Benaiah Aiden

Wow! What a weekend. This has definitely been one of the highlights of my life (as if you couldn't tell from the pictures :)) Amanda and I both apreciate all the prayers and for all the kind words/visits and gifts over the past few days.

I'll try to recap as best as I can (which really isn't all that good because words really can't describe ow great this has been):

Abouts 2am Saturday morning, Amanda woke up. She wasn't feeling well and she was having some spotting. She waited around til 2:30, but she was still spotting, so she woke me up. For the next half-hour, we tried to see if her condition would get better. We even called the OB/GYN, and he sayed we should be ok. Of course, Amanda was worried that something had happened to the baby. I knew she wouldn't be able to sleep until she was able to talk to a doctor face-to-face. So we loaded up in the car and headed to Brookwood at 3:30.

When we left the house, I fully expected to be back home in just a short while. Amanda was not having contractions and the due date was over 2 weeks away.

When we got to the hospital (at 4) and got out of the car, Amanda froze in pain. I tried to pursuade her "Come on, we're here now. Let's just get inside teh door." We got inside and they put us in a room (probably because Amanda said, "I think we may be having a baby today.") We got in and when they hooked Amanda up to the contraction monitor and then checked to see if she had dialated. When they did, her water broke. And we discovered that the pain that Amanda had experienced in the parking lot was in fact a contraction. In fact, they were starting to come every 5 minutes or so. So our "quick trip" to calm our nerves turned into "Wow, we'll have our baby today!" :)

Our doctor was on vacation, so we met Dr. Gams who would be our substitute physician. After about 2 hours at the hospital, Amanda hadn't dialated any more, so they gave her a hormone that increased the rate of her contractions. She also got an epidural, so from about 5a on, she was pretty comfortable.

When they checked Amanda an hour later, she had dialated to 7cm. Every time they checked it got closer to the goal. By 11, she was at 9 1/2 cm (or so we thought)

About 12:45, the Dr. popped in again and checked to see if she made it to 10cm. But, he delievered some discouraging news: Amanda was not at 9 1/2, she was at 7, maybe 8 at best. He said that the labor had stalled out and that we would have to have a C-section.

There's a verse in Job that sums up how I felt in the moment: "I am terrified." That's actually probably an understatment, but I don't know if there's a strong-enough word to describe how I felt. I tried to be calm and brave because Amanda was even more shaken that I was (obviously). She had never had surgery at all--or even been admitted to a hospital. So that compounded the fear. They set the time for 1:30p to do the surgery.

During the down time, we tried to comfort each other. I got to put on my surgery scrubs. They wheeled Amanda back and came back to get me a little later. It was probably only 5 minutes, but it felt like 30. When I got to the operating room, they had Amanda sliced open. I got to sit at her head behind the curtain (thank God for that because I would have straight passed out). It took only 3 - 5 minutes and we heard the most wonderful sound I have ever heard. Little Benaiah Aiden was here (at 1:47p) and he was letting everyone know about it. Because he was a C-section baby, he had a lot more fluid in his lungs, so his first yell sounded like he was under water.

Amanda's cousin Amy--who works in the NICU at Brookwood--was in the room and was one of the nurses who handled the baby. She even got to give his official weight (7 lbs. 8 oz.). Then mommy got to hold the baby for the first time. Then daddy got to take him to the nursery to let everyone else see. Amanda's dad lucked up and found our path so he got a sneak peek.

After everyone got to see him through the window for a coule of minutes, we carried him to the recovery room, were the nursing staff gave him a bath, checked his temp., gave him a shot or two, measured him (21 1/2 in.), put medicine in his eyes, etc. Then Daddy and Aiden got to wait for mommy. About 20 minutes after we got in the recovery room, they wheeled mommy in and she REALLY got to hold baby.

We stayed in recovery for about 2 hours. I know it killed our family because they couldn't come back. Then at 4p we moved into our suite and the family got to see baby and Mommy for the first time.

