I shall have bird feeders

Psalm 108:6 (NIV)

Save us and help us with your right hand,
   that those you love may be delivered.

When I am an old man, I shall have bird feeders. And a big aquarium. I will take a photography class at the community college, and I will go on long walks every day the weather permits.

The children will come visit us for holidays and, most importantly, their birthdays. We will dote on our grandchildren and always keep on hand the foods their parents won’t. We will drive to see the great sights of America — the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the Golden Gate Bridge. I will choose a favorite restaurant where everyone on the staff knows me so well they just wave when I walk in the door and five minutes later my lunch comes to the table.

I could keep going for a while here. This tends to be the sort of thing I ponder when jamming my thumb in a fussy infant’s mouth long after the sun has set. But I’ll stop for two reasons. One, Jenny Joseph covered the ground expertly with her poem “Warning,” the first line of which is “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.” And two, I’ve been made all too aware recently, again, of just how fragile and fleeting life can be.

It would be easy enough to run through a laundry list of tragedies large and small to further illustrate the point, and I’d scarcely have to go back more than a week, or even outside my family and close friends. But I could write something similar seemingly every week. Tragedy is all around — the sudden loss of life or health or security are constant, though the individuals and families so stricken are chosen at random.

The takeaway lesson is simple: none of us are promised anything in this life. Every day we have is a precious blessing that ought to be cherished and lived in gratitude. And as sure as I express that sentiment I have to admit how routinely I fall short of that ideal, arguing with the kids about getting into the car so we’re only five minutes late to church, fretting over a glitch in the DVR or grumbling because I gazed into a refrigerator full of food and couldn’t decide what to eat. I know better, but that knowledge can be fleeting at any moment.

Still, the future is not mine to decide. So when I think about my bird feeders and my aquarium and my photography class, I realize it’s about as real to me as playing second base for the Cubs or filing columns for the Chicago Tribune. If I’m blessed enough to one day celebrate a holiday surrounded by wife and our boys and their children, hopefully I’ll be fully aware of the source of that blessing and appropriately grateful.

But more importantly, I have to live every day between now and then in thankfulness for the chance to simply wake up and move about the planet. Some days are rich with joys, others laden with sorrows. And most of them lie somewhere in between, not too high and not too low, but spectacular gifts nonetheless, each and every one of them. To God alone be the glory.

A prayer for November 24:

Lord, thank you for everything I have, for each breath, each day I get to be surrounded by my family, each chance to look into my children’s eyes and make sure they know how much I love them. Help me as I strive to remember the precious nature of life, to take nothing for granted and to live in gratitude for the blessings of this life and the promises of things to come. Tell me what I need to hear and show me the path you would have me walk, and may the things I do and say bring you praise. Amen.

• • •

I didn't get into the specifics in this post; however, if you are so inclined as to click for more information, I offer this link to the clearinghouse for tornado relief in Washington, Ill., and this page about a scholarship fund for the family of our dear friends who last Sunday suffered an unexpected loss.

He cries alone

Psalm 111:1 (NIV)

Praise the Lord.

I will extol the Lord with all my heart
   in the council of the upright and in the assembly.

Isaac can be very loud. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, least of all me, since I’ve walked this road three times before. But for as much as I expected the noise, what I couldn’t guess was how unfazed the older brothers would be when the new arrival is screaming from the bottom of his toes.

To be fair, he seems to save his most curdling shrieks for the middle of the night when only he and I are awake. We’ve not yet had the whole family in the van for much more than 15 or 20 minutes at a shot, which means I’m holding my breath for our first cross-state drive to see Kristie’s family. But even around the house when he can get sort of ornery, the big boys just don’t seem to care.

Believe it or not, this guy can get pretty worked up.

The thing is, I’d be pretty understanding if they were bothered. Infant crying can be incessant and piercing, and I don’t recall Jack, Max or Charlie requesting another addition to the family. Yet so far they’ve displayed preternatural grace under pressure. They’ve almost always been patient when the baby’s needs have to come first. They haven’t shown a shred of jealousy. And when he cries, they take it as some sort of fact of nature — this from children who sometimes act personally insulted if it’s raining outside. Jack knows when it’s the right time to pick up Isaac and Charlie tries to kiss his head to make him feel better.

