The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming.
- Fredrick Buechner in A Room Called Remember
We accomplish in our life time only a tiny fraction of the miraculous enterprise that is God’s work…We cannot do everything, and there is liberation in realizing that. It enables us to something small and try to do that well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
- Oscar Romero cited in Seeking Peace
This is how we know we are no longer hungry…that the world is full of terror, full of beauty and yet we are not afraid to find solace here. To be bread for each other. To love.
- Gunilla Norris in Plenty
He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.
“For the foundations of the earth are the LORD's; upon them he has set the world.”
- 1 Samuel 2: 8
Tonight’s the night the world begins again…
- Goo Goo Dolls, Better Days
5/26/2008
Memorial Day 2008
A day wrapped in memory with the promise of peace. That is Memorial Day to me. It is a calling back to that room Buechner has so aptly named Remember. It is a chance to look back – to take stock – to be mindful of the countless people, both known and unknown, that have shaped the course of our lives. It is a window to gaze up into what one biblical writer has called our “cloud of witnesses.” It is the day we stand and say, “If it hadn’t been for so and so I never would have become such and such.” Memorial Day reminds us that we did not, cannot and need not go it alone.
A day wrapped in memory with the promise of peace. Every year when this weekend passes we name the cost of every war in very human terms. We name them – the men and women whose lives were cut short when their nations could not settle their differences peacefully. Each year when those names are read, I pledge myself to the hard work of peace. I make this pledge so that when next year’s roll is called there will be no new names. And I make this pledge to so that the two names I am now in temporary care of, need not ever be read when this day passes years from now. Memorial Day is more than yesterday’s faithful recounting it is also tomorrow’s promissory glance.
The dual reality of this day has never been more apparent than it is to me today as Bridget and I celebrate the birth our second child, born yesterday, May 25th, 2008. At just three minutes past four in the morning Samuel Aaron was welcomed in a spirit wrapped in memory with the promise of peace.
The last ten weeks have had more ups and downs than we anticipated. Late in March, I took Bridget to the ER with intense stomach pain. Tests quickly showed that she was having preterm contractions. They were able to stop them, sending us home with orders to “cool it,” which we did our best to do. But three weeks later, the pain was back and so we were we. This time the contractions lead to an overnight stay and the definitive orders for her to stay off her feet for the duration of the pregnancy. Thus began the seven weeks of bed rest.
Bed rest. Two words that seem to go great together. Some thoughts on the matter from a reflection Bridget wrote last week:
Bed.
Rest.
Two words I love.
There are days when all I want to do is find 5 minutes to rest or cannot wait to get into my bed.
But this is different.
Get in bed. Then stay there.
1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5
“I wish someone would put me on bed rest” people say, probably a combination of wishing for an enforced break from their life, and trying to be funny.
“Careful what you wish for” is my polite response.
I have never felt so useless or helpless.
And I am one of the lucky ones.
There have been tough moments these past weeks. But we have managed. We learned to ask for help and to receive it – both more humbling that we thought. We learned your world can get awfully small awfully quick. We learned that work could wait while learning that we could wait on God. We learned we really do love each other.
What was causing these early contractions? At every stage of the game Bridget has been measuring big – big baby and big amounts of extra fluid. A pregnant woman’s belly should measure a cm/week. (They didn’t teach us any of this in seminary.) At her last doctor’s appointment, on Tuesday, at only 37 weeks, Bridget’ belly measured 52 cm! Two weeks prior, an ultrasound suggested that the baby inside her was nearing 10 pounds with five weeks of growing to still to go! What we were getting ourselves into? (More on this in a moment…)
All of the bed rest, all of the doctors, all of the appointments, all of the measurements, tests, exams, pokes and prods were supposed to culminate last Thursday with a scheduled C-section. Bridget was to take a test Wednesday morning that would tell us if the baby’s lungs were ready for delivery the next day. Every indication told us that we were ahead of schedule. Doctors were confident that the test would show that he was ready to go. In fact, the test felt a bit like a formality. So when the results came back that he was close, but not quite ready, we simply weren’t prepared. Wednesday was easily the toughest day of the past nine months. With her body pushed to the limit, she just wasn’t sure she could do this anymore. With the wind sucked out of our sails and the intricate Casey contingency plans crashing like a house of cards, we just sat and looked at each other, not knowing what to say. We would just have to wait. Take the test again the middle of next week, roll the dice and see what happens. There was nothing more we could do.
