Golf carts, bridges, and leather chaps

It was the summer of 2004, and I was working at Timber Pointe Outdoor Center, a summer camp for kids and adults with disabilities and chronic illnesses outside Bloomington, IL.  Well, maybe it was 2003 or 2005; I can't remember for sure, but I remember how it happened, and I am going to tell the story so it doesn't get buried in the dusty archives of my memory. 


Whichever summer it was, I was a program staff that year.  I created and ran a music program, and with the rest of the program staff I planned and ran the large group activities.  Program staff have a few "perks" that counselors (those who take care of the campers) don't have.  We carried walkie talkies, we were not assigned campers, and we got to drive the golf carts.

These perks seem pretty sweet, but there are certainly some drawbacks.  While we had a blast blaring bad music and cracking"your mom" jokes toward our camp director over the walkie talkies, they also made us reachable 24-7, which was annoying at 2:30am when we had to deal with a bat in one of the girls' cabins.  Sometimes after sitting on them and inadvertantly pressing the talk button, a private conversation would be publicized (Fuzz).

Not being assigned campers was great, because when you're a counselor assigned campers, you're booked solid for your campers' entire waking hours, and as a program staff with no campers, you have more flexibility to take some of the day a bit more leisurely.  You also have the freedom to get to know ALL the campers, because they come to your activities, and you can float around to hang out with the campers you want to in down times.  The drawback of this flexibility, is that we were then available to do random work projects. These would consist of everything from helping with dishes in the kitchen to hammering loose nails on the waterfront deck to inventorying arts and craft supplies to clearing out trails with machetes.  The worst of these I remember is on the hottest day of the year, we had to power-wash our outdoor concrete basketball court.

The other program staff perk, driving the golf carts, really only had one drawback, and that is why I'm writing this.

We had at least four golf carts that year:  the Millenium Falcon, a gas powered cart that we rented for the summer, the Starship Enterprise, another rental, the Electric cart , which wasn't cool enough to have its own name and was usually only used by the nurses, and the Low Rider.  The Low Rider was our camp-owned battle-horse, and it had seen its better days.  After being beaten down by countless summers of abuse, wrecks, and jerry-rigged repairs, the Low Rider putt-putted through camp.  If you pressed lightly on the gas pedal, the Low Rider would move slowly in reverse, which we called "Moonwalking". 

The Low Rider had a solid rap sheet of camp shenanigans.  I believe it was the Low Rider that John, a camper we called "Cheeseburger", stepped onto when one of our staff left the key in, and drove it into the lake.  This was before my time, but the incident has lived on as legend.

Fuzz and Oller, a couple of our staff, were driving the Low Rider one day, while dragging a little red wagon, and randomly letting it go to see what it crashed into.  They accidentally ran it over after it didn't go where they thought it would.  The Low Rider banged up this wagon so bad, that they knew they couldn't return it, or risk throwing it away and have it be seen by the director. So they hung it on a tree in the woods and dubbed it "El Muerte".

El Muerte lives on at camp.

And it was the Low Rider that was the protagonist, let's say "anti-hero", of my story.  Those of us who drove the golf carts were...well...idiots.  That nobody died on one of those things is nothing short of a miracle.  We often drove the carts around an obstacle course that we made up on the trails.  The rules were simple.  Once you start, you push the accelerator to the floor and don't let up or hit the breaks until you've gotten all the way through.  Sometimes we would tag team this with the person in the passenger seat stepping on the gas pedal while the driver steered.

I don't remember the exact course, but we definitely went down a dip by the waterfront which gave us extra speed, wrapped around to Chapel Point, passed by the ropes course and threaded the needle while crossing The Bridge of Destiny, appropriately named, because you had about an inch or two on each side of the cart.  (We also had a Bridge of Death that the carts couldn't quite squeeze through.)

One such day, I was running water jugs to various locations with Lego (we had camp names, not strange parents) when we decided we would take a breather and drive through the obstacle course.  Nearing the end, Lego asked me if I would like to drive on the "Luigi Raceway", which was a level from Mariokart.  Sounded okay to me, so I kept the pedal floored.  Luigi Raceway turned out to be that concrete basketball court.  We swerved a 90 degree angle on the gravel to enter the court, then started looping around.  On a right turn, the bald driver side tires of the Low Rider decided they'd had enough contact with the ground and that they wanted nothing more to do with it.

