Labor and Life

I can't believe it's been so long since I updated. Granted, my life has changed a bit since I last wrote. I'm thankful that Matt has been blogging some :) I figure I'll update gradually so I don't have an entry that's a mile long.

I'll briefly tell you about the delivery. Labor was amazing...yes, it hurt. But, it was amazing. I was in labor for 11 and a half hours and only pushed for 45 minutes. I am still in awe of how God created women's bodies to bring life into this world. I'm also still in awe of the fact that I was able to do it! I wasn't so sure I'd be able to; it’s such a daunting task. It's a scary feeling when the doctor and nurses tell you it's time to push. Just as in other areas of life, God somehow prepared me for the moment. What a gift to be able to work with God in creation.

Life after labor has been equally amazing and stressful :) I'll say that Charlotte is seriously the most amazing baby. She doesn't cry much and she sleeps like a rockstar. Overall, she’s an easy baby. However, we've had trouble in one area- FEEDING. I've wanted to breastfeed from the beginning, and was excited to do so. She latched RIGHT away, and was a great eater from day one (go figure!). After her 1st doctor's appointment they were worried because she dropped too much weight. Subsequent weigh-ins showed that she was gaining at too slow of a rate. Our doctor asked us to start supplementing with formula. This helped a little with her weight gain, but not enough. He then asked me to see a lactation consultant. It was here that we discovered that I'm hardly producing any milk at all. This has broken my heart. They’ve put me on herbal supplements and a regimented feeding and pumping schedule. However, I’m still producing less than an ounce a day. We are now feeding her a bottle at every feeding as well as breastfeeding her with the hopes that my milk production will improve. I also have mastitis so it’s important for me to feed until this passes (I know, the perfect storm). I’m hoping that my production will improve, but have prepared myself to call it quits.

Those of you who know me well understand that it’s unusual for me to share so openly about personal struggles; but, I know there are readers who can offer words of wisdom and encouragement :) I’m now starting to have peace of mind about bottle feeding. I know that not breastfeeding doesn’t make me a bad mother. I think it’s just the disappointment of things not going the way I had planned on and even dreamed of. I suppose this is something I should get used to! I just have to remember that it isn’t about me and what I want---it’s about my sweet Charlotte and doing what’s best for her! This certainly makes all of the feeding stress easier to digest :)

Unexpected...

In the first month of our marriage, we got our car stolen, I graduated from seminary, we went on our honeymoon, moved to Kansas and both started new jobs. Talk about transition! We felt like we tried to cram every major life change that we could into a 30 day span. The only thing that made it possible is that (with the exception of the stolen car which technically happened the day before our wedding with the marriage certificate inside) we knew all of the transitions were coming and were able to prepare for them. Or so we thought. As it happened, one of the biggest transitions for us was one we didn’t even know about: the cultural transition from the South to the Midwest. Neither of us had lived outside the South (I grew up in Texas and Margaret grew up in Georgia), so we simply didn’t know that people from the Midwest are just different than people from the South (not placing any value judgement). It seems that no matter how well we prepare for “the next step,” there’s always something (big) that we find ourselves ill-equipped to deal with.
During these first 18 days of parenthood, we’ve encountered a lot of challenges that we expected: lack of sleep, problems feeding, the disorienting effects of not being on a schedule, etc. However just like 3 years ago, there’s a major challenge for which we find ourselves completely unprepared: the frustration that comes along with being a parent. To be perfectly honest, there’s a lot about being a parent that frustrates the heck out of us. It’s not that we didn’t see the challenges coming; we read enough and talked to enough parents to know that this wasn’t going to be all peaches and cream. I figured that any small amount of frustration we might experience would be so overpowered by our love for Charlotte that we wouldn’t even notice a sense of frustration. I was wrong. I feel more than a little guilty saying that. It’s not (of course) that we don’t love her more than anything on earth, but when you don’t know why your child is crying hysterically or when you can’t get her to fall asleep or when she seems so hungry yet unwilling to eat, you can’t help but feel frustrated. It’s a frustration born out of love, but frustration nonetheless. Patience has never really been one of my virtues, but I think it’s about to be.

