Fatherhood

On August 26th, at about 9 in the morning, I became a Dad for the first time.

Joanna's water broke unexpectedly on Thursday night, and we labored through it together (in a sense) all night long.  She pulled it off naturally, with some light drugs in her IV drip to take the edge off.  Still, I've never seen her in more pain - and have never been more proud to stand by her side.  She progressed quickly with the "help" of pitocin, and by 8am, it was time to push.  I held one leg while the nurse held the other, and watched as our daughter came into the world.  It was surreal.

I tried mostly in vain to read the Psalms and pray aloud during Joanna's labor - I was so overcome with the experience, and seeing her endure so much that I choked almost every time I opened my mouth.  It's something I've seen my own Dad experience countless times before.  Jo's father has similar moments when he will "fall silent" in prayer or conversation if he's feeling especially emotional.

For me, it was the feeling that an explosive sob was lurking just below the surface - threatening to emasculate if I so much as spoke another word.  A week later I can see that the deeper cause was more like a consuming gratefulness.

Gratefulness to be married to the woman of my dreams, to have the opportunity to become a Dad, to have a healthy and whole child, and to know that God had chosen Jo and I to be her parents.  Although we were surprised to discover the process was beginning in December of 2010; walking through the moment, contraction by contraction, it couldn't have felt more on purpose - meant to be - even orchestrated.

And it left me speechless.


Through it - I felt engrafted into the fraternity of speechless, grateful Dads; verklempt and unable to utter a sound.  Not emasculated, but reborn as something "more man" than I was before.  Metamorphosed into something deeper perhaps.  I wonder if it happens each time you have a child, or if it even happens to every dude who becomes "Dad"?

Finally, as I cut the cord and Everly Ivy Tongue was placed on Jo's chest for the first time, I cut loose and did burst into sobbing tears.  No good reason to hold back - no chance to pull it off if I had tried.

Learning - by Doing - by Sitting

Summer was kind to me.  With lots of changes in the NLSW, getting licensed as a pastor, and a baby (any day now!) to cap it all off - it held my attention well enough.  Still, the biggest surprise of summer happened to be an extra vertebrae that ironically frustrated my efforts to fully enjoy the aforementioned summer season.

Discovering that spare bone back there (pun intended), my mind became alerted to the gentle ache - that while not terrible threw my mental fortitude for a loop.  It's taken about 2 months to heal physically, and get over it mentally.  Along the way I've had a few new experiences - "rights of passage" if you will.

The strange; at the end of a ride, pulling onto my sidewalk passing a haggard, shirtless guy who called out even as he recoiled to one side, "Can I have your bike?"  I surprised even myself with the speed of my reaction - thoughtless, instinctual: "No!"

The universal; walking back in cleats after a flat when I forgot a spare, getting rescued from miles of cleat-walking, spending an hour trying to fix my first flat, and that first ride back out on a tube I changed myself.  Freedom.

The terrifying; a "Hells Angels" kind of guy on a polished hog made a last minute left in front of me.  He wasn't looking.  I was resting my neck for a split second - staring at my spinning ankles - and when I looked up it was almost too late.  My tires squeaked, leaving rubber on the road.  It was much closer than I ever want to experience again; inches.  

Although I might call it adventure, Jo wouldn't be happy to hear about my afternoon 'endo' at 30mph.

Of course, if you're not a rider yourself, these things aren't half as interesting as they are to me.  What I discovered  this summer was an underlying fear, an insecurity.  "What if I'm doomed to life on the couch?  What if despite a fortitude for fitness, I'm unable, and slowly degenerate into neglect and apathy?"  This battle has been as much mental as it has been flesh and blood.

Getting back into some speed work last week, thinking over how well I'd recovered, the verse in 2 Corinthians came to mind: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"  As things do while riding - it began to just run through my mind over and over, until I added my own piece to the finish - "the new has come in me."

That 'newness' is more encompassing than any of us fully realize, not limited to our physical bodies or occasional circumstances, but the depths of soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  Thanks God.  My summer journey of bike and bone, mind and spirit helped me remember anew; "I will not fear, He holds it all."

