Saturday, April 30, 2005

The name game

I just printed out "The Short List" - names my wife and I are reviewing as possible names for our child.
We're hoping not to give the child a weighty or otherwise unsuitable name. I also don't want to saddle the child with some wild expectation of what he or she will be like 20 or even 30 years from now.
I pray we will also include anything we're not considering now just in case we leave something off the list.
We want the right name for this child - bottom line.
We just got the baby furniture!
I don't want to try to put it together this morning. Feels like a good time for a nap after experiencing at 3 a.m. one of the worst thunderstorms I ever recall in terms of lightning. Flashes seemed to come at two to three a second.
More later!

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

It's a ...

Girl! At least that's the doc's best guess.
Way past my bedtime, so I need to hit the hay.
More to come as posting time permits!

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Bridging the great divide

Amanda and I tried for nearly four and a half years to have a child before this most recent pregnancy. We encountered one miscarriage in 2001.
During this time, we've known our child(ren) would be born with one set of grandparents missing entirely from the equation of helping to raise and shape our child.
We're now facing the reality we'll have to tell our child(ren) about his or her (thier) paternal grandparents and hope such explanation does the job.
I've written notes about them for an anticipated day we'll be able to sit down and tell him or her about them.
Mom gave birth to me less a month after her 40th birthday. Dad was about six weeks from his 44th birthday when I came into the world. I wasn't quite 16 when Dad died, and I was within weeks of my 31st birthday when Mom passed away.
I've thought for years about making a DVD of people who knew Mom and Dad talking about them. As the years pass, so do the people who can tell our child(ren) about them.
We bought a video camera for the first time this past week, so maybe we can finally do it. Finding the time to get back to my hometown might be a trick, though stranger things have happened.
But we hope we can help our child(ren) have a sense of connectedness to their grandparents, even if it's through a television screen or on a piece of paper.
It's better than nothing.

Temporarily disconnected

Ahh... modern life.
It's strange what we get attached to and what we find important.
For about 15 hours beginning Tuesday afternoon, I felt exposed and otherwise out of sorts when I discovered I couldn't find my cell phone - a little bitty piece of plastic with some fancy electronic stuff and a battery in it.
You'd have thought somebody cut one of my fingers off when I realized it was missing.
Maybe I left it on the charger in the truck.
Nope.
Maybe I left it on my desk at work.
Nope.
Maybe I dropped it before I got in the truck.
Nope.
I began to think ... maybe I left it at ...
A phone call this morning to the place of business confirmed my suspicion, and the folks there kept it safe until I retrieved it.
The lesson?
Keep checking until you make sure you have everything you think you're supposed to have with you, no matter how insignificant you may think it is at the time.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Insomnia :P

Boy, I don't have insomnia bouts like this much. Probably something I ate or drank too late.
At any rate, this should be a good outlet for it.
Amanda and I got in about five hours ago from a trip to handle a few things in Alabama and celebrate three lives - one who passed away last Tuesday and two others who are still alive, although it's hard to say that our friend who is now with the Lord is dead - I believe she is very much alive and now whole.
All three made profound impacts on us in my hometown in a time when we required strong examples of courage, tenacity and faith. They also welcomed us as extended parts of their natural families, something Amanda and I very much need and appreciate.
Though we didn't have hours of direct time with Linda, her courage spoke volumes about her trust in Christ. Linda's funeral was fun. I don't mean it to sound disrespectful. I actually enjoyed saying farewell because it was a life well lived and she set the example for facing adversity - embrace and learn from it - don't let it kill you.
As I understand it, it was the aftermath of fighting three skirmishes with cancer over 16 years which led to her death, not the cancer itself. She left those of us who knew her with a sense that facing death can draw us and others closer to Christ.
At her funeral, we got to share the news about our expected child with people who prayed for the day to arrive, some of whom wondered if it ever would.
Linda's widower, Wayne, said he'd check it off Linda's prayer list for her.
The others - Carmen and Elaine - serve as spiritual mentors to us in many ways, mostly in their examples of following Christ and being real about it.
Some people who've served alongside these two held an appreciation dinner for them Friday night and we were glad to have gotten the chance to see the genuine looks of surprise on their faces.
Their children are among a core group of surrogate brothers and sisters to us - the Lord continues to use them to sustain and nurture us. We were surrounded by other friends the whole day who've been there with us through our own version of going through Hell and back.
We would have seen more people had there been time to arrange more visits.
Though exhausted from traveling and facing even more that evening, we left encouraged and emboldened, reminded we have an extended family of friends who love us and are behind us 100 percent.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Under the weather

I'm home early from work feeling kind of nauseated.
Sympathy pains? Eh, maybe.
I'm also under the weather in a different way - there are eight Mississippi counties under tornado warnings as I write this and the thunder's rolling outside right now.
Got a few ideas for future, longer posts. More as ideas develop into words and circumstances allow.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Air time

This is my first blog.
I'm not sure how long it'll be or what this will eventually become.
Something tells me this is going to be fun.
I started this blog yesterday - April Fool's Day.
I don't think I would've believed someone if they'd told me 25 years ago we'd be sitting at keyboards, sharing our lives and thoughts vicariously through the magic of a computer screen.
Well, hey.
This is a start.
The weather's nicer today than we'd expected, though it's really windy.
The in-laws are here and it's fun. I know I could have it worse in that territory.
Well, guess that's it for now.
More later.