Hope

My new daughter’s middle name is Hope. I have often discounted this practical theological principle since hope is not in something that is tangible now. I’m rather narrow minded in this regard, I know that it is something that I need to allow the Lord to reshape my thinking on. One thing that I see specifically is that there is very little in my life that I do with an excitement and hope. Hope is critical for all life, but sometimes I think I want everything practical, right now, and ‘easy.’ That’s where God comes in 🙂

Romans 5:1-6 really puts things in perspective.

1 Therefore having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ;
2 by whom we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.
3 And not only [that], but we also boast in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works endurance;
4 and endurance, experience; and experience, hope;
5 and hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by [the] Holy Spirit which has been given to us:

I find this section of scripture to be stunning. It tells me that due to the shere fact of my salvation by faith I am to have hope, it will be part of what the Holy Spirit is doing in my life as He conforms me into the image of Christ. My lack of thinking about hope does not mean I’m not living with hope, its just an area of my life that I need to be submitting to him rather than just sitting back and saying, “Whatever happens will happen. God’s in control.” Instead I need to have the mindset that, “Whatever will happen will happen because God’s in control and I have access to God and can appeal to Him, His Power, and His Love to hopefully achieve something that is amazing.” Having faith in an all mighty God means that I can pray prayers that He would move the mountains and Hope in Him who can move mountains.

I’ve lost hope in people due to them failing me like I failed them (and trust me, I’ve failed a lot of people). However, I’m decieved if I lose hope in God. fortunately He reminded me about this by having me name my daughter Hope. I have high hopes for Evelyn Hope to become a godly woman. My hope is in God’s work, and not in my own as a man.

Horrible Examples of Hypocrisy

So this evening I was watching Scary Movie on NBC and a commercial comes on with Megan Mullally. In the commercial, which is supposed to be a public dis-service announcement, she tells people that its what is on the inside that counts. If you’re not feeling good about yourself on the outside then you need to find who you are on the inside.

Doh! This woman is on a TV show about physical attraction between straight and homosexual people, she’s been touted as one of the more voluptuous women over 40 or some other such label. She has apparently lost some weight to feel more attractive… and yet she needs to tell people that even though they can’t be like her, they should be happy with who they are inside. Lame.

I find public service announcements to be absolutely insulting. Other fine examples of these things are people saying that our public schools are going down the tube due to President Bush’s signing into place the ‘No Child Left Behind’ act and then having someone on the television tell me that I should stay in school to have a fulfilling and meaninful life. We have shows that require actors and actresses to do crazy (and theoretically funny) things because they’re drunk and then those same actors and actresses do public swervice denouncements saying, “Drinking doesn’t make you cool.”

Continuing on with Molly, I think that television has clearly enunciated the fact that sex sells. I have to laugh at the idea that every other commercial seems to have at least one element that involves sexuality and then they put one on that’s suppose to counter that. I think Molly should have been wearing sack cloth and ashes instead of a slender, form fitting outfit to tell people that looks don’t matter. Looks don’t matter on television like being dumb (without speech) works on radio. I think this is going to really impact America’s culture – we’re all going to feel better about ourselves because a television star told us to.

On the upside I feel better about myself because I’m not telling everyone else to feel better about themselves. In fact, I don’t feel good about myself sometimes, and that’s good, it shows that I recognize areas of my life that need improvement. By being content with parts of me that are goofy (and trust me, there are plenty of those) they’ll stay that way. I don’t sit and dread them, but I also am not going to just say, “It doesn’t matter, I’m perfect just the way I am.”

Oh, and by the way, you should feel good about yourself because you’re created in God’s image. Or, maybe you should feel better about yourself because you weren’t watching Scary Movie on NBC 😉

Dominated

Our house is now dominated by baby stuff. My bedroom, once a sanctum of marriage is now an even more crowded room with baby stuff covering surfaces to make sure that any time during the nightly nursing process we can take care of this. Our basement has Abby’s toys on one side and Evie’s vibrating seat and swing on the other side, flanking the TV. The kitchen has a vibrating seat to hold the pumpkin girl whilst we eat, the living room has somehow escaped unscathed. My office also holds no baby things, but the computer surely is now loaded with many pictures (only some of which are worthy of internet distribution, in case people *cough* Shari *cough* are wondering where new ones are).

Evie has now dominated the landscape of what was once a simple domicile. I love her though, so its OK to lose the house to gain a beautiful daughter.

Jessica’s Labor and Delivery of Evie: Edited

Howdy, I think I got enough sleep last night to write about Jessica’s labor and delivery of Evie. I’ll edit it so as to keep it generally G-Rated, but I also wanted to share about this fantastic experience.