So many other small things happened that would take too long to explain. But needless to say, we are overjoyed (an understatement indeed) to have little Benaiah Aiden with us. Also, August 1st happens to be my late grandmother's birthday. So God gave us a little poetic miracle in that too.

The Buffalo River... the end

You can read the first two parts of this account here and here

When I woke up Friday morning, I had lost a lot of the desire to keep going. I had fun the day before, no doubt; but, now that I had slept all night (and watched as Jason and Robert fought off the army of raccoons that invaded our camp) I had stiffened up and really did not want to paddle more. Jason and I agreed that we should try to get to the end as fast as possible... and we did.

Too fast actually. We did not realize that our campsite was 2/3rds of the way to the end and thought we had to paddle as long as we did on day #1. Wrong! It took us only a couple of hours to get to the bridge where we could load back up on the church van. Had to wait about 2 more hours before everyone else caught up.

Once everyone did we all loaded up on the van and went back to the hotel. Ate some pizza... took a nap... ate some more (including frog legs for the first time ever!)... went to bed.

Woke up and helped load the van. Cranked up the big white bus and about the time we started getting in someone said, "Hey, what's that?" Couple of minutes later we determine that it is in fact gasoline. Diesel Gasoline in fact. As mentioned earlier we were at the end of the earth, so of course, no mechanic shop was open on Saturday except one across the border in Missouri. Yeah.

So a group of 4 brave souls--Shelby, Mark, Kenny, and Terry--stayed behind as the rest of us shoved off for Alabama. Ate lunch at an extremely hot Burger King in Memphis. Really thought we'd all die of heat stroke by the time we got to B'ham. But, we made it home.

It was great. Got to know some new people. And there's probably a whole lot that I've forgotten since a month ago...

Oh, well.

The Buffalo River pt.2

Ok, so this post is WAAAAAYYY over due. But, here is part 2 of the post I began earlier chronicling my expedition to the Buffalo River in Arkansas.

You can read part 1 here.

We woke up early the next morning (Thursday, I think) and enjoyed a free breakfast at the before-mentioned Western Sizzlin'. Then we loaded up on the vans for another 45 minute trek through mountain roads and little towns. We arrived at the canoe rental place called Crazy Bill's. This immediately struck a little fear in my heart because I was in the presence of Buffalo Bill (compliments of Joe Dirt). We then were taken to a drop off point where we were picked up by a Crazy Bill's bus. They took us up river to the place where we would put in.

We got in. The water felt great. Saw a lot of fishermen not catching anything. Took a couple of swim breaks. Watched Robert jump off a 45 ft. cliff...twice. Thought Josh would be eaten by a moccasin. Enjoyed my Vienna's for lunch. Thank God for caramel popcorn or I would not have survived the trip.

Saw dozens of turtles sunbathing. Started to get sunburnt (not nearly as bad as Glenn and Devin). Finally made it to the campsite. Sat in the lagoon for hours. We were the 4th canoe to arrive (out of 8 or 9) and the last canoe came in about 4 hours after we arrived. Some people liked to stop and fish and swim a lot.

Cooked my hot dogs amongst a variety of foods--from beanie-weenies to pork chops that were 2 inches thick. Crawled in the tent and tried to go to sleep on my wet sleeping bag.

Pt. 3 tomorrow (hopefully)...

Insights from "The Monkey and the Fish"

Just finished reading The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church by Dave Gibbons. This book really challenged me and it also reinforced some things that I already have been exposed to. Here are some excerpts:

"I believe that today God is calling us in the church to become a different kind of movement, known for our kisses of compassion rather than our condemnations."

"I think we {the church} are preoccupied with big."

"We cannot be fully human alone."

"...questions should lead us. Questions, not answers."

"'You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into the bottle, it become the bottle. You put it into a teapot and it becomes the teapot. The water can flow. The water can crash. Be water my friend' [Bruce Lee]"

"While an answer may fork in a specific situation, questions can guide us to the answers is all kinds of situations."