At the risk of jinxing the whole darn thing, the big boys’ reception of Baby Four thus far has exceeded my grandest hopes. I was steeled for the worst-case scenario, but their acceptance and understanding is making this transition into our new normal somewhere between tolerable and downright fun. I don’t even recall praying for this kind of blessing, but I’m certainly expressing my gratitude for whatever’s been making it possible.

Perhaps if I had more sleep or a shorter to-do list I could mine some deep truth from the way our big brothers have adapted. Surely there’s something almost primal about the familial bonds and they way children have almost a better sense for human nature than adults. But mostly I’m happy to still feel like this is a house where love reigns.

It’s not all sunshine and roses. Bath time is a nightly war, homework is a daily struggle and there are days where everyone’s attitudes could use a drastic improvement. But at the same time, we all seem to have made room in our hearts for the new guy, and that’s why it already feels like he fits perfectly. He was always supposed to be here, even before we knew it was time.

I don’t claim to understand how these things work, or even have a good handle on explaining how they feel, except to be thankful to God for these many blessings. Life can be absolutely wonderful, and when those moments wash over me, I try my best to remember the source.

A prayer for November 16:

Lord, thank you for simple gifts in overwhelming amounts. May the works of my hands and the words of my mouth be sufficient to give you praise in gratitude for the opportunity to delight in the wonderful people I count among family and friends. Thank you for allowing me to feel loved, and help me share that joy with others. Amen.

That was the week that was

Psalm 40:11 (NIV)

Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord;
   may your love and faithfulness always protect me.

There comes a point when, while holding your feverish, 18-day-old son down on an emergency room exam table for a chest X-ray around 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night, you both kind of look at each other and silence falls on the room. At least that was my experience with Isaac earlier this week, a kid so new my fingers still don’t automatically type his name when I envision his face.

In that moment, when I knew words would do me no good, I hoped against hope my face would reveal a calmness beyond my own capability, and that somehow the eight pounds of baby on the table would look at me and trust he would be as fine as we kept saying he would. And while I’m not entirely sure how well a person that tiny can see anything, sure enough the silence came.

Maybe he was just too tired after screaming through the collection three bodily fluids. Maybe the 101-degree fever sapped his extra energy. Maybe he was so wracked with hunger he couldn’t put up a fight. Or maybe, just maybe, he could sense serenity in a father taking one of his four sons through the emergency room for the seventh time. He was the youngest, by far (the others were all well past their first birthdays), and the only to earn admission (for three nights), but considering the chasm between the worst-case scenario and what actually happened, you’ll find no complaints here.

Three weeks old today; a third of those days spent in a hospital.

In the simplest of terms, very young children with high enough fevers need to be tested and preventively treated for bacterial infections. Once the fever goes away and the tests come back negative (some results take 48 hours), you get to go home, and that’s what we did this afternoon. But when you have four children, two in school and two in diapers, nothing is really simple.

When they told us we’d be spending Tuesday night in the hospital, the first caveat was only one of us could stay unless we were the only occupants of a double room (we were). But then came the logistical worries. We’d dropped the big boys off with my parents earlier and got approval for them to spend the night. Already on the next day’s calendar were an IEP meeting and a kindergarten costume parade. Two days in to working afternoons in an attempt to ease back into postpartum office life that plan got put right back on the shelf.

God bless my parents, by the way. This is the third time since the start of September we moved some or all of our family into their house with little to no notice. I’m eternally grateful for their hospitality and willingness to step right into direct parenting of our big guys, but we’d all be fairly happy to go years and years without any more extreme situations or extenuating circumstances. Our house still bears the marks of sewer-related damage, but it’s home no matter what, and it’s good to know we’ll all sleep here tonight — provided the five-year-old watching movies in the basement because his own illness led to a five-hour nap this afternoon actually goes to sleep at some point, and provided the two-year-old hacking up organs upstairs actually stays asleep.

Even with those hurdles, having us all under one roof is a comfort. Contrast that to my Wednesday: Around midnight, I left the hospital for home to get the things I’d have packed if I’d known we’d more or less be moving out for the rest of the week. Got back to the room around 2 a.m. By 6:45 I was out the door, over to Pops & K’s to pick up Jack so I could drive him home to meet the school bus, as well as get the garbage and recycling cans to the curb, take a quick shower and head back down to the hospital, grabbing breakfast for Kristie on the way, hopefully in time to catch the report from the morning shift doctor.