The Low Rider flipped up onto its right side, driving for what seemed like a minute on two tires, but it must've been less than second. I was thrown from the cart, with both knees skidding across the ground, the concrete shredding apart the knees of my jeans and mincing the skin of my knees.  Lego landed on top of me, completely unscathed and free from injury.

We got up, assessed the situation, realized I was hurt, Lego wasn't, and the Low Rider may have been, but you couldn't really tell amongst all the other dings and dents. We flipped the golf cart right side up and drove to the med shed to get me cleaned up.  It was a slow time during Camp COCO, where I was cared for, not by the typical older camp nurses, but by the younger, more appealing to a 22-year-old, Oncology nurses, who were only there for the week.  Let's just say it hurt way worse than I let on.

Rabbit, our camp director heard about the injury and asked me what happened.  I told him the truth.  "I fell off the golf cart." Sure, I didn't mention the flooring it or flipping it, but I did fall off.  He had me fill out an incident/injury report just in case I were seriously injured it would be covered by workman's compensation.

Two or three days later, Rabbit came back to me with a blank incident report telling me I had to fill it out again. When I asked why he said, "Under 'What could have prevented this injury?' you wrote 'leather chaps'."


We continued the rest of the summer (and subsequent summers) to drive the obstacle course, although we refrained from driving the Luigi Raceway.  I think one thing that camp taught me is not to take myself too seriously.

Faggots, Bigots, and Heretics

I woke up this morning to a post on Facebook from my friend Matt, a staunch conservative.  I say "staunch conservative" because I'm pretty sure he would label himself as such; if I'm wrong, please correct me and I'll edit this.  Matt specifically tagged me, as he knows I am pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum that he is, and I've had many Facebook "discussions" with him over the years, where it's been generally respectful despite our differences.  The post is below, with the other last names being omitted.

I've refrained until now about gay marriage. No longer.Gay marriage is a component of homosexuality. A component.The Bible says it is a sin in the old and new testament. Sin is sin. No one is greater than the other. "For we all sin and fall short of the glory of God." So to support gay marriage, again a component of homosexuality, is supporting sin. To support a pastor who will marry a same-sex marriage is also advocating for sin. To me, that means, you support most of the sins. Therefore making you an ineffective witness for Christ. ( Yes I have sinned. Yes I continue to do so. Unavoidable, I'm not Jesus Christ, or God, or the Holy Spirit. I am fallen. I am not the best witness either. I know that.)Love the person hate the sin. Absolutely. But Steven P N, Daniel Sutter, and Lacey C why do you support it?I agree we as humans can be forgiven, but to support a path of sin, really? Not to mention this is a blatant and strategic attack on Christianity and the first amendment. The law suits that are being up held against religious freedom. It's completely wrong and obvious.‪#‎onemanonewoman‬.

I used to engage in this type of online debate constantly, but over the past couple years, I've grown tired of it.  It can be emotionally and intellectually draining as well as extremely frustrating when someone can't understand your point of view, even though you spend an hour or more drafting your response.  Nobody will ever change their position based on these debates alone, and I consider it to generally be an exercise in futility.  I'm making an exception here, to give a genuine answer to what seems to be a genuine question.  I know I'm not going to change this friend's mind, but that's not my goal.  My goal is to help him understand why I think the way I do and also offer some guidance on ways we as Christians should act (or more importantly, not act) through these sweeping changes to our world regardless of where we land on the spectrum.

From here on out, I'm talking to and about Christians; everyone is welcome to read and chime in, but Matt's question is completely based around a Christian perspective (a perspective which I hold) and I want to speak to that. When talking about our stance on gay marriage, many people would have you believe that there are two stances to take; either you're for it or you're against it.  That's an oversimplification, and it prances around the underlying, until recently unspoken debate, which is "what do you think about homosexuality?"  And the follow-up to that, "how does what you think about homosexuality fit in with church orthodoxy?"

Regarding gay marriage, these are the points of view I have seen, and I have friends or acquaintances who hold to all of them.

Stance 1 - Homosexuality is a sin, and gay marriage should be illegal because of that.
Stance 2 - Homosexuality is a sin, but gay marriage should be legal because it's a civic institution, not religious.
Stance 3 - Homosexuality is not a sin, and gay marriage should be legal.
Stance 4 - I'm not sure if homosexuality is a sin; there seems to be some doubt among several Christians, but I'd rather be safe than sorry, so gay marriage should be illegal.
Stance 5 - I'm not sure if homosexuality is a sin; there seems to be some doubt among several Christians, and we've gotten things wrong before (i.e. slavery, flat-earth, misogyny) so I'd rather err on the side of grace; gay marriage should be legal.
Stance 6 - Don't know. Don't care.

