On learning that I am going to become a father...

Hello world.


It's true. There is going to be a mini-Gazaneo taking over the world shortly. Sarah and I are expecting our first child in early November.

We have been trying for a while (Sarah's been blogging about our desire to become parents for a while). Last month, the day after my birthday, Sarah had a blood test early in the morning because she was late (and had been feeling like she was going to puke).

What ensued was the longest day of my life. I called her seven or eight times during the day to try and find out if we had an answer. She finally called me back, just before I walked into a staff meeting here at our school. 

You have to understand, it's been a significant emotional weight for us - trying to conceive a child. As we've been navigating our emotions and fears, we have been doing our best to keep the idea of having a child as something special and wonderful. We didn't want to harbour anger or resentment... and so we found ourselves regularly having to deal with our anger and resentment. 

All that to say, when Sarah said to me, "you're going to be a daddy!" on the phone, my eyes filled with tears - not for sadness or relief but because of genuine joy. Then I had to walk into my staff meeting and try to seem normal (when all I wanted to do was scream: I'M GOING TO BE A FATHER! THERE'S GOING TO BE A SPAWN OF MY LOINS RUNNING AROUND TORONTO SHORTLY! I'M SO EXCITED! I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT THIS ALL ENTAILS BUT I FEEL LIKE I'VE WON THE LOTTERY: ONE OF THOSE CASH FOR LIFE LOTTERIES WHERE YOU KEEP ON WINNING BECAUSE THE REGULAR LOTTERIES ONLY GIVE YOU ONE PAYOUT BUT I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING TO KEEP ON WINNING FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!) 

Needless to say, it was a difficult few hours but Sarah and I were soon celebrating that night.

It's been a crazy few weeks and I've been thinking a good deal about what it means to be a Father. I'll be sharing some thoughts over the next few months and I'd really like your input, Interwebs. I'm feeling thrilled, exhilarated, and a bit overwhelmed for what is to come. But I can't wait for baby to come!

See Sarah's blog about our new Baby here.

Don't you see that children are God's best gift? Psalm 127:3 (MSG)

Hero

Hopkins:

Our Lord Jesus Christ is our hero, a hero all the world wants. You know how books are written that put one man before the reader and shew him off handsome for the most part and brag and call him, My hero, or Our hero. Soldiers make a hero of a great general; a party, of its leader; a nation, of any great man that brings it glory, whether king, warrior, statesman, thinker, poet, or whatever it shall be. But Christ, he is the hero. He too is the hero of books — of the divine Gospels. He is a warrior and a conqueror, of whom it is written he went forth conquering and to conquer. He is a king, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. He is a statesman, that drew up the New Testament in his blood. He is a thinker, that taught us divine mysteries. He is an orator and poet, as in his eloquent words and parables appears.

He is all the world’s hero, the desire of nations. But besides, he is the hero of single souls; his mother’s hero, because he was, as the angel told her, great and the son of the Most High, and all that he did and said she laid up in her heart. He is the true love and the bridegroom of our souls: the virgins and martyrs follow him; all his servants take up their cross and follow him. And those even that do not follow him, yet they look wistfully after him, own him a hero, and wish they dared answer to his call. Children, as soon as they can understand, ought to be told about him, that they may make him the hero of their young hearts.

There met in Jesus Christ all things that can make one lovely and lovable.

Rich Mullins

I just love Rich Mullins. He was such an abandoned guy.

"I’m not really sure that God is all that concerned about being entertained, I’m not sure, it’s just a human thing. Sometimes you try to pray, you try to impress God with all the right words and I just don’t think it’s an easy thing to impress God Almighty. Another thing that I think we often forget is that we don’t really have to impress Him, He’s already knocked out about you, He already loves you more than you can imagine.

I remember reading a think that Picaso once said, I like to read what famous artist have to say because I am barely able to look at their paintings without going into a coma trying to figure out what its about. But he said this one thing that I really did like, he said “good taste was the enemy of great art”. Which I think is very true. Good taste has all to do with being cultured and being refined and if art has to do with anything is has to do with being human. And one of the reasons I love the Bible is because the humans in the Bible are not very refined. They’re pretty goofy if you wanna know the whole true about it.