By 10 a.m. I was out the door again, head back north for the IEP meeting. After that there was enough time to snag lunch, then go back down to get Max and Charlie in time to get Max home before the bus. Shortly after he rode off Charlie and I drove to school for the costume parade. Then we hurried home so as to be here before Jack returned. Then we waited for Max and eventually got everyone back in the car to go back to Pops & K’s. I left them and headed to the hospital so Kristie could leave — when she finished feeding Isaac — to grab her first shower in more than 36 hours.

She left shortly before the World Series game started, and while Isaac did not so much sleep (who could blame him given the medications, tape, tubes and wires), he and I did watch quite a bit of uninterrupted baseball, and when Kristie returned around 8:30 with leftover pizza, I was able to exhale and feel like I’d done my caffeine-aided best to take care of my entire family as best I could for one day, not quite realizing Isaac wouldn’t be sleeping for another three hours at least.

And that’s the meat of the matter. There’s nothing like a medical situation in the midst of an already busy everyday routine to drive home just how much our kids depend on us for everything. That it happened while Kristie is still recovering from childbirth and also acting as the sole source of nourishment for another person is an extra degree of difficulty. That the battery in our minivan failed to function in the middle of a pouring rain Thursday afternoon when I had all three kids loaded right outside the bus stop was a straw in search of an overtaxed camel.

Not here. Not this family. Somewhere along the way we all earned an extra measure of resiliency. None of us would choose the flooded house or the feverish newborn fears, but all of us managed to make peace with the things we can’t control and make the best of the rest. Somewhere the abnormal starts to feel routine and rolling with the punches is a badge of honor. It’s not like we enjoy this stuff, but it’s still far too easy to find another family going through something much more difficult. We were never promised perfection or an easy path. Part of those wedding vows mention being broke, being sick and just plain worse. And yet tomorrow the sun rises and we have a chance to all be together, so what’s the use in complaining?

I hope Isaac never remembers anything of his hospital experience. I hope our older boys understand and forgive their mother for not being able to be at everything while we fight back to regular. But I pray none of us forgets the boundless love of the people who care for us, the simple yet rich blessing of being a family and the promise of a God whose love will sustain, save and guide us in this life and beyond.

There’s no place like home, and there’s no home like family. It’s great to be back.

A prayer for November 1:

Lord, thank you for our health, our home and our family. May we rise each day in full appreciation for the many blessings we enjoy in this life, and may we go forward into your world as thankful people, returning those blessings to you in praise and allowing others to see in us what it truly means to be transformed by your love and amazing grace. Amen.

Weary, burdened and blessed beyond words

Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV)

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I am not as exhausted as I’d expected, let’s start there. The lion’s share of the credit goes to Kristie’s mom, who got to our house a few hours after we got back from the hospital with Baby Four and spent the next seven nights taking care of both Kristie and Isaac, not to mention the insane amount of housekeeping and big kid feeding she mastered during the daylight hours. By the time she left Monday afternoon, the house was in better shape than before our sewer explosion, the fridge was full of good food and the older boys, at least, hadn’t had much interruption in the regular routines. A blessing beyond words.

Even before our bundle of joy arrived, an almost unfathomable amount of stress and anxiety dissipated when it became clear scheduling would allow the older boys to essentially move in with my parents for a four-day weekend. While I knew they’d be comfortable there and able to adapt to routines (on account of the week we lived there in early September), I also knew what remarkable effort would be required of my parents to act as ringmasters for our traveling circus. Again, no one’s vocabulary is sufficient to express our gratitude.

This should happen less in the day and more at night. But still adorable.

Though I’ve committed to stay home the rest of this work week while Kristie continues to gain strength and stamina and the boys continue to adjust to the new normal, it already does feel we’re slowly finding our way. This is helped along by what’s becoming a somewhat predictable sleep-and-eat pattern for Isaac. He’s not sleeping through the night or anything, but when patterns emerge, the body adapts. This is why I’ve long maintained a preference for dealing with babies at night over the uncertainties of toddlers who can’t decide whether or not to stay in their own bed all night long.