Monday morning Jessica woke me up with, “Are you ready to be a daddy, again?” Which of course was like being shot up with 1,000 CCs of adrenaline. It was like waking up with something much better than Folgers in my cup. It was like when she woke me up to tell me that Abby was going to be joining us in the world: exciting and scary all at the same time. Exciting because I love the concept of fatherhood and scary because being a parent is a huge responsibility with the chance to fail costing lives or changing the course of them so radically that I’d rather have had the doctor screw up on my circumcision to have prevented my screwing up my children (I know, too much information – but I’ll quote the Bible to validate it: Galatians 5:12. Are you laughing yet?). Either wayEvie was coming and there was no backing out now. Heck, there was no backing out since some time in February when we figured out that we had a little one coming.

We woke up and began the psychological preparation for labor and delivery knowing that contractions with Abby rapidly progressed to 5 minutes apart within approximately 3 hours. I sent off emails to appropriate work related contacts, sent a few instant messages because I could to ask people to pray and send further emails to other people. Once Linda (my mother-in-law) woke up we told her and the exceptional excitement spread. I blogged here that contractions had started. The world was spinning just a little faster and I was preparing to be a dad by the afternoon. Doh! Silly assumptions.

Jessica and I went out for a brisk walk to help speed up contractions since they were still light and not close enough together. We walked for about an hour and it was a nice walk because it was just the two of us talking – something that will be much more rare now :). Contractions started to be more intense but their frequency was still rather unreliable. So we walked home, got ready for the day as best as we could and the four of us went out shopping. This is a big mistake for those of you who have a future involving waiting for labor pains to increase. Don’t go spending more money while waiting to have the baby, you don’t know how long things will take – we shopped for around 6 hours and I still haven’t tallied up the receipts from all of the small purchases.

We dropped Abby off around noon at my parents place and the three of us (Linda being the third, unless you count me as the third, in which case Jessica and Linda were the other two. Jessica at no time should be counted as the third person) went out for lunch and then walked around the new Whole Foods market. On the way out of Whole Foods we were walking to the car and Jessica had a contraction. I chided her and said, “What? You can’t walk during your contractions? What’s up with that?” To which she replied, “Why don’t I squeeze your testicals and then we’ll see if you can walk.” That is a priceless moment. One I will always cherish.

We ended up shopping at Timbuk Toys and then Linens ‘n’ Things. Right before we entered Timbuk Toys Jessica called her midwife and asked if 8 minutes would be close enough apart to come in since it was 4:20 or so and it was getting later in the day. The midwife said, “Wait until they’re 5 minutes apart.” Apparently that was the magic thing to say because pretty much as soon as she hung up the phone contractions started coming at about 5 minutes apart. We had a few that were 8 minutes apart, some that were 4 minutes apart, but things averaged at 5 minutes apart for about an hour and 20 minutes before we headed to the hospital. In fact we had managed to go to a walking trail and get about 1/8th of a mile down it when Jessica started having contractions four minutes apart. Getting back to the car took a while due to the regular contractions.

We called the midwife’s call service on the way to the hospital because that was when we’d officially had an hour of 5 or less minute apart contractions. The midwife chuckled as her call service had let her know we’d called again and by the time she called us back we were in the parking garage. She said she’d let the hospital know we were coming. While we registered at the Emergency Room registration area Jessica had two contractions and a few more on the way up to the hospital’s labor and delivery area. The walk should have been short, but the contractions kept us stopping. The Registered Nurse (RN) took some initial measurements and tests and determined that Jessica had dialated to 5 centimeters already. Jessica planned to go walking around the department to help speed up contractions but found that she was unable to walk very far before having another contraction. Plus the contractions were becoming more intense. As a side note I want to offer other fathers-to-be this advice: only give your pregnant lady at most 2 fingers to squeeze during contractions. A whole hand has too many knuckles and you’ll regret giving her 3 or more fingers as the knuckles will press into one another and you’ll cry like a baby.

Jessica chose plan B which was to get into the bathtub and have further contractions there. This was the best choice she could have made as the water helped sooth her and reduce the pain level of the contractions. Once the midwife arrived in our room Jessica had been in the tub for a while and had even more contractions. The midwife helped her out of the tub and had her get into the delivery bed and checked her for greater dialation. In an hours time Jessica had gone from 5 centimeters to 8 centimeters. We were debating whether or not the midwife should break her bag of water (which buffers the baby from the birth canal). God, having a better plan than us, ended the debate and brake it by way of internal pressure. We didn’t have to choose to wait or have the midwife do it. You can start your stopwatches now because 22 minutes later Evie would enter the world. Once the midwife was ready for the pushing and catching Evie it only took 6 minutes of pushing.