I started off in Stance 6. I didn't know, and I didn't care.  Somehow, in my mind, I formed no opinion whatsoever.  I was involved in the musical theater, which has historically been an open and accepting place for LGBTQ folks, so I knew quite a few, but it never really came up to me.  It wasn't my issue.  My parents didn't teach me about it; I don't really remember my church talking about it.  I didn't even really think about it.  I was naive.

My naivete continued into college, where I started going to a youth group at a fairly conservative church.  Here I was introduced to the Bible as the authority.  What you need to know about anything, you can find it there.  The Bible says homosexuality is a sin, so it is, because the Bible is inerrant and authoritative, so we should hold to what it says.  As such, we should vote for the candidate who will fight against gay marriage, abortion, and...well, those are the only two that I remember; we talked about it during the height of an election year.  I believed it.  I knew that the people I was around were genuine, and they had good intentions.  So I took stance 1.  Homosexuality is a sin, and gay marriage should be illegal because of that.

This view was not something I came to on my own; I just believed what I was told.  Now, to clarify, I'm not bashing this group or what they believe; the onus was on me and my ignorance.  Overall this group was great for me and formed a solid foundation for understanding God and who he is, most importantly the concepts of Grace and Faith.

During the first year or two out of college, I started to think a bit differently.  This came about through a shifting of how I understood the Bible.  As I read and studied it, parts of it seemed to contrast with things I believed, contrast with itself, and contrast with how I understood Jesus.  For example, the Genesis story.  I still believed that God created the world, but I did not believe he did that in a literal seven days some 4,000 years ago.  I could not reconcile the genocidal God of the Old Testament with Jesus.  And I wasn't sure I believed that homosexuality was a sin.  (So I transitioned to stance 4 and then 5).

This led to a huge crisis for me, because so much of what I believed about God was based around what I believed about the Bible.  I wasn't confident enough at the time to claim I didn't believe these things.  As I talked about them, I considered them doubts I was struggling with, but in retrospect, they weren't doubts; they were beliefs.  And I was too afraid that I would be ostracized from the rest of the church if I believed that way.  How can I believe in Jesus, but not believe everything the Bible says?  Am I really a Christian?  This was a dark time for me.

I can't speak toward others who hold to an authoritative interpretation of the Bible, but for me, what I was doing was equating the Bible with God.  I was idolizing it.  But the Bible is not God, it's the word of God; Jesus is God...and the Word of God (and with God).  At that same time, I started reading books by several authors (the ones that impacted me most were Shane Claiborne, N.T. Wright, Rob Bell, and Tony Campolo) who didn't necessarily believe everything the Bible says is literal.  This began to give me some comfort. These people are following Jesus, but don't believe homosexuality is a sin (Campolo) and don't necessarily believe in hell as eternal conscious torment (Bell) or that Jesus came not for us to go to Heaven when we die, but to start his Kingdom here and now (Wright, Claiborne).  These people articulated so well what I was thinking and believing (especially Claiborne and Wright) that I was comforted to know that there were other followers of Christ who thought the way I did.

A few more years went by, life happened, my family moved around a lot, and we were looking for a new church after a move.  What we found has been life-changing.  We go to a church where I have learned that I am not alone.  Other people believe the same things I do about God and have the same questions about the Bible.  And not only that, but people who do not believe the same things I do still recognize that I'm a follower of Jesus, and we commune, worship, serve, and follow Jesus together, knowing that we disagree about a lot, but we agree about the most important thing.

Now, I am comfortable claiming that I land on stance 3.  I do not believe that homosexuality is a sin (and gay marriage should be legal.)  Knowing Jesus, having gay friends, and learning about the original language and context of the Bible has reinforced this.  I believe God would bless a committed monogamous marriage between two people regardless of what sex organs they have.

So, that's my journey. I've been at all but one of those stances.  I get it.  I know why you think the way you do.  So what are we to do?  Specifically those who believe homosexuality is a sin and those who believe it is not a sin.

I've seen three words used to debate for and against homosexuality, and they are NEVER helpful.  In addition to using these three words, we should avoid alluding to them.  They cause nothing but hurt, anger, and bitterness.

Faggot, Bigot, and Heretic.  