Still, weary and burdened are apt descriptors. We chose this road and knew it well before setting out a fourth time, but that makes rest no less welcome. I’m trying my best to help Kristie in her recovery, and am thankful and fortunate she is so skilled at walking the line between the rest she needs and the steps she must take on the path that leads back to normal. So much of what I do these days is following cues, from her, the baby, the other kids — at times it can be exhausting to live in a state of reaction, but the tax on the body doesn’t exceed the benefit to the mind and the soul that comes from responding to the instincts that lead me to care for the people I most love.

And, of course, my body is fine. Sure, I haven’t gotten real exercise for nearly two weeks, and I’ve been eating a bunch more than usual, so my jeans are a hair more snug than usual. But I’m not recovering from a second major abdominal surgery or providing the sole source of nourishment for a human being. Toting an eight-pound fart machine for a few minutes a day doesn’t even register on the scale of people in this house who have earned the right to complain of physical fatigue.

But that’s 530 words about the physical stuff, and a hair of the mental. None of it mentions the deeply spiritual, which is where God enters the picture. At no point along the way the last few weeks have I felt anything but sustained, supported and loved by our family, friends and faith community. I cannot imagine the challenge of parenting a newborn without the kind of extraordinary outpouring of aid and concern from all corners we’ve been blessed to experience. That our joy is shared by so many, that the offers of assistance are so numerous are gifts we’re somehow still overwhelmed to enjoy. Not to brag or anything, but it is wonderful to feel loved.

As often is the case when I feel surrounded by blessings, I hope I can both turn them into praise for the giver of all good things as well as commit myself to be a blessing for other when the time arises. Maybe that will be as simple as inviting someone else to lay their worries at God’s feet and to feel the rest when the yoke is lifted. Maybe it will be a much more daunting task. But just as God as blessed me and my family, so too will God give me whatever tools I need to answer the call to serve as needed — for God’s glory alone.

A prayer for October 22:

Lord, thank you for the gift of so much time with my family. Please continue to help me take care of the many needs we all have, and open my eyes to my own limitations that we may go to you together for deeper care, guidance, sustenance and lasting provisions for life and love. May we continue to adjust smoothly and remember your role at the center of our lives. Amen.

What's in a name?

1 Corinthians 14:15 (NIV)

So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding.

A few things to put on the table. The first is a bit of clarification. When last I wrote, wee in the early morning hours the day after our fourth son entered the world, I attempted to explain the pronunciation of his middle name, Evert. It’s Kristie’s father’s father’s middle name, as noted earlier, and he’s always pronounced it like the last name of the famous tennis player. But Kristie, wanting to both honor her grandfather and that entire side of the family’s Dutch heritage, wants it to be pronounced as the Dutch would.

And how is that exactly? Well, what I typed was EH-vert. But then my music teacher sister and my lifelong singer mother and my exasperated wife informed me that just because Canadians add an “eh” to the end of many sentences and it sounds like the letter a does not mean me typing “eh” conveys the same phonetic notion. Rather “eh” is like the e at the beginning of the word edge or extra.

What I should have conveyed is the entire vowel sound of the name. So that’s Evert as in saver or waver. Perhaps AY-vert would have been more accurate. But the T at the end is there, loud and proud, so that’s vert as in vertical, without the ical. Got it? Again, in my defense, it was very, very late and I was very, very tired. I’m sorry son (and wife). Won’t let it happen again.

That said, as I was recounting the reasons we chose to name our son Isaac, I neglected to add the tipping point that brought me around to the name. As covered months ago, landing on a mutually agreeable name was difficult for this child. We’d gotten so used to calling him Floyd at one point I was convinced it wouldn’t be such a bad name to hang on a child born in 2013, despite the fact it has not been in the Social Security Administration’s top 1,000 baby boy names since 1998, when it checked in at 981.

But the moment I walked into church Sunday morning, I remembered a night a few months ago when I awakened to the idea of Isaac being so suitable. Kristie suggested it months earlier. Heck, we both suggested just about anything one could imagine. I’d never totally ruled it out, but the night I remembered the name and legacy of Isaac Watts, the pieces fell into place.

Watts is one of the most significant writers of hymns in the English language. Many times in the course of the 500 entries I’ve composed for this project I’ve reflected briefly on a classic hymn, or simply written an entire post on one beloved old songs. Time and again I’ve expressed how close I feel to God when surrounded by a jubilant congregation and skilled choir, loudly singing a great old song of the faith. Many times I can’t make my voice function, as I’m too busy choking back tears of joy to actually sing.