I want to pause here and say that Jessica did a phenominal job during this whole day. She was patient, determined and gracious (with exception to threatening to squeeze my ‘manicals’ which was a joke anyway). In the bathtub she had said, “I don’t know if I can do this.” Which was mostly because it was rather painful. However, she kept on keepin’ on and she did great. When the pushing came on the RN and the Midwife told her to focus and push. Jessica closed her eyes, focused her brain and with 2 pushes Evie was out. Amazing. I watched and cried as two of the three most beautiful women in my life were there before me in a short moment of wonder.

I cut the umbilical cord in the tradition of so many men. The hospital wouldn’t let me bring in my table saw to do that so I just used the provided scissors. I rushed out to tell Linda after taking a moment to hold the precious new girl in my arms. She wasn’t in the hallway and I figured she’d gone out to smoke. It turns out she was in the waiting room: waiting. However, she came shortly and we cried together as she held Evie. We made some phone calls and let some people know that she was here and had my parents bring Abby over even though it was after 9:00 PM.

Jessica, Evie and I stayed at the hospital and Evie was shockingly quiet during the night. We had planned to take her to the nurses station between feedings to ensure sleeping but Evie was just so quiet and sleeping, too, so we kept her with us. I got about 5 hours of sleep that night, but it was restful sleep because the intensity of the day was over.

Abby’s still adjusting to having a little sister, Jessica and I are adjusting to waking up at odd hours of the night and Evie is adjusting to everything. We’re doing well and I’m pleased to share my presious little girl, who already has a good sense of humor.
Daddy, you crack me up

Evie

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Evelyn Hope . She was born Monday, October 24th at 9:12 PM [21:12]. Jessica handled the labor and delivery masterfully and she’s doing well. Evie is quiet and much more sedate than Abby ever was so I’m going to have to relearn how to be a dad. But I think it’ll be worth it. She weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces and is 19.75 inches long.

I cried a lot after her birth. Tears of joy (just like with Abby). I don’t deserve anything in my life that I’ve been blessed with, but having two beautiful daughters with one beautiful wife is an abundance that I can’t comprehend. Just thinking about her right now makes me a bit weepy. I can’t wait until everyone can meet her, it’ll be fantastic!

Pictures are up on Flickr and I’ll continue to shoot more so that I can keep people oogling and Googling.

Apologetics – Relativism

Using notes from seminary and the book “Relativism: Feet firmly planted mid-air” I prepared for this last week’s apologetics class. I’ve uploaded it here for you to listen to.

It is roughly 24MB and is about 45 minutes long. This is ‘tip of the iceberg’ type stuff here so remember that when listening. Also, this is from a tape that seems to have been duplicated at a slightly faster speed… either that or I sound like I’m distantly related to chipmunks [but I’m not :)].

No Baby Evie… Yet

As of this morning Evie has not been born. I apologize for the delay, but I don’t think its my fault entirely 😉 I know folks are anctiously awaiting her arrival and my buddy Craig actually called yesterday morning to see if she was born yet. We’re still waiting, and the waiting is driving me nuts. I want this little girl in my arms already.

You Might Be a Postmodernist if…

Well, I got a strange complement yesterday on the phone talking to my friend Krystal. She had said that one of the elders’ wives had told her she really needed to listen to a recording of the first apologetics class that I’ve been co-teaching with my dad. I said, “Wow, that wasn’t even one of my better prepared classes.” She clarified that the reason she had been told to listen to it was this: that it was hilarious. Apparently instead of preparing people for the contents of the class I was comic relief. Such is life, I suppose it could be worse and people could be warning, “Stay away from that class – Randy’s boring and has no clue whatsoever about anything that comes out of his mouth.”

I’m actually excited about teaching this class because its full of things that I haven’t thought about in a while and I’m re-learning and learning new things about my faith in God and in my understanding of the way the human mind works. Maybe in the future there’ll be some good recordings available as MP3’s on the church website.

Back in CO

This morning I got up at 4:00 AM Texas time and headed out to the airport around 5:00 AM. I got on the airplane around 6:35 and I assume we left close to on time. I sat by the window and another man sat by the aisle. That man was not one to be bothered by social stigmas like bathing before going out in public. I got a special smell every once in a while when he’d shift and cause the odors from his body to stir and waft over towards me. This is not a huge problem though because they fortunately turned the lights out and he slept for a good part of the way on the airplane.

I’m also excited because this was a very fruitful and productive trip – there’s nothing more betterer than a good productive business trip… the exception being that Jessica did not go into labor while I had a good productive trip 🙂