He's here....

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of skyward; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

e.e. cummings in I Thank You God For This Amazing

The past does not exist. The future has not begun. The present is an infinitely small point in time in which the already nonexistent past meets the imminent future. At this point, which is timeless, a person’s real life exists.

The Talmud

It is the time of change, the saving hour.
The word is not fear, the word we live,
but an old word suddenly made new,
as we learn it again, as we bring it alive.
Love. Love. Love. Love.

Mary Sarton in “AIDS”

God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.
I Corinthians 1:27

It’s a beautiful day!
U2

June 6th, 2006 11:27 pm

Dear friends,

Today was the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of this new millennium –the calendar will not line up like this again for another one thousand years. None of us will ever get the chance to live this day again. I look out the window now and that amazing truth sinks in– there will never be day like today in my life ever again – this morning, at 4:46 am, we welcomed our son – Casey John Nelson – into this world.

Let me take you through the events of these past couple of days. This past weekend was one of the busiest weekends for us in recent memory. We hosted all of our parents, and Bridget’s sister, Cailin. The weekend was dedicated to preparing our home for the arrival of the newest addition to our family. The guest room was transformed into a nursery. Fresh paint, wall paper border, curtains, crib and rocker all helped complete a job that might even impress the folks from Extreme Makeover. The yard was weeded and fresh flowers planted. The car seat was installed in the back seat of the car. Room in the kitchen cupboards were made for bottles, little plates and bowls, tiny spoons and “sippy” cups. (We are truly learning a new language, here.)

In addition to all of the prep work around the house, this past Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, so in addition to a wedding and rehearsal on Friday and Saturday that I was officiating, I was the preacher for all four of our Sunday services. After the Sunday evening service (complete with an entire multi-sensory Pentecost experience – wind, fire, speaking in tongues, the whole nine yards – you had to see it!) we had our last baby shower (a Green Bay Packer themed one at that – these folks do understand us.)

All the while Bridget has continued to grow bigger and bigger with each passing day. On Thursday of last week Bridget’s tummy measured 46cm in diameter. This was with two full weeks to go until her due date (mind you, the average size of a full term tummy is 39 cm). When was this day going to come? When we climbed into to bed together on Sunday night, after an incredibly full, exciting and exhausting weekend, Bridget leaned over and said to me, “Just watch. I’ll go into labor in the next 24 hours now that we’ve made it through this weekend.” Those would prove to prophetic words.

We had a check up with our doctor on Monday morning – our doctor took one look at Bridget and said, “I’m sending you in. I’ll meet you at the hospital at 5:00.” We left her office and rode home together for what would be our last such ride together as a young, married couple with no kids.

That afternoon was absolutely gorgeous. The temperature was warm with a gentle spring breeze. Bright sunshine with just a few poofy, white clouds floating in the air. We hardly knew what to say to each other. Chances were pretty good that by this time tomorrow we would be parents. Were we really ready for this? At that moment U2’s “It’s a Beautiful Day,” came up on the ipod. Have you ever heard a song hundreds of times only to suddenly hear it in a way you never have before? This was going to be day unlike any other day in our life. This song became the perfect soundtrack for what would become the most unforgettable 24 hours of our lives – it truly was a beautiful day.

We came home and began final preparations. Bags packed. Bills paid. Garbage bagged. Dishes washed. Floors swept. Showers taken. A few phone calls made to let our family know what was happening. Then it was off to the hospital. We were checked in and then we waited. The first hours went by kind of slow. We watched episodes of the The Office on the ipod and read our books. When our doctor arrived about 8:30 pm and found Bridget sitting in a rocking chair doing a sudoku puzzle I think she must have thought to herself, “We’re going to be here awhile.” For the first few hours there was no sign that anything was happening.

But things started to change. By 9:30 Bridget’s water had broke (a story I’ll let her tell you but let me say it explained why she was measuring so big.) By 10:30 she had moved into active labor (and I into active bewilderment about what the female body can accomplish.) By midnight she decided that an epidural would help, which it did and allowed her to sleep. At 3:30 our doctor (whom we absolutely love by the way…she sings in our church choir) checked again and decided that we needed to go in and get him. They dressed me up into a surgical cap and gown and within the half hour we were in surgery.

Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, prepares you for the moment your first child is born. Absolutely nothing. At 4:46 am he was here. He was here! A 9 pound, 9 ounce bundle of joy. The child we helped to create. The child that had lived within his mother’s womb, and his father’s heart, was here. He was really here.

Then came perhaps the greatest single hour of my entire life. After Casey’s arrival, attention needed to be turned to his mother who had just completed major surgery. While the doctors and nurses attended to her, they took me to the recovery room and within in minutes placed my son into my arms and I got to just hold him. There are few moments in your life where time literally stands still, where everything stops and the moment you are living in commands all of your attention, all of your senses, all of your awareness. These are moments where everything boils down into what is most precious and valuable in life. These are the moments we are truly alive! The fist hour of his life and I got to spend it with him. I could not take my eyes off of him (the only other time I remember having such transfixed gaze was when a young woman, dressed in white, stood at the back of a long aisle and began a slow walk towards me almost ten years ago.)