European Rhythms

After a long, 2 month summer break from leading worship, I was ready to get back into it.

I lead worship for a men's prayer meeting, that creatively enough goes by the same name, "Men's Prayer."  I took over for Ross Parsley in January of 2010 as he prepared to plant his church that fall, and have been doing it ever since.  I have to be there at 6am each Thursday for sound check and a 6:30 start time, and since I live about 30minutes from the church, I get up at about 4:45 on Thursday's.

After the service, I head to Chick-Fil-A with the band; a tradition we've carried on together since very early on.  Some days we talk about the set, the service, or ways to dig deeper into what we do each week with the men of New Life.  Other days the conversation diverges to work situations, avant-garde chiptune concerts, and the varied perplexities of life from just as varied generational perspectives.

Usually, but not as regularly as I'd like, I head to Starbucks right afterward.  I arrive at about 8:23 each week, and have discovered the beauty of routine.  Specifically, I've seen the same elderly couple at this specific Starbucks whenever I come - for at least the last year.

There's something mysterious and beautiful about them; him with his hard-of-hearing loud-talking, her with her too-strong-for-public perfume - and the both of them with thick Jersey accents that endear them almost immediately.  And there's something about their routine, a rhythm that every Thursday helps me feel I've been transported to a side-street bistro somewhere in Italy, and that time itself has somehow been made to wait for the day to really begin.

I look forward to this moment, coffee in hand, like an "after worship dessert" every week.

I think it's the rhythm of it.  The respiration, the sipping of the hot coffee, the morning sun, the familiar faces all help me pause and reset - just in time for the weekend as fate would have it.  These moments help me remain, and become, the person I want to be: someone centered by a routine and not bound to it.  A person who can "lean back in the saddle" of life, and take a look at the scenery as it goes by.

I've grown to cherish my early, sleepless Thursday mornings.  Time with God, the men of New Life, and an hour of solitude with my coffee has helped shape my vocational ministry in a should-have-seen-it-coming-but-didn't kind of way.  For that, I'm thankful.

Reading What? (part two)

This article, "Books Without Batteries: The Negative Impacts of Technology" by Bill Henderson, is something of a plug for his new book, "Book Love." Here Henderson explores the cents and sense of the E-reader debate with regards to the ecological impact this technology promises. (continued from part one)

Some think that the e-reader will save trees. Soon, according to a recent New York Times article, we will possess over 100 million e-readers. What a savings in our forests, right? Wrong.

Here’s what an e-reader is: a battery-operated slab, about a pound, one-half inch think, perhaps with an aluminum border, rubberized back, plastic, metal, silicon, a bit of gold, plus rare metals such as columbite-tantalite (Google it) ripped from the earth, often in war-torn Africa. To make one e-reader requires 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water to refine the minerals and produce the battery and printed writing. The production of other e-reading devices such as cellphones, iPads, and whatever new gizmo will pop up in the years ahead is similar. “The adverse health impacts [on the general public] from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those for making a single book,” says the Times.

Then you figure that the 100million e-readers will be outmoded in short order, to be replaced by 100 million new and improved devices in the years ahead that will likewise be replaced by new models ad infinitum, and you realize an environmental disaster is at hand. We will have lost a chunk of our planet as we lose our minds to the digital juggernaut.

Here’s what it takes to make a book, which, if it is any good, will be shared by many readers and preserved and appreciated in personal, public, and university libraries that survive the gigantic digital book burning: recycled paper, a dash of minerals, and two gallons of water. Batteries not necessary. If trees are harvested, they can be replanted.

I co-edited Book Love – a collection of observations on writing, reading, and the tradition of printed and bound books – for those who still love books. Books are our history and our future. If they survive, we will, too. Books, readers, writers – on this tripod we keep the faith.

Book Love, edited by James Charlton and Bill Henderson is out from Pushcart Press on April 23, the International Day of the Book.



Check out Part 3 in the days ahead for some of my own brief thoughts about this subject.