Which brings us to Saturday – with fresh disappointment behind us and the possibility of scheduled C-section a week away, Saturday was perhaps the most “normal” day we have had in months. It was the most relaxed we’d been in weeks. I took Casey to the zoo in the morning and spent the afternoon and the early evening in the backyard pulling weeds and trimming branches. Bridget sat on the patio, potting plants. We had dinner, gave Casey a bath and began to watch a movie we’d wanted to see all year but never the got the chance.
Just after 11:00, half way through the movie, Bridget asked me to press pause while she went to the bathroom. She got up from the couch (no small task these days, mind you) looked at me and said, “Uh-oh! My water just broke!” Which it had!
Phone calls to Cathy, our doctor, and Patty, our Casey care emergency stand by, and we found ourselves at the all too familiar Providence Hospital Emergency Room entrance one more time. We arrived just after midnight, were prepped just after one, wheeled into surgery just after three and holding our second child just after four.
Cathy Chartier, our dear friend and dedicated doctor, delivered 11lbs and 11 oz. Samuel Aaron at 4:03 am. They drained three liters of fluid from Bridget’s womb (mark my words, this boy is going to be an Olympic swimmer.) His head measured 44 cm in diameter (average baby is 34 cm.) The little hat didn’t fit him; it was off to pediatrics to find a gown big enough to cover him. Minutes after the delivery he was the talk of the floor, nurses and doctors coming into to see the biggest baby in recent memory.
By six o’clock we were all together in the recovery room – the moment which made every moment prior worth it! We loved him from the start.
Samuel – a name rich in biblical history. Samuel – the last of the Hebrew judges and the first of the great prophets. He was the only son born to Hannah who was barren until God at last answered her prayers. She names him Samuel which in the Hebrew means, asked of God (now, this is what they taught me seminary.) Upon his birth, Samuel’s mother dedicates his life back to the One who gave him to her in the first place. But it’s the song his mother sings – a song about who she hopes this son of hers will become that most captures my imagination on the eve of Memorial Day. She sings about a hope – a hope that this one she now holds in her hands will one day grow up to be a servant of justice and proclaimer of peace – that his life in some way will raise “the poor from the dust and lift the needy from the ash heap.” I know that the Samuel born this day has a mom who loves to sing and I bet that as I write this she is humming him to sleep with notes as hopeful.
We were drawn to this name not so much for its biblical narrative but because of another boy named Samuel who has inspired us. Over these past three years, Bridget and I find ourselves growing more committed to the plight of African AIDS orphans (12 million and growing,) a concern that has twice taken us to the West African country of Ghana. It was there that we met Samuel, the twelve year old artist, soccer player an AIDS orphan living at the King Jesus Charity Home just outside of Kumasi, Ghana. His inquisitive nature, his caring smile, his gentle spirit and his creative mind have remain with us. He is the kind of boy we hope our sons grow up to be. Bridget writes to him regularly and on our last visit he showed me every one of her letters and pictures. He has saved them as if they were treasure. Samuel has taught us the power of being remembered. So through our son Samuel, we hope to never forget him and to continually dedicate our lives to serving children like him throughout the world. These two Sams will help us remember who we are and what we want our lives to be about.
We will never be able think of the weeks leading up to Sam’s birth without grateful remembrance for every prayer prayed, card sent, call made, meal cooked, first born child played with, read to, hugged and loved, every load of laundry done, every shopping list completed, every way you have told us you love us. We will do all we can to pay your kindness forward to others who might wake up one day and find their world turned upside down. Thank you for “being” the church and for being our friends.
For now we look forward to tending our little corner of the world with our little family, hoping to give these boys many days wrapped in memory with the promise of peace.
Keep your eyes open for Bridget as she anxiously awaits her reentry into society (look out she’s ready to organize something!) Please plan to visit us when you can and don’t forget to check out the blog, http://www.thepreacherskid.blogspot.com/ , for latest the pictures and updates.
With a very full heart!
Grace and Peace,
Jeff
Casey and Sam’s Dad
PS – Just before I put Casey down for a nap today we read a book someone gave him about the creation story. Every page has beautiful pictures of nature and animals and babies. Before turning each page it reads, “And God said…” to which he gladly responds, “Isn’t that great!” Oh how right you are, my boy! How right you are!
Life is crammed with little miracles. Who knows, our beleaguered Tigers might even get inspired!
- Fredrick Buechner in A Room Called Remember
We accomplish in our life time only a tiny fraction of the miraculous enterprise that is God’s work…We cannot do everything, and there is liberation in realizing that. It enables us to something small and try to do that well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
- Oscar Romero cited in Seeking Peace
This is how we know we are no longer hungry…that the world is full of terror, full of beauty and yet we are not afraid to find solace here. To be bread for each other. To love.