I remember when I was a kid and people would always say, because I was one of those typical depressed adolescent types, I wrote poetry and stuff, that’s how morose I was as a kid. People would go around saying, oh cheer up man because God loves you, and I’d always say big deal, God loves everyone, that don’t make me special, that just proves that God aint got no taste. And I don’t think He does, thank God. Cause God takes the junk of our lives and He makes the greatest art in the world out of it. And if He was cultured, if He was as civilized as most Christian people wish He was, He would be useless to Christianity. But God is a Wild Man, and I hope that the course of your life you encounter Him. But let me warn you, you need to hang on for dear life, or let go for dear life, maybe is better.” - Rich Mullins

On Turning 30 Years Old

Well, I turn 30 years old in just over a week.

As often happens when major life-milestones occur, I am thinking things over. I’m not one of those people who is afraid of getting older... every new year of my life is better than the one before, so I’m really, truly expecting my 30s to be unbelievable.

But still. 30.

There’s a line in a Phoenix song that goes, “do you remember when 21 was old??” I do. It’s amazing the way I’ve grown in my 20s... I’m more confident, more genuinely comfortable in my skin, and now, more than ever, I’m genuinely thrilled by life as 30 comes around.

My wife has a “things to do before 30” list. I’ve never had anything like that but as I look back, I realize there are things of great and little importance done (two degrees, a beautiful marriage, living healthy, meals made for myself and for hundreds of others, churches planted, people around me thriving, creatively bringing new things into being, etc...) and things still to be done (a renter for our basement apartment, really understanding how love works, my solo CD, many started but as yet unfinished books [especially the Brothers Karamazov, that molar that needs a new crown, my city truly restored to God’s heart, etc...) and yet I feel incredibly full.

I am perhaps the (some would say luckiest but I’d say) most blessed man alive on planet Earth today. I have won the heart of the most incredible woman alive, walked the streets of many cities around the world, had the privilege of pursuing some of my biggest dreams, succeeded at pursuing those dreams, have the largest and most outstanding group of friends... I have seen lives, marriages, bodies, communities restored... My words do no justice to all the good that has pursued me these past 29 years. I’ve experience enough good for a dozen lifetimes and, yet ... I’m not satisfied. There’s more for me. I just know it. And I have to have it.

I try to live, with God’s help, an intentional life. I try to take advantage of every day, living wise and with intention, while moving toward the future I see before me. I know there are always things we don’t know or are unprepared for but wisdom tells me to dream, plan, and move forward. And so I do.

Recently, life has been challenging. Sarah and I are trying to be faithful at the life that is before us... and yet there is still a pull-backwards we haven’t felt in years. And yet, we still move forward.

A few weeks ago, I woke up one morning with a line from Hopkins’ The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo on my mind. He’s my favourite poet but I haven’t read his stuff in almost a year; it was unusual to have this line on my mind (especially because I don’t know this poem well at all). The line was, “give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.”

I found a book of collected poems and read this poem again, aloud, and slowly (I’d recommend you do the same); I realized it speaks to these things in my heart during this life milestone. There are two voices speaking in the poem: a pessimistic one and a hopeful one.

I’m learning, more and more, that God’s voice is the hopeful one. I’m learning that my life is a piece of art, a story, an elaborate formula, a beautiful song that puts God in his place. Despite difficulties, frustrations, and disappointments, I’ve decided to live a beautiful life. I realize that trouble will almost certainly come but life... ah... life is mine to shape and enjoy fully.

Cheers!

The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo
Gerard Manley Hopkins

THE LEADEN ECHO

HOW to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there ’s none, there ’s none, O no there ’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there ’s none; no no no there ’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

THE GOLDEN ECHO

Spare!
There ís one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun’s tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth’s air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Oné. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that ’s fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets móre, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an everlastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace—
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then why
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept.—Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.—
Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.

Calling

I’ve been counselling a bunch of young adults recently about their callings. Most of these discussions come out of people frustrated with a lack of faithfulness in their lives. It’s amazing how rare and uncommon disciplined faithfulness is amongst young adults. I’ve also really really wrestled with faithfulness this past decade (my 20s are coming to an end next month).

As I’ve been thinking, I find that there’s much in scripture about living a life worthy of the calling we have received. Paul prays for the Thessalonians that God would count them worthy of his calling. And then context of God finding them worthy is in fulfilling their purposes and acts prompted by their faith.