We obviously know "faggot" is an insult, a slur that should never be used; especially as the church.  People who agree with me, we should not call others "bigots" as most people who hold the opposing view are not. They are genuine in their understanding, and they didn't choose their stance, they learned it.  They just believe that way; maybe they will change some day as some of us did, maybe not.  People on the far right, don't call those of us who do not believe homosexuality is a sin "heretics".  We are still trying to follow Jesus as best as we know how, and this should be what unites us, not our differences.

The Sunday after the Supreme Court decision came down, we began at my church by singing together and then communing together.  Prior to taking communion, we recite the Apostle's Creed.  Despite our differences of opinion on homosexuality, the death penalty, war, method of baptism, we come together, worship together, and serve together, and that should be the response of the church.

Messages from the World Vision debacle

And the Pharisees asked him, "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?".
Jesus replied, "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments."
Then the Pharisees said, "What about the third greatest?"
Jesus said, "Oppose anything gay."

Okay, so the last two lines of that are somewhat apocryphal (and completely tongue in cheek), but if the Bible actually said that, even this would not support the actions and attitudes from some of our brothers and sisters regarding the recent decision and reversal of World Vision's employment stance on homosexuality.  If you aren't familiar with it, you can Google it.

tl;dr version: On Monday, World Vision says, "Okay, we won't discriminate against employees in same-sex marriages."  Tuesday, the Christian Right (not all, but some) is in an uproar and threatens to drop the children they're sponsoring.  Thursday, World Vision reverses its stance.

I hope to keep this pointed and following a logical progression, but no promises.  I do promise no insults though.  ...and commence rant now.

 <rant>

First of all, World Vision is not a church.  They are an ecumenical non-profit organization providing aid to people in need.  Their employees are just that, employees for an ecumenical non-profit organization.  A shift is taking place in the church today, and more and more churches are changing their stance on the sinfulness of homosexuality.  As an ecumenical organization (clearly this is the record for most times saying "ecumenical" in one paragraph) World Vision decided they would leave this highly divisive issue out of their employment practices and leave it up to individual churches.  They are not in the business of indoctrinating stances on types of baptism, what happens to the Eucharist elements, and so forth.

 I believe this was the right move.  Why?  Well, I work in HR; specifically recruiting.  When we look for someone to fill a job, we try to place the person who is most qualified to perform the job duties.  We look for a couple other things as well, namely safety, hence criminal background checks, and we would prefer people who buy into the mission of our organization.  If someone meets those criteria and has another issue that is not relevant to performing the job, it's none of our business.  Nor should it be.

Shouldn't we as a church (in the holy catholic {universal} sense) want this to be the case with people trying to feed the poor?  Should it matter that someone who disagrees with us on a highly contested doctrinal issue is trying to do good work in the name of Christ with a Christian organization?  (especially if they're the most qualified person!) Here's what Jesus says about people who are not "with us" doing work in His name:

 “Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.”  “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.”  Luke 9:49-50
Or in Mark 9:39-40 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. " (emphasis mine)

Based on the rest of World Vision's hiring stances, these employees in same-sex marriages are doing this work in Jesus' name.  We're not talking about people from different religions doing this; we're talking about people who follow Jesus. How can we, as ambassadors of the Kingdom of God here on earth, not want to encourage this?  Even if homosexuality is a sin, should we not encourage these acts of love?  Do we discourage people living lives of gluttony or pride or lust from doing charitable work for a Christian organization?  Of course not, but we single out the LGBT community.

Tangent:  I would claim, based on the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46), that we should even encourage secular (Half the Sky) and other religious (Islamic Relief) organizations doing the work of the Kingdom.  As they serve "the least of these" they're serving Jesus whether they realize it or not.

Now, just for a moment, let's forget what I said.  For the sake of argument, let's say World Vision changing their stance to allow employees in same-sex marriages was wrong.  Let's say I currently sponsor a child through World Vision, but I disagree with their decision.  So I'm going to end my commitment to that child by cancelling my World Vision sponsorship.  That'll show them, right?  Right?  Well, maybe a little.  But it really shows that child that I care more about some doctrinal issue than I do about them.  You can flip that around for those considering pulling their sponsorship after the reversal. 

Think about all the messages we're sending here.  

To LGBT Christians-"I'm sorry.  Your desire to do the work of Christ is not welcome here."  

To our fellow Christians-"You need to believe everything I do the way that I do, which is the right way." 

To the non-Christian community-"We Christians cannot agree on anything.  An action meant to unite us divided us even further."  

To the people receiving aid from World Vision-"Sorry. Meeting your material needs is not as important as meeting our need to be right."  

To World Vision-"Your mission should only proceed if you believe everything the same as I do."