- Gunilla Norris in Plenty
He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.
“For the foundations of the earth are the LORD's; upon them he has set the world.”
- 1 Samuel 2: 8
Tonight’s the night the world begins again…
- Goo Goo Dolls, Better Days
5/26/2008
Memorial Day 2008
A day wrapped in memory with the promise of peace. That is Memorial Day to me. It is a calling back to that room Buechner has so aptly named Remember. It is a chance to look back – to take stock – to be mindful of the countless people, both known and unknown, that have shaped the course of our lives. It is a window to gaze up into what one biblical writer has called our “cloud of witnesses.” It is the day we stand and say, “If it hadn’t been for so and so I never would have become such and such.” Memorial Day reminds us that we did not, cannot and need not go it alone.
A day wrapped in memory with the promise of peace. Every year when this weekend passes we name the cost of every war in very human terms. We name them – the men and women whose lives were cut short when their nations could not settle their differences peacefully. Each year when those names are read, I pledge myself to the hard work of peace. I make this pledge so that when next year’s roll is called there will be no new names. And I make this pledge to so that the two names I am now in temporary care of, need not ever be read when this day passes years from now. Memorial Day is more than yesterday’s faithful recounting it is also tomorrow’s promissory glance.
The dual reality of this day has never been more apparent than it is to me today as Bridget and I celebrate the birth our second child, born yesterday, May 25th, 2008. At just three minutes past four in the morning Samuel Aaron was welcomed in a spirit wrapped in memory with the promise of peace.
The last ten weeks have had more ups and downs than we anticipated. Late in March, I took Bridget to the ER with intense stomach pain. Tests quickly showed that she was having preterm contractions. They were able to stop them, sending us home with orders to “cool it,” which we did our best to do. But three weeks later, the pain was back and so we were we. This time the contractions lead to an overnight stay and the definitive orders for her to stay off her feet for the duration of the pregnancy. Thus began the seven weeks of bed rest.
Bed rest. Two words that seem to go great together. Some thoughts on the matter from a reflection Bridget wrote last week:
Bed.
Rest.
Two words I love.
There are days when all I want to do is find 5 minutes to rest or cannot wait to get into my bed.
But this is different.
Get in bed. Then stay there.
1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5
“I wish someone would put me on bed rest” people say, probably a combination of wishing for an enforced break from their life, and trying to be funny.
“Careful what you wish for” is my polite response.
I have never felt so useless or helpless.
And I am one of the lucky ones.
There have been tough moments these past weeks. But we have managed. We learned to ask for help and to receive it – both more humbling that we thought. We learned your world can get awfully small awfully quick. We learned that work could wait while learning that we could wait on God. We learned we really do love each other.
What was causing these early contractions? At every stage of the game Bridget has been measuring big – big baby and big amounts of extra fluid. A pregnant woman’s belly should measure a cm/week. (They didn’t teach us any of this in seminary.) At her last doctor’s appointment, on Tuesday, at only 37 weeks, Bridget’ belly measured 52 cm! Two weeks prior, an ultrasound suggested that the baby inside her was nearing 10 pounds with five weeks of growing to still to go! What we were getting ourselves into? (More on this in a moment…)
All of the bed rest, all of the doctors, all of the appointments, all of the measurements, tests, exams, pokes and prods were supposed to culminate last Thursday with a scheduled C-section. Bridget was to take a test Wednesday morning that would tell us if the baby’s lungs were ready for delivery the next day. Every indication told us that we were ahead of schedule. Doctors were confident that the test would show that he was ready to go. In fact, the test felt a bit like a formality. So when the results came back that he was close, but not quite ready, we simply weren’t prepared. Wednesday was easily the toughest day of the past nine months. With her body pushed to the limit, she just wasn’t sure she could do this anymore. With the wind sucked out of our sails and the intricate Casey contingency plans crashing like a house of cards, we just sat and looked at each other, not knowing what to say. We would just have to wait. Take the test again the middle of next week, roll the dice and see what happens. There was nothing more we could do.
Which brings us to Saturday – with fresh disappointment behind us and the possibility of scheduled C-section a week away, Saturday was perhaps the most “normal” day we have had in months. It was the most relaxed we’d been in weeks. I took Casey to the zoo in the morning and spent the afternoon and the early evening in the backyard pulling weeds and trimming branches. Bridget sat on the patio, potting plants. We had dinner, gave Casey a bath and began to watch a movie we’d wanted to see all year but never the got the chance.