The more I think about it, I realize that it doesn’t take much faith to live a life of mediocrity. I think it takes a lot of faith to really, intentionally live in our callings in Him. Hebrews says to us who share in the heavenly calling, that we should fix our thoughts on Jesus. As if to say - focus on him and not the challenges before you.

I was reading this great blog today and the dude was blogging about Pareto’s Law. Here’s a few of his thoughts (with my emphasis added):

This law is known as Pareto’s Law. It is named after an Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. It is also known as the 80-20 rule. If you run a business, 80% of your business probably comes from 20% of your customers. If you are a creative person, 80% of your awards/ recognition/income will come from 20% of your output. So how can knowing this principle help you? Well, start by looking at your day. See where you spend most of your time. The likelihood is you will find out you spend most of your time on the things that you are not that good at. [...] This is called The Law of Oterap. (Pareto backwards). This is where you spend 80% of your time on the things you are least good at. And where you can make the least difference. You don’t need more time in the day. You don’t need to work longer hours. You don’t need to work weekends. You just need to spend more time on what you are brilliant at. And less time on all that other stuff.

I think the reason why most of us aren’t really fulfilling our callings is that we keep getting bogged down by all the junk of life and (if we’re honest) we aren’t really faithful in the stuff that matters and the stuff that opens doors for us.

So, let’s be faithful and do what God has put before us. Here’s some encouragement from 2 Peter 1:3-11
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

on 2009, Michael Jackson, Obama, and Tiger Woods

Reflection time, my peoples. As I've been thinking about 2009 over the past few days, I've come to the obvious conclusion that this has been a difficult year for the western world. I blogged about Michael Jackson's death because I felt that it incapsulated so much of what was happening in our society. We have become worshippers of idealism and enemies of realism. We have forgotten that we are just human and need a loving God to carry us, forgive us, and be in control.

I think people looked to Obama as a saviour and have been disappointed. He's a good man with decent ideas but not a saviour. Having said that, I think he's doing a fantastic job as America's leader; with all the difficulties, challenges, problems, two wars, a crippled economy, and opinions about how he should lead, Obama has presented some strong leadership. He's taking his time in leading change but I think he's doing it effectively and as we all continue to pray for him, I believe he will lead well.

and then there's Tiger. People worshipped Tiger Woods as a man of perfection. We idolized him and were again let down by human failings. I was reading the New York Times this morning and found a great quote about the huge distinction between the public Tiger and the one behind the scenes:

What’s striking instead is the exceptional, Enron-sized gap between this golfer’s public image as a paragon of businesslike discipline and focus and the maniacally reckless life we now know he led. What’s equally striking, if not shocking, is that the American establishment and news media — all of it, not just golf writers or celebrity tabloids — fell for the Woods myth as hard as any fan and actively helped sustain and enhance it.

We adored him and his discipline... unfortunately, we also elevated him to the position of a God and ended up feeling conned. In fact, Tiger didn't con anyone. We just seen him now exactly as we all are - flawed and in need of grace and a saviour. I don't condone his behaviour or excuse it at all... but in the same way Father God doesn't hash out our faults and sins with us, I think Tiger Woods could benefit from God's grace. I think people who are deeply angry with Tiger are actually annoyed with themselves - now seeing their faults through the mirror of Tiger's mistakes.

Let's share the grace we're addicted to with our circles of influence. "We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved" (Acts 15:11), right?

Eve

Genesis 2:18-24 -

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs [b] and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man."
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

I think God knew our propensity as humans to push away community, relationship, and pursue independence. It's interesting that God brought Adam all the other created creatures and no suitable helper (or, as it's sometimes translated, partner) was found. God knew that Adam would need someone created as his equal (not the same as him but equal to him) to be his partner or helper.

It's also interesting that God took a part of the man's side for Eve to be created. I believe that God's choice of body part was highly symbolic. He didn't use Adam's foot, which would have symbolically put Eve below Adam. God didn't use a part of Adam's head, which would have put Eve above Adam. God chose a part of Adam's side (traditionally, his rib). I believe this symbolically put Eve beside Adam in the things of life, under his arm for protection, and near his heart.

In contemporary society, we praise independence and we pursue casual relationships that cost us little and have nearly no benefit to our lives. God's plan for us is that we would live in families and communities that were close-knit. In these environments, accountability flourishes, deep friendships bless us, and we are given a safety net in case of life's upsets.