Hungry, Hungry Hippo (aka Charlotte)

I’ve found- not surprisingly- that my life has become remarkably ‘triune’ in nature. It’s just that I never imagined the three elements of that trinity being eating, sleeping, and bowel movements. I guess the truth is that even within that trinity, the center seems to be feeding Charlotte. If she’s hungry, she can’t sleep; and what goes in must come out. Thus most of our days are consumed with careful observation for signs of hunger, and trying to satisfy what seems to be an insatiable hunger (our scientific guess is that she’s going through an early growth spurt- we base this guess on our extensive parental knowledge and experience).
I think the one thing that has inspired more wonder and awe than anything else in our young lives as parents is that idea that Charlotte is kept alive by the nourishment Margaret provides. It’s fascinating! It’s wondrous and awe-inspiring; Margaret and I talk about it more often than you can imagine. It’s also an inexact science. If we feed her too little, she’s not dissimilar from her father- cranky, sleepless, dissatisfied and generally unhappy. If we feed her too much (who knew she wouldn’t stop herself?), she ejects her food at an alarming rate. Our primary parental purpose is to find a happy medium wherein Charlotte receives enough food to satisfy her, but not so much that it’s overwhelming and miserable.
Maybe it’s because I do this for a living, or maybe it’s because I haven’t really left the house in the last two weeks, but I can’t help but see the Christian life in this. Whether it’s when we’re 5 years old or 55, there’s a point in life when we realize that we’re starving. We may not even know for what we’re starving, or (in the same way that Charlotte can’t really recognize her hunger pains as such) we may not even know that what we’re feeling is the sensation of hunger. But at some point we find ourselves dissatisfied and hungry for something that will nourish, satisfy, and fulfill our hearts and souls in a way that only something greater than us could accomplish. On the other hand, the unfortunate reality for new converts or those returning to the faith after a long absence is that they so zealously immerse themselves Christian activity that they soon are exhausted of their new life and reject it. Though they set out with right hearts, they become easily overwhelmed and discouraged by the demands of the gospel on their lives. Our role as faithful Christian brothers and sisters is not to simply point out people’s hunger and let them wallow in it. Nor are we called to throw people into the deep end of the pool to see if they can swim. Rather, our role is to help people find the happy medium wherein they are nourished so as to promote growth without overwhelming our new family members so that they cannot continue.


Peace,
Matt

May 9

We’re starting to recognize that regardless of location or time in history, there is one tried and true method of growing faithful disciples of Christ: start your church in a country that persecutes Christians. We hear stories of this phenomenon particularly in places like China, but we still tend to think of it as a fringe trend- a series of unrelated incidents. However, the truth is that the Church Universal’s story begins in the story of a persecuted people. For the first 300 years of Christianity, the Roman empire and Jewish authorities pursued Christians with varying degrees of intensity (historical details are debated) because we didn’t quite fit in with or submit to commonly held customs and beliefs. We were a counterculture revolution that challenged the foundations of societal, political, and economic reality. Yet through it all, followers of the Way (i.e. what the followers of Christ were called before they were labeled Christians) grew by leaps and bounds across the regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea. I think I finally understand why persecuted churches tend to thrive. Persecution breeds desperation; desperation inspires focus; focus causes intentional activity; intentional spiritual activity is the beginning point of discipleship. Though Charlotte Madison’s first few days were quiet, calm, and collected, the last 36 hours have been more than intense. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that when Charlotte gets frustrated (particularly as it relates to eating), there is almost nothing that will calm her down. Margaret and I had our first sleepless night as we tried everything in our fledgling parental arsenal to calm her down enough to eat or sleep. To say we were desperate by 4:30 in the morning would be an understatement. But in that place of desperation, you begin to search the depths of your experience to figure out if there is anything remotely useful. For whatever reason, it often takes a place of desperation for me to remember that I’m a man of faith- faith in a God who provides everything His kids need in life, even nourishment for a newborn. As that focus and reliance on God takes its place among our parental tools, we have the opportunity to be intentional about how we invite God in and make ourselves available to the movement of the Spirit in the smallest of life’s crises. We don’t yet know exactly what it means to be faithful in parenthood, but we figure that’s a pretty decent place to begin.

Relief!