I'm tired of these messages being sent again and again, recycled and reworded in different ways.  I'm tired of our LGBT brothers and sisters being singled out and pushed out.  I'm tired of the religious right claiming "THE Biblical view" or "THE Christian view" as if theirs is the only one, with no possibility for error, and no room for discussion or respectful disagreement.  I'm tired of the religious left calling the right "bigots" instead of building bridges toward empathy.  More than all of this though, I'm tired of Christ and his church being defined by what we're against and not what we're for.  I want to be defined by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; empathy, engagement, and empowerment; justice and mercy; shalom.

</rant>

Patrick Stewart, Yul Brynner, and Me

I am balding.

There, I said it.  I've been in denial for the past six years, when the recession apparently hit not only the economy, but my hairline as well.  It has been thinning out in the front, and I have been unable to accept this inevitability of male aging.

My Grandpa Sutter (the bearded one) and two of his brothers; the greatest man I've ever known, but damn this gene passed down to me!

Every minute away from work, I cover my head with a Cubs hat or one of two "newsy" caps, which I love to wear, but the time has come to face reality.  I am going to be bald.  I have three options I can take with this; I can hold on to the past as long as I can, growing it, and trying to style it to where it looks the least amount of bald, I can accept it and realize that I will more resemble George Costanza than I ever wanted to, or I can embrace it, meaning shave it all off.

I have been going with the first option for far too long, and I can't stand the second option, so it looks as though option three would be my best bet...except for one thing.  On the left side of my head, I have a protruding mole the size of Texas.  Now, I don't want to be vain (which this post thus far would not lead you to believe), but this mole would become my caricature.  People would not describe me as "that bald guy" (which I could grow to be ok with; it sounds scary right now) but "that bald guy with the giant mole".  I am fairly confident with most of my body image, at least content, but this mole is taunting me.  It is a bald man's nemesis.

Enter apple cider vinegar.  My wife saw, on Facebook or Pinterest or one of those dumb sites, a post about using apple cider vinegar to remove moles.  Apparently it contains an acid that will dissolve the mole over a couple months, and it will look as though it was never there to begin with.  Skeptically, I researched the internet, and there seems to be quite a bit of anecdotal evidence in support.

So at night time, I'm wearing a headband, holding an apple cider vinegar soaked cotton ball in place.  Should this work, should it dissolve away the excess, I will be able to accept my baldness, and be happy with it, because it's who I am.

Jesus works the same was as apple cider vinegar on a mole.  When people see our sin, our insecurity, our imperfections, like the mole, they can become our caricature.  They become what people see.  They become what we see.  Jesus dissolves these away.  They are not part of who we truly are, and the more we let Jesus work in our lives, the closer we become to the image of God we were created to be.  Only then can we fully embrace our true identity.

Musings from a parent of a young child

It's 2:15am, and the alarm goes off.  Time to force myself out of bed to feed the baby.  I contemplate the snooze, but he's starting to fidget, and the sooner I get it done, the sooner I can go back to bed.

Since mama's up pumping all night every few hours, I'm on feeding duty.  Lucky me.

I turn off the alarm, the Muppets' "Mahna Mahna", I reluctantly sit up, and I force my eyes open.  Looking around the room, I stand up, grab the bottle from the 11:30 feeding, and head to the steps.

My objective is simple, add the formula to the bottle I've already measured out, place it in a cup of hot water, all without waking the dog. I am successful...I think.  As I ascend the stairs, I begin to doubt.  Did I mix the formula, or did I just do the water?  I look at the bottle, and I can tell, I did add the formula, as it's not completely mixed in yet.

My ascent is complete and I walk back into the bedroom, set the bottle on the vanity, and turn on my nightstand lamp.  Cy is awake and fully alert, fussing a bit, but not full-on crying; Jamie is sound asleep.  I lift Cy out of his side of the pack and play-twin bassinet combo, place him on our bed, and remove his swaddle.  Grabbing his heart and breathing monitor, I carry him to his room to change his diaper before the feeding.

I unbutton his onesie, and the leads from the monitor come loose, creating a fire-alarm sound that surprisingly awakens only my desire to swear, and everyone else stays asleep.  After putting the leads back in place, I race to get his diaper changed before he pees on me.  Alas, he has pooped, so this will take some time. 

My exhaustion intensifies my frustration as he begins to pee and gets it all over his sleeping outfit.  I find an outfit that swims on him, but it works.  As I fasten the last snap, his leads come loose again, so I must undress him and fix the leads.

