Dave is 33!

We had a great day celebrating Dave's birth!

I'll let the pictures tell the story :)

Threes for Daddy!

We took Dave to Seafood Sams for dinner and celebrated with a lobster roll and lots of threes!

birthday kiss from Sarah

birthday kiss from Siah

giggles because even after many attempts they couldn't seem to kiss at the same time

which led to lots more kisses

Next year, Lydia! Here's to another great year with the love of our lives and rock of our family!

Dave ended the week by picking out a speaker and a project guitar.

Do We Worry About Our Children?

Sarah and Josiah are playing on the living room floor together- Josiah rolling around and chewing on toys while Sarah chases him and makes those same toys into hats for his head. It touches my heart to see it because I was made in the image of a God who sees children (red, yellow, black, and white) as precious in His sight. You were made like Him too, which is why neither of us can stop looking at all those pictures of babies on Facebook.

We live in a small New England village not unlike the one you see on the news these days. Our children are unaware that a mad gunman could have just as easily chosen our picturesque Christmas Village Stroll over a quaint elementary school yesterday. But we're aware. As Osterville lit up like a Norman Rockwell painting last night, you could tell everyone was keeping a closer eye on their children. What if he'd come here instead? It's a scary thought. Were God not with me, I couldn't bear it.

It's hard to think or write about yesterday's shooting. It's the sort of event that reveals our hearts. Is yours willing to question or judge God? You may know a little better now from your response yesterday. But there's a difference between a judgmental, "How could He?", and a childlike, "I don't understand."

We don't understand the whole answer, but it begins and ends with a little baby, one we're all thinking about this time of year. He faced the cold of the night without a home as soon as he drew his breath, fled to Egypt to escape the rage of a king, and then grew up to promise us that, while we would be delivered over to death, not a hair on our heads would perish. He didn't just promise that, he lived it. He was, like yesterday's children, delivered over to an unjust and undeserved death. His was on a criminal's cross, the kind normally reserved for school shooters.

Could you trust Jesus if the story ended there? No, it would have proved all His promises empty. "He saved others, let him save himself!", the crowd shouted, as if the cross proved his defeat. But they were wrong. Once the stone rolled away and the earth shook, we saw the truth- not a hair on his head perished. He was risen.

It's also hard to trust God with our children if we see life's story ending at death. "He still can't save others!", the crowd will shout. But once again they will be wrong. We will see it when all of us who died with Christ rise with him, not one hair on our heads having perished.

How confident can we be that yesterday's twenty children will be there, risen with us? The scriptures stop one half step before giving complete assurance, but they do tell us comforting news. First, they remind us that God can change even the heart of a fetus when the unborn John leaps in his mother's womb as she nears Mary and the unborn Jesus. He can save the children we've lost to miscarriage in the same way, by giving them a new heart which loves Jesus and is sensitive to his presence. That sounds like a miracle, and it is. But it's no more miraculous than the day He saved me. I was as capable of real faith as a 4-cell zygote the day before God saved me, except that my heart was harder.

Then we're taught time and time again that God especially loves children (and that Satan especially hates them). Jesus calls the children to come to him and tells us to have faith like theirs while Satan has pharaohs and kings hunt them down with the sword. God spares the Israelite children in the desert when their parents rebel, while demon-gods require the Canaanites to sacrifice their own children. Then God sends His own Son to earth as, of all things, a baby boy. He spreads His love for children all over His pages, and then makes us in His image, with a soft spot for children in our own hearts.

He loves them, can save them, and will always do what is right. We don't have a handy proof-text that guarantees our children's salvation. If we did, we'd probably abuse it. But what God reveals about himself in the Bible gives us great hope for our children. And there is one thing that He does assure us: that He is trustworthy. You can trust Him with them, He will do right, and you will praise Him for it in Heaven. Fear not.

