The Family of God

When I went to college almost nine years ago, I left the church that I had gone to nearly my entire life.  Except for a couple of years during middle school, I attended the same church to adulthood.  Many (most?) of my important childhood memories revolve around church life.  There was a time where each week the congregation would hold hands and sing "The Family of God" together, and the sense of belonging, of family, of love I felt during those times stands nearly unmatched in my memory.

Do you know there are some people who spend their entire lives in the same church?  Why is this so strange to us now?  Regardless of the good or not-so-good reasons that people leave a church, what should be the ideal?  Is it something indifferent to leave one church for another?  What should we want for ourselves and for our children?  

...which reminds me of this Chesterton quote from What's Wrong with the World:

"There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man.  It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man.  Certainly, at least, we need a theorist.  A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work.  When things will not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all.  It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning."

Moving

After four years of renting at four different places, we are, Lord willing, closing on our first house next week. Renting has been nice, but I am very excited about living in a house and neighborhood that we can enjoy and invest in with a little more permanence.

I found this passage from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy timely for our move:

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing - say Pimlico.  If we think what is really best for Pimlico, we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary.  It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case, he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea.  Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.  The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason.  If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved.  For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable.  A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it.  A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck.  If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence.

Some readers will say that this is a fantasy.  I answer that this is the actual history of mankind.  This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great.  Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well.  People first paid honor to a spot and afterward gained glory for it.  Men did not love Rome because she was great.  She was great because they had loved her.  

The Way

Wordsmithy is a fun little read, and I just loved this paragraph:

A question I frequently get, and which I am generally reluctant to answer, is a question about time management. How do I get everything done? I don't like to answer this for three reasons. First, I don't get everything done. The done stuff is visible enough, but the undone stuff is sitting on my desk, staring at me malevolently. Secondly, I am a firm believer in distinguishing principles from methods, and I am afraid that if I talk too much about what I do, or the way I approach things, people in completely different circumstances or with a different set of gifts will think that I am saying that this is the way, which it isn't. And third, it seems awkward and self-centered to talk about yourself like you were a template of some kind, as though you were trying to explain to people how you got to be so wonderful. That kind of attitude evokes the ick response, and I don't ever want to look like I am doing that.

Pulling for Obama

First, let me say that I would sooner eat my own hand than cast a vote for Obama.

That being said, I do think it would be more beneficial for this country and the small government movement in the long run if Obama is reelected tomorrow.

"They" tell us that this is the most important election of our lives; the country is doomed if Obama is reelected.  I'm even told by one person that this will be the last election in American history we allow Obama to win.  Really?  Am I the only one who is getting really sick of the apocalyptic scare tactics being used to convince me to vote one way or the other?

Maybe the country is doomed and there will never be another election.  But it's not going to be because of what happened on one day in November of 2012.  It will be because we are a country full of idiots who care more about free birth control than the drone war, among other things.

Unfortunately, the public seems to view Romney and the Republican Party as the party of limited government and Obama and the Democrats as the reverse.  Their policies may be quite similar, but these are the perceptions.  Of course, regardless of some usual campaign rhetoric, I don't believe Romney represents limited government.  But when he fails to change the direction the country is going, his limited government philosophy will be blamed.  On the other hand, when Obama fails to change the direction the country is going after eight years in office, I believe that many people will reject his socialist philosophy, which will then open the door for a true conservative candidate to come along and be successful.

Romney and Obama don't seem too different on foreign policy, but I do give a slight edge to Obama as being less war-mongering.  The Republican Party is still not willing to admit their mistakes from the Bush years, so I also believe that another four years of Democrat-led war will hopefully cause the Republicans to begin rejecting war, even if only for partisan purposes.

If Romney does win and is not a conservative president, it will be very hard for a Republican to mount a successful challenge against him in 2016.  We will, once again, not have a chance at a conservative option from the two major parties until 2020.  If in 2020 we have just had eight years of Romney, I suspect that the country will swing back toward the Democrats just to change it up and see if it works.

I also think that the Republicans will take the Senate and keep the House, so a Democrat in the White House is going to create more deadlock.  We know what happened last time the Republicans were in complete control; it wasn't good.  A government efficient in getting things done is usually a government totally screwing us.

Who knows what will happen in the coming years?  Romney may be better than Obama in the long run, but I don't think that will be the case.  Based on both of these candidates' records and plans, I'm fairly certain that either one will be a complete disaster for the next four years.

As for me, tomorrow I will be writing in Ron Swanson.



(Just kidding...but seriously, that would be awesome.)

Catechism Fail

Mommy: Nathan, who are you? (answer: "I am a child of God")
Nathan: (holding his Cars cup) I am Lightening McQueen!