"Where is the other side of the tracks in your cit or region? In other words, who are the marginalized or the outsiders near you, people whom you feel pain for?"

"What will draw most of the world to Christ is not simply a prosperity gospel but a gospel that takes a real look at the beauty and the bane of suffering."

"Any worthy endeavor is constrained by our worst fears."

"Our {the church's} party should be the best.

"...create unity among diversity."

"We need to learn to walk in the blur and in the intersections of cultures, to bust the walls that separate us from a world of colliding cultures and generations, and the shifting of roles, responsibilities, and influence."

"All of the prejudices we've set up among cultures, among peoples of color, among backgrounds is so alien to the mind of Christ that it is the deepest kind of evil that I know. {Brennan Manning}"

The Greatest Wedding Entrance...EVER!

Crap, why couldn't I think of this...?

7 Lessons on Parenting

*Disclaimer: I found this pic on a Google search, this was not an experiment of mine

Ok, so I haven't had a lot of extra time to come up with my own posts this week, but there have been some AMAZING posts on other blogs that I read. I can't post every good thing I see, but in light of the baby that's almost here and my journey into fatherhood, this post spoke volumes to me:

(oh yeah, I found this on evotional.com. Mark Batterson's blog)

Can I take a little blog survey?

I ask this question of other parents all the time: what is the greatest lesson you've learned as a parent? Would love to hear about some of the lessons you've learned at different stages of parenting. Nothing ismore rewarding or more challenging than being a parent. We need to help each other out. I know it's tough to boil it down to one thing. So feel free to share a few lessons learned.

Here are seven lessons I've learned:

1) Your greatest failures as a parent can turn into your greatest successes IF you simply apologize. You are modeling one of the toughest skills to learn: how to handle mistakes.

2) A great marriage is one of the greatest gifts you can give your kids so focus on your marriage first and your kids second.

3) You create memories via engineering shared experiences. Be intentional about setting shared goals. Become a student of your kids. Learn to love what they love.

4) Parents are prophets. Don't just use your authority to speak correction into their lives. Use your authority to speak encouragementinto their lives. Otherwise you will become a prophet of doom.

5) We have a Heavenly Father who compensates for our parental weaknesses. So take a deep breath and relax a little. Even if you're a single parent, you're not alone. God will make up the difference!

6) One of the greatest gifts you can give your kids is time. A little one-on-one time opens channels of communication like nothing else. If you hang with them when they are young they'll want to hang with you when you're old.

7) If all else fails, teach your kids to say please, thank you, and sorry. Especially to God.

Stop Reading

Here's a post from Stephen Furtick, Lead Pastor at Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. This one really helps me out...

The following approach to reading has been freeing for me. Maybe it will liberate you too.

When you’re reading a book, and you lose interest, give yourself permission to stop reading. My goal in reading a book isn’t to finish. I read to learn. When my interest ceases, I figure that either I no longer care what the author is saying, or I already know it.

If I don’t care, I won’t learn, because my mind only processes and integrates information that it perceives as relevant.

If the information is redundant, there’s a good chance the author has squeezed a 10 page concept into a 200 page book. Once I’ve got the concept and enough application to get started, I’m ready to move on to something else. I may come back and finish the book later. I may not. There’s no book report due, so it’s up to me. This is one of the advantages of being a grown-up.

If I don’t understand the concept, my solution is the same: I need to stop reading. I’ll either read it again when my mind is fresh, or pick up a different book that explains the topic at a level that does pique my interest. I’m not in high school anymore, and I’m not working from a syllabus. Life’s too short to read stuff that’s too complicated or convoluted to capture my attention.

Of course, this rule does not apply to the reading of God’s Word. When it comes to the Bible, it’s usually the parts you want to read the least that change your life the most.

But if the book you’re reading isn’t the inerrant, inspired, infallible Word of the Lord, read until you lose interest.

Then stop.