Just after 11:00, half way through the movie, Bridget asked me to press pause while she went to the bathroom. She got up from the couch (no small task these days, mind you) looked at me and said, “Uh-oh! My water just broke!” Which it had!
Phone calls to Cathy, our doctor, and Patty, our Casey care emergency stand by, and we found ourselves at the all too familiar Providence Hospital Emergency Room entrance one more time. We arrived just after midnight, were prepped just after one, wheeled into surgery just after three and holding our second child just after four.
Cathy Chartier, our dear friend and dedicated doctor, delivered 11lbs and 11 oz. Samuel Aaron at 4:03 am. They drained three liters of fluid from Bridget’s womb (mark my words, this boy is going to be an Olympic swimmer.) His head measured 44 cm in diameter (average baby is 34 cm.) The little hat didn’t fit him; it was off to pediatrics to find a gown big enough to cover him. Minutes after the delivery he was the talk of the floor, nurses and doctors coming into to see the biggest baby in recent memory.
By six o’clock we were all together in the recovery room – the moment which made every moment prior worth it! We loved him from the start.
Samuel – a name rich in biblical history. Samuel – the last of the Hebrew judges and the first of the great prophets. He was the only son born to Hannah who was barren until God at last answered her prayers. She names him Samuel which in the Hebrew means, asked of God (now, this is what they taught me seminary.) Upon his birth, Samuel’s mother dedicates his life back to the One who gave him to her in the first place. But it’s the song his mother sings – a song about who she hopes this son of hers will become that most captures my imagination on the eve of Memorial Day. She sings about a hope – a hope that this one she now holds in her hands will one day grow up to be a servant of justice and proclaimer of peace – that his life in some way will raise “the poor from the dust and lift the needy from the ash heap.” I know that the Samuel born this day has a mom who loves to sing and I bet that as I write this she is humming him to sleep with notes as hopeful.
We were drawn to this name not so much for its biblical narrative but because of another boy named Samuel who has inspired us. Over these past three years, Bridget and I find ourselves growing more committed to the plight of African AIDS orphans (12 million and growing,) a concern that has twice taken us to the West African country of Ghana. It was there that we met Samuel, the twelve year old artist, soccer player an AIDS orphan living at the King Jesus Charity Home just outside of Kumasi, Ghana. His inquisitive nature, his caring smile, his gentle spirit and his creative mind have remain with us. He is the kind of boy we hope our sons grow up to be. Bridget writes to him regularly and on our last visit he showed me every one of her letters and pictures. He has saved them as if they were treasure. Samuel has taught us the power of being remembered. So through our son Samuel, we hope to never forget him and to continually dedicate our lives to serving children like him throughout the world. These two Sams will help us remember who we are and what we want our lives to be about.
We will never be able think of the weeks leading up to Sam’s birth without grateful remembrance for every prayer prayed, card sent, call made, meal cooked, first born child played with, read to, hugged and loved, every load of laundry done, every shopping list completed, every way you have told us you love us. We will do all we can to pay your kindness forward to others who might wake up one day and find their world turned upside down. Thank you for “being” the church and for being our friends.
For now we look forward to tending our little corner of the world with our little family, hoping to give these boys many days wrapped in memory with the promise of peace.
Keep your eyes open for Bridget as she anxiously awaits her reentry into society (look out she’s ready to organize something!) Please plan to visit us when you can and don’t forget to check out the blog, http://www.thepreacherskid.blogspot.com/ , for latest the pictures and updates.
With a very full heart!
Grace and Peace,
Jeff
Casey and Sam’s Dad
PS – Just before I put Casey down for a nap today we read a book someone gave him about the creation story. Every page has beautiful pictures of nature and animals and babies. Before turning each page it reads, “And God said…” to which he gladly responds, “Isn’t that great!” Oh how right you are, my boy! How right you are!
Life is crammed with little miracles. Who knows, our beleaguered Tigers might even get inspired!
5 comments:
YAY YOU GUYS!!! Congratulations to EVERYONE!
Love, Angelica
Congratulations you guys :)
Can't wait to meet him!
Lots of love
Alexa
I am so happy for your whole family. Best wishes and congrats and all that. I sure look forward to meeting him.
Love,
Mary
Samuel is very lucky to have such a loving and patient family! He looks like a real big boy! Being a mother of twins, I was sure thinking you had more than one in there. Can't wait to meet Samuel.
Love you all,
Anita & Mike
What a sweet child & how blessed to have y'all as his loving family! Bridget u r amazing! Love/blessings to all from Hendersonville NC ruth & stew xoxox xox
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