A horrific death was part of God's plan for His own Son, and that doesn't mean God didn't love Him. Could it be His plan for my son or for my daughter? Could their path toward exaltation look frighteningly like His? I pray that instead they will die old in a warm bed, but I trust Him in whatever path He has for them.

He is good, He is just, and He loves especially the little children of the World.

A Wise Dad with Dirty Fingernails

I don't remember my dad ever coming home from work clean. I'm sure he did sometimes, but it's tough to run a peat mine without getting a moderate to severe amount of dirt on you. You should have seen our house on laundry day.

I also can't remember any hobbies of his that didn't somehow connect him to us. Dad never withdrew to have his own time, though if I'm anything like him, I'm sure he wanted to. He would make music with me, take us skiing, sit with my mom, work on the house for us, work on my car, or take us to church. If he ever did slow down, it was to watch NASCAR, and he usually fell asleep. He worked more hours than an average dad, but I never knew that. Because when he was home, he was home with all his heart.

Eventually he took me to the peat mine and put me to work. I still enjoy bragging about having run a front-end loader as a young teenager, but I'm even more glad to have seen him in work mode. He plays in the the dirt like he means it. His employees respect him because he cares for them and knows what he's doing. He goes to survey a prospective site, shoots a cottonmouth in the face, and doesn't tell us about it. The environmentalists tell him to restore an acre of wetland, and he restores two. Then he invents a way to replace peat with compost and suddenly turns commercial potting soil into a renewable resource. Nobody knows dirt like my dad. And he works it with all of his heart.

We shared several adventures and misadventures that involved a ski boat. I've never seen anyone swim faster (and I watched the 2008 Olympics) than he did the day a ski rope turned into a noose and drug my neck behind a boat. He made absolutely sure I was safe. But then he waited and waited while he was coaching me through a deep-water start on a slalom ski. In the cockpit of a boat, and everywhere else, he is an aggressive lion and a patient lamb rolled into one.

It took so long, and so much renewal of my own mind through reading the Bible, for me to see what was really going on. Why does my dad love to work in dirt? Because he's a man, who, like Adam, was made to work the earth. Why is he so naturally like both a lion and a lamb? Because he knows the Lion and the Lamb. Why does he love his bride so consistently? Because he knows a Savior who loves His bride. Why is he so good to Jacki and I? Because he knows a Father who loves His children. Everything that makes him a great dad is rooted in one thing: he knows the Lord.

My point is this: my dad isn't awesome because he read a thousand books on how to raise children. He just fears the Lord and acts like a man. Because the fear of the Lord really is the beginning of wisdom, and a wise dad is a good dad.

Now I get to watch him play with his granddaughter in the dirt, and number myself among the many dads who are trying to figure this fatherhood thing out. I think it just might work if I can remember the big lesson he silently taught me: to love the Lord and be a man. It's an intimidating calling. But if you fear the Lord, He will give you wisdom, just like He gave it to my dad. And maybe (eventually) your children will notice it.

I'm starting to.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Lessons from Fatherhood

From Dave.

Having a Father taught me much about my Heavenly Father.  Of course, most of it went over my head, but God is a patient teacher.  Some of what I missed from watching my dad be Dad is finally becoming clear now that I'm Dad.  My hope now is that I can articulate some of these lessons well, so that you might share in them. 

Life Lesson: We Don't Understand the Good Our Father Intends for Us

I wonder how often Sarah thinks we have her ill in mind.  Putting her in her car seat, which she always likes once she's fully in it, probably makes her see me more as a tormentor than a protective father.  Changing her clothes doesn't seem like an act of service to her when we're doing it.  Bathing doesn't seem all that loving to her.  Only now has she realized that changing her diaper is not punishment.  But we have her good in mind through all of it. We're serving her and loving her, but she thinks we're out to get her. 