I carry him back to the bedroom, plug in the monitor, and sit down.  I'm almost done.  All I have to do is sit and wait while he downs this bottle.  I struggle to stay awake.  I question how I am going to do this when Dulcinea comes home and eats twice as slowly as he does.  I question my loyalty, my ability, and my sanity. 

Then, he opens his eyes.

Those wide dark eyes stare into mine.  I find the energy to stay awake. All my doubts vanish.  I stare back at him, and I am at peace.  He quickly downs his bottle, I burp him, put him in his bassinet, and I go back to bed.

Then the damn leads come off again.

Increasing our children by 200% unless we're talking about mass, in which case, about 5%

Part 1:  The Story

We expected our twins would be here before the scheduled C-section at 38 weeks gestation.  Jamie was thinking somewhere around 36 weeks, and I was guessing more like 34 weeks, but Cyrenius and Dulcinea had a different idea.

After a Sunday through Tuesday hospital stay two weeks ago and a mandated bed-rest for Jamie, I thought we were in the clear for a while.  Last Friday morning, though, I got a call at work saying we needed to go back to the hospital.  We were having contractions. (When I say "we" I actually mean "Jamie" because my non-uterus was not contracting, but I want to feel like I was part of it, so I'll say "we").

The doctors were determined to slow down the contractions and let the babies stay "cooking" for at least three more weeks.   As the afternoon progressed, labor did not progress.  Jamie thought she was having contractions, but the monitors were not showing them, and she was not dilated.  At this news, I got Afton, went home, and went to bed.  (Having an on-call sitter in case I had to go back over night)

I wrote Jamie some custom goals in the Antepartum unit.

After putting Afton to bed, I spent a few hours cataloguing some of my new massive record collection.  Thinking I would be waking up in the morning to take Afton out for breakfast and visit Jamie in the hospital, (where we thought she was going to be for a week or two) I crashed at 11:30.  At 1:00 or so, Jamie called to tell me she was dilated to a 3 and they were moving her to labor and delivery.  "You probably better come back," she said.

This was it, and I knew it.  I called my friend Steve, who graciously came to sleep on our couch for the rest of the night until Afton woke up in the morning, and I drove toward the hospital.  I was getting nervous.  I spent the whole drive scanning the radio to find something that would calm me down a bit.  As I drove past East Peoria, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" by the Righteous Brothers came up, and it was the soundtrack for the rest of my drive (and is in my head still!).

I arrived at the labor and delivery room, and the resident doctor was telling Jamie the plan.  The doctor upped her medicine to the maximum amount she could give in a last-ditch effort to slow down the contractions.  She said she would check in an hour to see if there had been any change.

The hour was tense.  All my effort was spent restraining myself from making jokes, which is my strongest defense mechanism, and unfortunately acts contrary to Jamie's strongest defense mechanism, being completely somber.  I kept staring at the monitor as the contractions kept coming, hoping that they would slow down.  They continued, and they grew in intensity.  Each minute, I became more convinced the babies were coming tonight.

After the hour was up, the resident came back and rechecked Jamie's cervix.  She said, "Well, you're at a 6.  We're going to have these babies."  Jamie's doctor was called to come in for the C-section, and we prepared for the surgery.

I made several texts and phone calls to inform parents that the babies were indeed coming tonight.  The nurses gave me a disposable surgery outfit consisting of shirt, trousers, foot covers, mask, and medical hair net.  After getting dressed, I stood at Jamie's bedside while she signed consents for surgery and anaesthesia.

When giving birth to Afton four years ago, the C-section was an emergency, where doctors and nurses were running around shouting at each other to hurry, ripping and cutting cords out of the wall, and running Jamie away in about 5 minutes.  This time, we had to wait a bit longer.  Jamie was understandably emotional, and my words were inconsolable.  I knew that it wasn't my fault though, so I tried to shut up and wait patiently.

They wheeled Jamie away, and I had about half an hour to spend by myself as they prepped her for surgery.  Knowing I had no power to do anything productive, I pulled out my phone and started crushing candy.  This lasted about 3 or 4 minutes before I couldn't stand the solitude (which I usually treasure).  I went to stand in the doorway of the labor and delivery room, positioned right across from the nurses station and wait for them to come get me.

As I stood there, I observed the difference between medical staff and patients' families.  For me, this is something that happens twice in my life.  They do it every day.  So while I'm all tense standing there eagerly awaiting this major life change, they're sitting there talking about their upcoming weekends and eating their dinners.  I also saw the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) staff calmly walk the beds that our babies would be staying in to the operating room.