And so on Sunday morning, where every time I turned a corner another dear friend offered a congratulatory hug or handshake, when Max sang with his kindergarten choir at the front of the sanctuary, when baptisms formally welcomed other families’ little ones into the family of faith, when a sermon about the ten lepers drove home the message of the one who lived in complete gratitude for what the Lord had done for him, where all of those things happened and my eyes welled with tears each time, I managed to find a few moments to flip through our congregation’s current hymnal and make note of a few of the words of Isaac Watts that so deeply touch my soul. Such as:

From “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun”:

People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessings on His name.

From “I Love the Lord; He Heard My Cries”:

I love the Lord; He heard my cries,
And pitied every groan;
Long as I live, when troubles rise,
I’ll hasten to His throne.

I love the Lord; He bowed His ear,
And chased my griefs away;
O let my heart no more despair,
While I have breath to pray!

My God hath saved my soul from death,
And dried my falling tears;
Now to His praise I’ll spend my breath,
And my remaining years.

From “I Sing the Mighty Power of God”:

I sing the goodness of the Lord, who filled the earth with food,
Who formed the creatures through the Word, and then pronounced them good.
Lord, how Thy wonders are displayed, where’er I turn my eye,
If I survey the ground I tread, or gaze upon the sky.

There’s not a plant or flower below, but makes Thy glories known,
And clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order from Thy throne;
While all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care;
And everywhere that we can be, Thou, God art present there.

From “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need”:

The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may Thy house be my abode,
And all my work be praise.
There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;
No more a stranger, nor a guest,
But like a child at home.

From “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”:

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

From “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed”:

Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt my eyes to tears.

Those are just a smattering. Watts, after all, is credited with writing nearly 800 hymns. Some of those lines probably tweaked me a bit more as the father of a child not yet alive for 48 hours as I read them in the balcony. Of them all, I think the one I like best is “While all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care.” Thinking about my life as something borrowed from God sets it apart from the notion of life as a gift. It somehow helps deepen my desire to make the most of my chances here on Earth. We’re all on borrowed time, in a way, and thus increases the urge to be positive, to seek and strengthen lasting relationships and to walk proudly the path set before me by my creator.

And then, of course, are two other verses from a well-known Watts hymn. I adore the entire song for numerous reasons. But the two verses in mind are even more special because of what happened Friday afternoon. After the lengthy pre-operative process, the nurses ushered my very pregnant wife into the surgical suite. They’d instructed me to don scrubs — a first in my four childbirth experiences — and asked me to wait in an isolated hallway.

Behind me were the nurseries (regular and higher risk) and I could see a bit of activity. In front of me was a door with no handles, and I was just waiting to see it open. They told me it would take ten or fifteen minutes, but I had no way of marking the time. It certainly felt longer, but time always slows when I’m left entirely with my own thoughts.

All l could think to do was pray. Yet I could not find any of my own words to use. So I turned directly to Isaac Watts, found words already imprinted on my heart and offered them there to my maker:

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while life shall last,
And our eternal home.

Mere minutes later, I heard my new son’s cry for the first time, and again my eyes welled with tears of joy. May God guard him as well, and may my son find peace in knowing what it means to be home.

A prayer for October 16:

Lord, dissolve my heart into thankfulness. All around me are examples of the glory of your creation, the wonders of your love and the blessings of this life I am so lucky to live. May all my work be praise to you. Not just in the words I say and write, but through my interactions with people, the relationships you have encouraged me to build and the children you’ve trusted me to raise. And may my children grow to understand the way your love and protection allow us to see the world through your eyes. May we be lights of your love. Grant us peace, and help us to promote peace. Amen.

Baby update

Psalm 51:15 (NIV)

Open my lips, Lord,
   and my mouth will declare your praise.

Isaac Evert Holland was born at 2:43 p.m. at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Ill.

At birth, Isaac weighed eight pounds, twelve ounces, and measured twenty and one-half inches long.

The catch of the day, bigger at birth than all his older brothers.

These dimensions are notable, because as both of Kristie’s obstetricians noted while wrapping up the Caesarean section, he most likely wasn’t going to fit the normal way. And so a planned surgery, while never the intended option, proved the most logical. The entire process was altogether different than the way his older brothers entered the world, but it ended with a crying, healthy baby and you’ll find no complaints here about that outcome.