Charlotte Madison has been the quietest baby you could possibly imagine. Seriously- the only time she cries is when we check her diaper. She doesn’t cry when she’s hungry; she doesn’t cry when she has a dirty diaper; she doesn’t cry when she’s cold or hot; best of all, she doesn’t cry during the night! That is, until we have family arrive to meet her for the first time. It’s like she knows we want to impress! Last night for the first time since she was born, she was simply inconsolable. We tried new clothes, new swaddling, changing positions, changing rooms, changing lighting- desperation sets in quicker now. She was so upset, and we had no clue how to relieve the suffering. Finally- mercifully- we checked her diaper only to discover that it was little more than a dirty diaper (why we didn’t think of that earlier, I don’t know- chalk it up to another new lesson learned). I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to help your child go from inconsolable screaming to happily eating her next meal. It’s more than simple relief that she’s no longer crying (although I would be lying if I said that wasn’t part of it). It’s a sense of comfort that your child is no longer in pain- a sense of peace that she has been healed of her affliction. You need to know- we were desperate to ease Charlotte’s hurt and our heart’s only desire was to restore her world to order. If that’s our response to suffering, surely God responds more perfectly. Surely God hears the cries of His children and is compelled as a loving parent to respond compassionately and lovingly to ease pain.
PS- at this rate, I’ll be able to preach for years without having to google sermon illustrations again…

A Promise Fulfilled

A Few Thoughts on the Birth of My Daughter

Two weeks ago I wrote in my church newsletter (copied below) about how much I could relate to people in Scripture like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who had to wait- wait a Long Time- for the birth of the child God had promised each of them. It’s so interesting to read Scripture through the lens of your own experiences that are similar to the events we read about in the Bible. While I wrote two weeks ago about how well I could relate to the idea of waiting (impatiently) for God’s promises, I write now as a man who knows the joy of a promise fulfilled. At 7:07 PM on May 3, I witnessed the love of my life bring the 9.1 lb, 20” love of our lives into this world. I’ve never seen true perfection before. I thought I had, but really what I saw was technical perfection; like a mint-condition baseball card or a perfectly new cell phone screen- you know, before it spends a lifetime in your pocket and get scratched beyond the point where you can actually read the screen. What I knew as perfection was really just the lack of blemish. Charlotte Madison was perfect from the very second she was born- not just in a “I have 10 toes and 10 fingers and a perfect rose-colored skin” kind of way- not just in a “I’m perfectly healthy and normal” kind of way. Hers was a created perfection- only achievable by the careful molding and shaping of the One Who created our universe. As the doctors worked diligently to heal Margaret, the only words that could come out of my mouth were “She’s perfect!” I paced back and forth between Mom and baby for the first 30 minutes of Charlotte’s life. I looked at Charlotte and made mental notes about everything I would tell Margaret. But by the time I got back to Margaret, the only thing I could say every time was “She’s perfect!” It was truly one of the most amazing- and deeply spiritual- moments of my life.

A year ago at about this time, Margaret and I got on I-70 near Manhattan, KS to begin the long drive to Texas to begin a new chapter of our lives and ministries together in Kingwood. Who was singing on the radio? None other than Israel Kamakawiwo Ole singing the famous ukulele version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World.” Given our departure from Kansas, we found the song to be a particularly appropriate expression of our feelings about our new adventure. When we heard it 3 more times that day on various radio stations on the way to Texas, we figured Someone wanted us to hear a message of hope, rather and a sense of fear about the unknown. So when we got in the car to leave the hospital with Charlotte Madison for the first time, what song was on the radio? Naturally, the sweet sound of a ukulele and Israel singing “I hear babies cry and I watch them grow, they’ll learn much more than we’ll know, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”

I learned to drive in 1997 on a ’91 Mazda Miata, a ’66 Volkswagen Bug, and a ’95 Dodge Caravan. Two of those cars are standard transmissions, so I learned to drive with one hand on the stick, and one on the steering wheel. Only once in my entire life have I driven with two hands on the wheel: during my driving test to get my driver’s license in 1997. Until Wednesday afternoon. On the way home from the hospital in Tomball (Methodist- Willowbrook), I drove with my hands at 10 and 2 so that I could maneuver around whatever obstacle had the nerve to cross our path. I could have out-maneuvered Jeff Gordon in the name of protecting the newest addition to our family. Even more, as Margaret, Charlotte Madison, and I came home as a family for the first time, I drove with the cruise control set so that both feet were poised to come crashing down on the brake in an instant with the full force of my entire body if anything or anyone made the mistake of impeding our progress. It’s amazing how not even the mundane things in life (i.e. driving) are left untouched by the birth of our first daughter.

Peace,
Matt