After this eternity, a nurse came out and got me, and I walked to the operating room.  They sat me down by Jamie, and I waited.  At Afton's birth, I couldn't see what was happening.  Here, I was able to peek around and see my wife cut open.  It was kind of gross, but kind of cool too.  I'm intrigued by what doctors are able to do with the human body.  It reminds me of a nerdy kid I went to gradeschool with that would disassemble and reassemble a Nintendo, only this is a living being.

The surgery seemed pretty standard, although I can't really make a comparison, because like Theodore Donald Karabatsos, I have no frame of reference.  Two NICU nurses stood by with beds for the twins, ready to take them down to their home for the next several weeks.

After a few minutes of the doctor "doing his thing" in my wife's open abdomen (okay, maybe that's not the best wording), I heard him say, "It's the boy.  4:14."   I saw a nurse carry the tiny boy over to his bed and transition him from fetus to baby.  The NICU staff suctioned his mouth, and within about 30 seconds or so, he started crying.  Eventually his cries will be something I try to stop, but this first one was angelic.  A wide smile grew under my surgical mask and tears started to fill my eyes.

Cy shortly after birth

Jamie said, "What does he look like?"  I responded with an obvious, unhelpful, "He's a baby."

We must have been living in slow motion, because it seemed like 5 or 10 minutes when the doctor said, "Here's the girl.  4:15."  After that, the NICU nurses said I could come over to where the babies were.  I walked to Cy first, as there were still nurses gathered around Dulci, trying to get her to give her first tears.

This started the split feeling that I have not yet been able to shake.  Part of me wanted to stay by Jamie to comfort her, tell her I loved her, and that she did a great job of carrying these children; part of me was excited to see Cy for the first time; part of me was anxious that Dulci had not yet cried.

Dulci right after birth

Eventually Dulcinea cried, and I moved to stand between the two babies while they completed the first phase of their Apgar tests.  The nurses carried Cy over to Jamie so she could see him for the first time, then they started the trek over to the NICU.  I stayed with Dulci.  After they stabilized her, she was shown to Jamie, then I joined her and a couple nurses for a walk to the NICU.

As we passed the Labor and Delivery lobby, we stopped to greet my dad.  He said, "I couldn't go back to sleep."  I asked if he saw Cy when he came by, and he had.  While my dad's not an emotional guy, I could tell he was deeply touched by being there to meet his two new grandchildren. 

The nurses and I started back to walking.  I had a million questions to ask the NICU staff, but on the walk, I failed to recall a single one.  Instead, they fed me scores of information that I instantly forgot.  I was with Dulci as they hooked her up to several monitors, including a c-pap that covered half her face.  Then I was shown Cy's room, and he was already being monitored.  I was asked to leave as they hooked up IV's through the babies' umbilical cords.  They told me that Jamie should be coming out of surgery any time, and I can meet her in recovery.

Dulci in her C-Pap

So I went back up to Labor and Delivery, waited about 3 or 4 minutes for Jamie to move to the recovery room, and I sat with her for a while.  Thus started my rounds between Jamie's room, Cy's room, and Dulci's room.

Part 2: How does it feel?

While Jamie was still in the hospital, I spent my time going back and forth between her room and the babies' rooms.  It's a bizarre feeling thinking that you're needed equally by multiple people in different locations, yet you're unable to provide sufficient time to any of them.  Even though Jamie and the babies needed me, I needed to care for myself as well.  That first day, I was running on an hour and half of sleep, so in the morning, I made a cot in Jamie's room and slept for another hour.  After picking up Afton in the afternoon, I went home and took a nap for another few hours.  Afton needed me as well.

Cy working on his tan

The entirety of Jamie's hospital stay, I was torn between her and all three kids separately.  When Jamie was discharged, it became easier to give the twins equal attention, but it remains difficult to give Afton the attention she deserves.  Also, I returned to work yesterday.  Thankfully, I am able to work remotely, but now I feel as though I'm being pulled between my family at home, my family at the hospital, and work.

At the same time, it's very strange going back and forth to the NICU.  The staff is incredible, and I love spending time with the twins, but the disconnect between home and hospital is unnerving to me.  People keep asking me how I'm doing, and my response is always, "Good...but it's weird."