They gave me a bottle and I got to feed him. I felt an ease and peace that I had not expected. Everything was going to be fine. I just felt it in my heart. As I sat there I passed on to my son the only two things I know for sure: First – life is good! Like Anne Frank has taught us, “Despite everything, people are really good at heart.” Second – Mom is always right. Don’t ask me why – I’ve just learned she usually is. Shortly after that, Bridget was brought back into the room and for the first time we were together as a family (well, with the exception of our dog Obie that is. Pray for him won’t you – he’s been an only “child” for some time now.) Life is good!

A few thoughts. Love. It can be a tired word sometimes. Overly sentimentalized and overly familiar. We love so many things in our culture. We love certain food. “I love pickles. I love pizza.” We love certain teams. “I love the Packers. I love the Pistons.” We love certain colors – certain cars – certain movies or television shows. But it was sometime in the wee hours of June 6th – with my son in my lap that I think I got my first real glimpse of what this tired old word love might mean.

Perhaps love is like the rose from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s marvelous little book, The Little Prince. From the star where the little prince tended three volcanoes and a single rose, the little prince found his way to Earth, where thousands of roses can be found in people’s garden. “People where you live,” the little prince said to his pilot friend, “grow five thousand roses in one garden….yet they don’t find what they are looking for...And what they are looking for could be found in a single rose…” And he added, “Eyes are blind. You have to look with your heart.” And for the heart to see rightly, the hand needs to give generously and perhaps that’s deeper wisdom of the little prince, the rose and of love.

The little prince’s affair with the rose began when he responded to the rose’s simple request, “Would you be so kind as to tend to me?” The gift of care made it his rose, the only one in the whole world. “It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important,” the wise fox told him. Take that gift away, and the one special rose blends into a 100,000 other roses, beautiful and interesting for a while, but in the long haul, ordinary and even boring.

This is where the secret of love might lie. You see, the gift of care didn’t just transform the rose. When the little prince looked up to the stars above the Earth, the entire heavens shone in a new way because on one of them he had left behind the rose he loved. It cast a spell over the entire sky, like a buried treasure casts a spell on all the islands you think it might lie hidden. It gave him a new radiance, a halo, invisible but palpable. “The image of the rose is shinning within him like a flame within a lamp, even when he is asleep,” said the pilot. He was a boy in love, vibrating with desire and yet strangely at rest. He had found what he was looking for.

In the early hours of 6/6/06, a date that will not come again for a thousand years, we received a “rose” and in the wee hours of that morning Casey John, “CJ,” said to us, “Would you be so kind as to tend to me?” – well, not in those words, but in the subtle, little cry (Yes, so for now the have been only subtle…we’ll see how long that lasts) of a baby hungry for food, for touch, for tender and soothing words, for the presence that delights, for time and space to grow, in a word, cries of a baby hungry for love. Yesterday morning we said to our rose, “We will tend to you,” and out of the million little boys at that moment he became our son, unique and more precious to us than all the others put together.

That’s when I started to put it all together. Like little CJ, all of us were a rose to someone else when we were born – a peculiar yet most beautiful of gifts, a gift that at first only receives, a gift that gives back only the joy parents might feel in giving and the delight they might experience in the child’s flourishing. Oh, I am sure that there will be more times than we will care to count where tiredness will choke the joy and worry will distinguish our delight. But we will do our best, like our parents did, and their parents did before them, and their parents before them, to give this gift of love, knowing that the gift will never be returned in full, but will perhaps be paid forward and that one day this son of ours will give to his children, and to the world, the gift of love we hope to give him.

The apostle Paul described the great paradox of God’s love like this, “God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.” Last night after I left my son sleeping in the arms of his mother I stopped at the chapel in the hospital and knelt down and prayed. I asked to let this little child confound us. To let him change us, and stretch us, and remind us, and teach us of what love is and what life is ultimately about. On the way out of the chapel, I dipped my fingers in the bowl of holy water and touched my forehead and made the sign of the cross. As I left, I heard these words float in the air, “Remember your baptism and be thankful.” I did. And I am.

Well, that’s the news from our little corner of the world. Thanks for sharing these past months of waiting with us. We have been carried by so many good thoughts and heartfelt prayers. We have felt them all. Bridget and CJ will be in the hospital until Friday and then we will bring him home and this next chapter of our life will begin in earnest. Please call and stop by. We want you to meet him. But be warned – he is likely to steal your heart, just as he has stolen ours.

With a grateful heart,
Jeff

P.S. – Let the record reflect that on June 6th, 2006, the day our son Casey John was born, the Detroit Tigers had the best record in major league baseball – a feat that might not happen again for another thousand years. Praise be to God – for all of the surprises! Life is good!