes might pass from mom to child? From dad? How many pounds and ounces? Expectations fly like Frisbees until the final activity signals the coming of cake:

Drop by drop, the wisdom falls as side conversations hum in the background. Then the friend who speaks thoughtfully clears her throat. She seems to share from some deep primal well. Shifting her focus from the belly that won’t be ignored to an eye lock with the mama-to-be, her words might sound something like this:

“Your worst enemy as a parent might be expectations. Having a fixed picture in your mind of what their lives will look like. Must look like. It can be crushing. For you. For them. The Lord absolutely asks us to raise our kids in Him. To guide and lead them. But life unfolds for us the same way it will for them - in real time. The unexpected confronts us. And then we have a choice. Will we release our death grip on the way we thought it would be and shift into expectancy? Expectancy that God is always working with our best efforts and despite our best efforts. Expecting God to be God. Never changing. Always good. Never late. Always moving. Practically, do all you can to shift from expectations to an expectancy that the One who made your child loves the snot out of them. He’s always on it!”

It's a drop your fork type of moment. She’s the kind of character who speaks more from the scars of thorny paths than the cush of spectator seating. Whatever dashed expectation causes such wisdom to flow, walking miles with God must open the spigot.

Birth changes everything. Because birth moves us from what we hope or imagine to what actually is. Birth moves us into the reality of life with, not life imagined with. We get pregnant with an idea, a calling, a journey, a desire, a child and we imagine what could be for this seed that God allowed to land in our soil. We fight to discern what should be. But it is the birth that finally puts a pin on the surface of the map of our lives and defines what is right now. A pin that defines where we will find our expectations either limiting or leaving. Where we scoot as close as we can to the Lord who is already around the blind corner and was joyously behind the delicious potential that we froze in rigid expectation.

In her book Walking on Water, Madeline L’Engle talks about the Annunciation, the angelic word to the virgin Mary that she was chosen to carry and labor to birth the One who rescues. The Christ. She doesn’t understand all the details of how all this will go down. She has questions. But when it sinks in that God is sending this announcer and will be in the seed planting, she responds with expectancy:

She leaves the how on the table in exchange for the remarkable mystery that the God of the universe wants to include her in His redemptive work. Here's how Madeline L'Engle so beautifully approaches the topic.

What is the Annunciation if not the beginning of the incarnation. The tangible fulfillment of expectancy. The reality of God with us. The Word made flesh.

OUR BIRTHDAY STORY

Expectant living exemplars provide the most fitting entrée we can muster to the Ridiculous Hour’s story of conception, birth and movement from a mere idea to an organization on the precipice of our fifth birthday. We are an expectation to expectancy lollapalooza.

Somewhere around 2017-ish, the whispers of the seed of a “project” landed in the heart of a fifty-something seminary student. She spent ridiculous hours trying to figure out what kind of tree was supposed to grow from it, but the only tangible thing she could articulate at the time was an urge to shine a magnifying glass on how our lives would change if we chose to respond to God’s pokes, prods and nudges no matter how ridiculous they seemed. She had oodles of questions.

The words “ridiculous” and “hours” kept repeating themselves. By the fall of 2017, she’d purchased the domain name TheRidiculousHour.com without knowing how it would ultimately be used. She thought it might be two different things: a book celebrating ridiculously responsive lives and some kind of charitable mission “inspiring and facilitating strings of people to give little increments of time that God will string together into ridiculous hours that change lives.” She sent out prayer cards with a vague vision and then started to create ridiculous “equipping boxes” for those who wanted to try out the idea.

By March 2019 she received a nod from two publishers to submit a book proposal expecting the book to inspire the charitable mission. But that’s not what happened. As she sought out stories, the need for mobilization took center stage instead. The phrase “Mobile Mission” landed in her heart much the way “Ridiculous Hour” did – a fascination with helping people joyfully mobilize right where they are in response to God.

The first “missions” [text messages to friends and family] were met with all-in responses. One friend took her entire family across the world to Mozambique because she’d felt the nudge long ago and never responded. By November, we were including “equipping pieces” with our stories to make it easy for people to remember the message and use it to engage in the challenge. People started sharing what they did with them and sharing them with others.

By January 2020, we expected to do twelve talks in twelve months to explain the Ridiculous Hour concept to groups. But that’s not what happened. We did talks in January, February and March and then COVID shut down the world. We needed a birth certificate and a name so that we could launch a website that would make us visible to the sequestered world.

 So, on March 31, 2020, we became an official charitable entity with a registered birth name – The Ridiculous Hour Foundation, Inc.

March is our forever birthday month.

We got approved for tax-exempt status and people who loved the mission started to volunteer. We started to arrange packing days to assemble our mission packs. The assembly team grew to the point they needed a name, so we started to call them The RH Packers. And oh what an amazing team they are. When all of ‘em come on the same day, they travel more than 400 miles EACH WAY to participate. Four hundred plus miles! They don't always come on the same day, but in our wildest dreams we couldn’t have fathomed that kind of community. Only God.

We expected every participant everywhere to love our delivery format, but that’s not what happened. One subscriber told us she was an auditory processor and couldn’t keep up with the reading. Others told us that English was their second language, or they preferred listening in the car, so we started a podcast. We found a talented editor who started to make them into creative audible productions that would eventually support the release of a digital mission pack with a storyteller’s vibe. Only God.

One of our participants moved to Amsterdam. She shared it with others. Another took a trip to Auckland and handed out a mission pack. A friend in Columbia South Carolina started giving the gift of the ridiculous hour routinely to friends. Thanks to her, there’s a wonderful group of SC Columbians living responsively and sharing the mission one gift at a time. 52,000+ mission packs later [counting digital and family packs per member] we have too many stories to tell. When a member of our team found a company who could calculate the distance by zip code (as the crow flies) our mission packs move every month, we burst out in wonder when we absorbed the number. Our non-digital mission packs move about 643,131 miles a month. Six hundred forty-three thousand one hundred and thirty one miles. What a miraculous birthday celebration this is.  Only God.

Our Birthday Month Mission

In celebration of our birth month, we have enclosed two things in our physical mission packs: a map of the world and a birthday card. If you aren't receiving them, click on the link at the top of this story.

God is always birthing something. He delights in including us in His redemptive work. Unfold the map. Put a pin in the spot where you generally open your mission pack. What’s He birthing through you in your corner of the world? What’s He called you to? On the back, write a list of your expectations or dashed expectations. Ask the Lord to move you from expectations to expectancy. Are your expectations limiting where and/or how you’re willing to go through your one ridiculous life? How might expectancy shift your actions?

Now, about that colorful birthday card and pre-addressed envelope... will you consider sending it back to us or sending us one of your choosing. Maybe tell us one thing the Lord has done through your responsiveness right where you live, through your use of an equipping piece, through your participation in this mission, or just wish us a Happy Birthday.

We can’t think of a better gift than a story from you!

Amen? Amen!