It's weird to have children I'm devoting this much attention and love toward, whom I'm lucky to see for 2 or 3 hours a day.  I feel uncomfortable that I'm sleeping at home, watching football games, and writing blog posts, while my children are in the hospital.  I feel awkward that I have one child who has little to no connection to the others, because they do not yet live together, and she's only spent about 2 hours with them.  I feel like an inadequate parent because it's difficult to engage with a child whom I can only hold for a limited amount of time in a tiny room.  I feel like a lousy husband sleeping, while Jamie is awake every two to three hours to pump.  I feel guilty regardless of whom I'm devoting my time to, as though I'm neglecting someone else.

NICU room

I know that it's going better than I feel.  I know that I'm spending quality time with Jamie, Afton, and the twins.  I know that my reading to the babies, even though they have no clue what I'm talking about, is stimulating their minds.  I know that the rest I'm getting is helping me make rational, good decisions, and giving me patience with Afton, while Jamie is incapacitated by exhaustion.  I know that this will come to pass, the twins will come home, and I will probably miss this time.

For now, I will keep going back and forth, doing the best I can.  Jamie is recovering well from the c-section, Afton and I have had the opportunity to go for a couple meals together and a nice hike on Sunday afternoon, and the twins are doing great in the NICU; the doctor yesterday said, "Just watch them grow."  So it's only a matter of time until we are one complete family at home together.

Bonus Part 3:  The Kingdom of Heaven

Recently at my church, the worship bands have done a series called, "The Kingdom of Heaven is Like", where we spoke about the different things Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven to.  This has inspired a few new analogies that others have come up with. (see Jeff's post and Charlie's post)  This whole birthing experience has reminded me of the Kingdom of Heaven and its "now but not yet" state.  This is not a perfect analogy as you'll see (we do not parent Heaven), but bear with me.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a fetus awaiting birth, and the Earth is the expectant mother.  The Kingdom started at conception.  A sperm (the spiritual realm) fused with an egg (the earthly realm), and the Kingdom began as an embryo.  It has been growing since.  The mother begins to see signs that her baby is coming.  She gets morning sickness, becomes bloated, eventually sees the doctor, who gives a sonogram and shows through a vague picture, that the fetus is there.

The fetus grows, and the mother's uterus begins stretching.  She knows that the baby is inside her, growing, and she longs for the day she gets to meet it, but it is not yet time.  She has a connection to the fetus; she feels it kick and move.  

As the fetus continues growing, she begins to have contractions.  These contractions are false labor, her uterus getting ready to deliver, but she can tell the baby is closer at hand, and its arrival is imminent.  Contractions become more regular and increase in intensity, the cervix dilates, and the baby is born.  All the pain was worth it, as the mother holds that new-born baby in her arms.

Jesus said, "the Kingdom is at hand."  It is here on Earth, now, just as a fetus is present in the mother's womb.  We are anticipating the Kingdom of Heaven.  We can feel it kicking, we know it is imminent.  In time, the Earth will go into labor, the Kingdom will be born, and we will experience it in fullness.

Justice vs. Mercy

I’ve always thought of justice and mercy as being pitted against each other, as if they are opposite ends of a spectrum. And we need to try to find some happy compromise in the middle, erring on the side of mercy.  As I work my way through Martin Luther King Jr.'s "autobiography", my thoughts on this are changing.  (I left autobiography in quotes because it's actually a re-writing of his speeches, sermons, interviews, and letters in autobiographical form.)

I always defined justice as bad guys getting what they deserve and mercy as bad guys not getting what they deserve and being given a second chance.  Under these definitions I thought, “Jesus is pulling us away from justice and toward mercy.”  Dr. King seemed to have different definitions in mind than I have always had; he saw mercy as a step toward justice.

As Dr. King spoke to the African American population of Montgomery, AL, during the bus boycott, he used the word justice frequently. However, he was clear that the justice he spoke of had nothing to do with punishment but with wrongs being righted. After his house was bombed, it would have been understandable for him to ask that the bombers get their deserved punishment. Instead he said, “We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.”  Justice is not against the wrongdoers, but justice is for the wronged.

When I consider this definition of justice, I think Jesus would’ve thought the same way.  This puts a whole different spin on Luke 18:1-8, the parable of the unjust judge. Jesus says, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?  I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.” (emphasis mine) The justice Jesus brings isn’t punishment against those deserving; it’s making things right for those who have been wronged.

Jesus used (and is still using) mercy (or grace) as the chief vehicle for his justice. Jesus’ sacrifice rights the wrongs that man has done to God, to each other, to ourselves, and to creation.  His justice is restorative, not punitive; redemptive, not retributive, and in the upside-down way that Jesus does things, he makes it possible through grace, mercy, and love.