How often God's children do the same to Him.  Sarah doesn't have a baby-version of Romans 8:28 to remind her that her Father is working all this together for her good, and the good of our family.  But we do.  God tells us plainly that the sufferings we go through and the discipline we receive are for our good.  If only I could teach that to the 26 year-old single man who stared at his ceiling the night before he met Emily Howell, wondering of God had any plans for his life.  I still don't know why he delayed bringing her into my life for so long, but I know that he will work that with everything else together for my good.  That's what fathers do for their children. One day it might be a very good thing that I put Sarah in that car seat, and she may not even realize it then.  But I'll do it.  Because that's what fathers do for their children. 

Surely Sarah doesn't understand all I intend for her.  I want to give her an inheritance, teach her the things of God, marry her to a good man, feed her for decades, teach her about chocolate, write songs for her, and so much more!  She doesn't even know what the stuffed frog in her crib is, much less what my plans for her are.  Likewise with us, no mind can comprehend what God has prepared for us. If only we would realize that there is so much more to life than the scary car seat God is patiently strapping us into. 

Apologetics Lesson: Relativism Is a Sensible Outcome of Spiritual Blindness

One thing I was not ready for when it came to having a baby was the smorgasbord of conflicting opinions that were thrown at us.  I was ill-equipped to lead us through it, because I had no idea the seriousness with which people take pregnancy, birthing, and child-rearing strategies.  Not only does every doctor, college, book, and friend disagree with all the others on everything, they all seem to believe that Sarah and Emily will die terrible, immediate deaths if we follow someone else's method.  Just when we think we've got something figured out, our Doctor tells us that what we're doing is bad for her.  Then our friend tells us that our doctor is an ignorant liar.  Eventually, we just wind up having to say "this works for us, get over it," and shutting out that well-meaning friend who thinks he knows the only way to have/raise a baby.  Somewhere in there I realized that this is the same experience the lost go through when it comes to the things of God.

I may not have any more respect for those who try to preach that your idea of God is right if it works for you, but I do have more pity for them now.  It's awful not knowing what the truth is and putting up with conflicting opinions from people who think they know more than everyone else.  If it weren't for the revelation of God through His Scriptures, I would be in the same place spiritually.  And I can see why "to each his own" teaching about life-or-death matters are so appealing.  They certainly are to me when it comes to scheduling Sarah or feeding her on demand.  I can see why, to a lost man, I'm just another man shoving an opinion down his throat, convinced that he will die if he doesn't listen to me.  If he can't see that God's word is true, that's exactly what I will look like to him.  What will he do?  Shut me out and file me in with all the other preachers he's heard.  The same thing I've come to do with baby-raising books.  This is why just hearing the Gospel isn't enough.  It takes the Spirit of God showing us that the Gospel is true, and opening our eyes to see it.  Without that, the blessed Gospel preacher looks no better than the preachers of Satan's Kingdom- probably worse.

Marriage Lesson: Love Is Not Made To Die, but To Bring New Life

I can remember, before Sarah was born, listening to Paul Simon sing a line from "April, Come She Will," about a love that had grown cold.  He compared it to Autumn's chilly winds, and it had a corresponding effect on my own heart.  "Am I a young fool?" I wondered, "Or am I right to sense something wrong with that?"  I guess this is an effect of a genre that sang about love all day but never sang about marriage.  I got to thinking, and I realized that the opposite was happening in my own life: our love was making a new human being.  New life was here.  Chants of "We don't die, we multiply," went through my head, but I quickly went on to something more productive.  I wrote Emily her Valentines Day present, a song with a chorus of "They say love just grows old and dies, but all I've seen it do is bring new life."

I'm blessed to get to live in it, but I do believe this is what marriage was made for.  It's not made to grow old and be moved on from.  It's not made to die until one of its participants does.  Rather, it is made to show new life: the new life of the Gospel it models and new life in the children it can create. It's a bouquet that keeps on blooming, not a fall leaf that will soon fall off. 


So that is a bit of what I've been learning.  My hands have learned many lessons of serving, love, patience, ect.  But my heart is learning, too.  God really does love his children.  I am thankful He is a patient teacher.