After three prior trips to the maternity ward, resulting in the lights of our lives who now are ages nine, five and two, I have gotten somewhat used to seeing my wife struggle with labor pains. But those experiences did little to prepare me to offer wise words as she battled a flood of pre-op emotions this afternoon. But like always, she dug her heels in and rose to the occasion (you will forgive some mixed metaphors here — it is early in the morning and I have not slept well for a decade) and if I accomplish one thing in life it will be to make sure my four sons exactly how much their mother sacrificed to give them life.

The former baby of the family meets the new guy.

We had all four of those sons together for the first time this evening. The older three, staying with my parents, came over after dinner. Charlie entered the room with a big smile on his face, walked right up to his baby brother and patted his tummy, then rubbed his hair. Apparently the way to greet a baby is much like how you engage my parents’ Cairn terrier. But he also bent over and kissed Isaac on top of his hairy little head, and I think I might have hurt my face smiling.

Max and Jack were very curious what name we’d chosen. Kristie and I settled on a first name a few weeks ago, and nailed down the middle name when, with Kristie torn between two choices today, I deferred and reminded her she was the one about to undergo surgery. And she still waited a few hours to make up her mind. But Jack and Max were not concerned with middle names. They just wanted to make sure we were not actually naming their new brother Floyd, which we’d been calling him for months inside the family just to have a reference point.

Isaac, we learned after deciding to go with the name, pops up at least once a few branches up my mother’s family tree. It also is from the Bible, and it just so happens the boys have been learning about the patriarchs of Israel in Sunday school. Max chimed right up today with the story of Abram and Sarai, and how God changed their names. Last week after church he explained to Kristie how Esau’s arms were hairy but Jacob’s were not. And Charlie, who still would prefer to call the baby Floyd, is able to pronounce the name just fine.

But there are lots of names in the Bible. Hundreds, if not thousands, in fact. Yet Isaac is the name associated with laughter, and laughter is something vitally important in our family. There’s no pressure on this hours-old child to grow into the life of the party. Even if that is his chosen path, he’ll need to elbow his way into dominance over some other outsized personalities who double as the source of all his hand-me-downs. But in a way, I think we wanted this fourth (and final) baby to know he is, was and always will be a source of joy to his parents.

Isaac’s middle name is Evert, and you’re all under strict orders to pronounce it as the Dutch would, which is EH-vert. It’s also the middle name of Kristie’s father’s father, which is the most personal connection, but in the broader sense it is a tribute to the family’s Dutch heritage. I have written before about her grandfather as well as the importance of a house filled with laughter, but bleariness prevents me from barking too far up either tree at this point.

As I wrote the morning after Charlie arrived, the Internet and email and text messages and cell phones have kept us connected with friends and family near and far, and it is a wonderful treat to hear and read words of encouragement and congratulations from so many people. It confirms my belief that, for all its challenges, the world Isaac is born into is one where love reigns supreme, where relationships can grow, deepen and endure such that no one is ever alone unless they choose to be, where friends become family and family becomes the safety net that binds, protects and steadies us all.

So many people have offered thoughts, prayers and support that throughout the day, even far away from my trusty laptop and with phones that could not pick up a signal deep inside the hospital, the names and faces of these dear people kept coming to mind, usually when I most needed a reminder of the wide network of people who fill our lives with love. I hope and pray I can be part of the web of support for them, but on days like today I need to focus more on receiving than giving.

Peace. Love. Motherhood.

Usually when I stare into little eyes as they flicker open for the first time, I think all sorts of things about the future. What will his voice sound like? Will he enjoy music? Will we watch baseball together like we did all night tonight? Will he take to reading quietly or prefer to play loudly in the front yard with the rest of the crew? I could write questions probably for another hour, but none of them would be anything that actually came to my mind today.

I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow or a few months from now or kindergarten or college. I was just content in the moment. We felt the need to have one more baby and now, finally, here he was. We wanted him to be healthy and the doctors said he is. We wanted the birth to go well, and there wasn’t a single complication. We wanted his older brothers to accept the new arrival, and they literally opened their arms. Why focus any attention on tomorrow when everything you ever wanted is in one tiny room, bound together by a love better felt than described?

Thankful does not begin to explain my heart tonight. This is our last first day of life as parents, and I will treasure it until the seas run dry. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Amen.

