Better Problems

Unlike the days of waiting in Milwaukee where blogging was a welcome time killer, now it is something I have to make time for, sometimes feeling like I am sidelining more important things and people to be sure to keep it up. Perhaps I am in training for fatherhood. Our lives are so full of wonderful things that I want time off. Didn't I pray for a flying job in Santa Barbara? A house of our own to do projects on? Family and friends? My own family, currently all in one package? How can you have too much of any of those things? I can't, but somehow I feel guilty trying to get out to a coffee shop to write this post. I am rushing to relax. This is all a warm up course, I suppose, for when an hour to write a post will be like an eternity. A ridiculous luxury which I would not even think to ask for. What wonderful problems we face! We are equal parts bored and busy. A situation that will soon change to exclude the bored part. We will be trading bed rest for baby-chasing. Position changing for diaper changing (we estimate about 20 per day). And our days of trying to decide which tasks we should complete will be traded for the perpetual cycle of our sons' input and output. Again, all answers to prayer.

As our problems decrease and our new problems are byproducts of much larger answered prayers we have temporarily grown used to our strange life. As though it were normal to have Megan at home and sideways all the time. We have settled into something weird and find ourselves wondering why our life seems flat. Perhaps it is because it is, literally, actually flat. We have to remember that we used to do things. We have to remember that we used to go out to dinner downtown. See movies. Go to the beach. Go hiking. Go swimming. That last summer we did a triathlon. That this time last year we were at the end of a 6 week trans-continental road trip. This year we are at the end of 6 week couch ride. It is not that we are ungrateful. Or that we have just become used to the fact that our boys seem to be ok. It is more that we are lulled into not feeling a whole lot of anything as we try to just pass the time until this phase is over. As we do that we try to remember that we face boredom only because our prayers are being answered. Remember that six weeks ago it seemed just as likely that we would be mourning the loss of one or both of our boys by now. Here is the power of prayer.

We have learned that Elk Creek Baptist church in McCall Idaho is praying for our boys. We are on the "prayer-chain" at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in St. Catherine Missouri. Also in Red Bluff California. Our church routinely prays for them. Our home group too. An unknown church in Montgomery Alabama is praying. A Presbyterian Church in Columbia South Carolina. One in Sommerset California. Noe valley in San Francisco. Trinity Presbyterian in San Carlos. Our family is praying and so are the folks at Life Network. Our friends kids are praying. Our neighbors are praying. Is God's mind made up? Will our praying more sway the vote? Last Sunday I went to "receive" prayer from one of the "prayer teams" that stand by to pray while the church takes communion. It was my first time. The team were Elders and friends who already knew our story and were already praying for us. She is wise and he is a doctor and they offered up heartfelt and educated prayers which were no more or less important than the ones my four year old niece prays. I pray the same things over and over. God heard me the first time but I keep asking him again and again. If He knows what we think before we think it, perhaps it is that we expose it all to him willingly that matters. We pray most fervently because we have so little to offer to the equation. We pray because we are never home free even when we feel like we are.

BTW: Ultrasounds continue to show the same good news. Our next one is on the 26th so we will post some numbers then.