James' Birth Story

I had been having contractions for a couple of weeks for a few hours each evening, but they always went away during the night. We went to my favorite Italian place, Capri's, with Gus' parents for dinner the night of March 15, and I thought the contractions felt a little different and a little steadier.  I didn't want to get my hopes up (though it couldn't have been too much longer since I was already four days past my due date), so I went to bed that night half-expecting them to go away.

I woke up a little before 4, and though the contractions were not much stronger and were still about 8-10 minutes apart, I couldn't sleep because I knew this was definitely the real thing.  Of course, Nathan sensed the excitement and woke up around 5:30 and wouldn't go back to bed, so we called my parents to come get him.  After he left around 7, I did something I never thought I would want to do in labor: we watched a movie.  Office Space.  My contractions were still not very serious, still about 8 minutes apart or so, so it was nice to laugh and relax instead of  obsessively timing contractions  (which is what I did during my first labor).

Around 10, we went to Publix to get some snacks, and we walked a lap at the soccer complex near our house.  My contractions went from 8 minutes apart to six minutes apart, and I experimented with laboring in different positions.  I tried the shower, which was awesome in that I could only slightly feel the peak of my contraction, but I didn't feel like I could totally relax there.  So I mostly followed a good friend's suggestion to labor on the toilet, and I could tell a huge difference in my mental state and progress when I did that.

Around 12:30 or 1, I was concerned that my contractions were still 6 minutes apart and about 1 minute long, so I tried a few things to speed up labor like eating pineapple and kiwi, doing squats, etc.  At 1:15, the contractions suddenly went to 3 minutes apart, 45 seconds long.  Though I had been working  on "opening" all morning, these contractions took more focus at making sure that I maintained control.  Still on the toilet, I would lean forward onto Gus and make sure that my hands and mouth were relaxed during the contractions.  Around 2, I got chills, which I remembered getting during transition with Nathan, so after a few more contractions, Gus called our midwife/friend/neighbor Elizabeth to see what she thought.  She came over a few minutes later to set up her stuff and check the baby's heart tones, but it didn't seem like she thought I was going to have the baby really soon.

Sometime after she got there, my hips started feeling like they were on fire.  I moved to a kneeling position beside the bed, and Gus pressed on my hips during a contraction.  I moved to the bed to lie in the running position during the next contraction to see if that helped, and it was the most painful moment of the birth because I completely lost control of my body.  I gripped the sheets as hard as I could and gritted my teeth and even had Gus try to lift me off the bed during the contraction.  I moved back to the toilet where I was able to relax again, and had another contraction really quickly.  I had three hard contractions very close together, but I used several relaxation techniques suggested in Ina May's Guide to Childbirth that helped me not lose control.

During the third hard contraction, Elizabeth came in to check the baby's heart tones, and I thought to myself, "I CANNOT do this much longer."  Elizabeth left the bathroom, and it seemed like almost immediately I had another contraction, this time a pushing one.  I never felt an urge to push with my first birth (I was 10 cm and everyone was panicking about how long it was taking), so the feeling caught me totally off-guard.  I called for Elizabeth and told her I thought I needed to push, and she was back in the bathroom in a flash with her gloves on.  I didn't really believe that I was done with the first stage of labor because it was so short and (relatively) easy.  I told her I thought I could make it to the bed for the next contraction, so Gus helped me to the bed where I assumed the all-fours position for pushing.  The baby's head was right there, and during the next contraction, my water broke and his head came out.  It took two more contractions before he was completely out.  Gus was holding a pillow under my head, which I was screaming into, not out of pain, but out of the enormous effort I was putting forth to get the baby out.  He was born at 3:09 p.m., less than 12 hours after I knew I was in for real labor and less than two hours after I really started working.  Exhausted and in complete disbelief that it was already over, I sat back on the bed and held my baby.  I didn't even think to ask/look if he was a boy or girl for a couple minutes.

James laid in my arms, eyes wide open, and looked back and forth between me and Gus as we talked.  He was so peaceful and alert.  After a few minutes, he started breastfeeding easily, and I delivered the placenta after several more contractions.  Around this time, the midwife's two apprentices arrived, and they cleaned me up just a little bit and then left us alone with the baby.  It was so incredible to relax and bond with our baby undisturbed for an hour or more before they came back to do the newborn exam.  He weighed 8 lb. 1 oz., and I still am completely amazed that I gave birth to a baby that big.

My whole birth experience was awesome, and I can't imagine how it could have been any better.  I learned a lot from my first birth, and all my mental and physical preparation and hours on my hands and knees turning the baby from posterior certainly paid off.  I don't really necessarily like when people use the term "pain-free" to describe their natural labors because I think it probably sounds lame and braggy or even untrue to people who didn't have natural labors, but I would definitely not describe my birth as painful.  It was intense, hard work that was totally worth it to have a peaceful, complication-free, healthy delivery at home.

James Donovan

born at home

March 16, 2012 at 3:09 p.m.

8 lbs. 1 oz., 20.5 inches