A prayer for October 11:

Lord, thank you for a happy, healthy baby, and for the woman who carried him in her womb and will continue to sacrifice for him more than he will ever comprehend. Please help us both to give to our children our best effort, to further deepen our marriage bonds and to show us how our partnership, through you, can build a strong foundation to prepare our boys to go and live lives worthy of you. Help me be the husband and father my family deserves, and thank you so much for your amazing grace. Amen.

It wasn't, but it will

Psalm 33:10-11 (NIV)

The Lord foils the plans of the nations;
   he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever,
   the purposes of his heart through all generations.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. No, Baby 4 was supposed to arrive like Baby 1 and Baby 3, a more or less traditional labor and delivery process. We figured it would be just like every other time, water breaking in the dark of some weekend night, drive to the hospital and follow orders. Anything less dire than what we experience with Baby 2 — an emergency c-section, a collapsed lung and an ambulance ride to the neonatal intensive care unit — would have been considered a success.

But that’s not how it’s going to go down. On account of a few medical issues that need not be detailed, and barring a radical change in condition between now and then, Baby 4 is going to enter the world surgically Friday afternoon. I’ve long maintained herding three children going back to April 2004 is not nearly a large enough sample size for us to have experienced every possible parenting scenario, and Baby 4 has proven that to be correct many times already, and his arrival will be an exclamation point.

But having a long-held belief is not the same as actually encountering it in real life. And so I sit here tonight in a position I’ve never occupied, and one I quite frankly never fully anticipated even as evidence mounted it would be inevitable. We’ve been given a time to report to the hospital and, provided things go as is generally the case, it’s fairly easy to map out our next few days. That it coincides with a four-day weekend for the older boys and a long-planned visit from my California sister is an added benefit — we likely couldn’t have planned the whole thing much better.

So why does it feel so weird? Why can I not get my brain around the reality of the situation? I now have enough time, and a deadline, to accomplish the last-minute tasks we need to take care of to be fully ready. I can pick out clothes days in advance for the older boys. No one should have to drop plans at the last minute to shuttle Max to his soccer game or one of the two birthday parties he’s been invited to Saturday afternoon. No midnight phone calls. No waking up Jack to give him the news so he’s not upset in the morning when we’re gone (fool him once, shame on us; fool him twice, swear up and down it won’t happen a third time).

Maybe the other three times there was some comfort in the element of surprise? I know the fact I was watching “Saturday Night Live” when Kristie told me “it’s time” for both Max and Charlie was pure coincidence, but a large part of me expected her to give me the same message last weekend.

There’s just something weird about knowing, and I’m likely never going to be able to fully understand or explain. I know I get twitchy when encountering people who discuss their unborn children by name, and this feels kind of similar. In many ways it’s no different from having a milestone event on the calendar, like a wedding or graduation, but it’s never been off-putting to discuss things like those as certainties. A lot of my perceptions changed the day Max was born, and I’ll probably never see the world the same way.

But we have a date and a time and a place and a name (we’re not telling) and now I have about 36 hours to get ready. I will wash all the dishes and the clothes and pick up as best as possible and transfer car seats and for the love of all things holy take a vacuum to the minivan. We will sit down with Babies 1, 2 and 3 to discuss what’s going to happen over the next couple of days and answer any possible questions. We will go to sleep Thursday knowing it is our last night as a family of five. And by Friday night we’ll have two in diapers, pictures to share and a name to reveal and the long process of recovery from surgery while also caring for the most adorably helpless of creatures.

I’m going to do the best I can to clear my mind, to seek God and to open myself fully that I might have wisdom, strength, patience and peace far beyond my own abilities — whatever I may need to not just get by but to effectively lead my family through the days ahead. We are not alone, and we are blessed with enough family and dear friends to make sure we never feel isolated. And woven through it all is God’s love, uplifting and redeeming. Even when nothing else makes sense, of this I can be sure.

A prayer for October 9:

Lord, I want to surrender myself to you. I need to let go of my worry, fear, anxiety and whatever else might be clouding my heart and mind. I need to make room for peace, for clarity, for strength and patience. As we inch ever closer to the day, the hour, the minute when our family forever changes, I want to be made like new in your eyes. I want to welcome our child into a house filled with laughter and love. And I want all of us to be healthy and safe. Watch over us now and always. Amen.