Archives for September 2005

Please join me in wishing Christopher Riley a

Happy Happy Happy Birthday!

At this time ten years ago Paul and I were awaking to the fleeting hours of our life Before Christopher. We didn’t take time to reflect as we were more focused on what was causing the passing of an age: the work of birthing the child who would supplant life as we knew it.

Let me tell you it was A LOT of work.

At the end of the day I was puffy, bruised and still in so much pain, dazed but happy. Paul was beaming, his face radiated pride and joy. Christopher was peaceful and perfect.

We didn’t know that an age had passed. Of course we knew that Parenthood had begun and that Life Before Children had ended but we had been ushered through a separate gate that no one could see and had begun to walk a path we didn’t know we were walking.

For Paul and me God has twice offered life through innocent babes. The first was Christ and the salvation brought by his death and resurrection. We consciously entered that era separately.

There is a picture of the second epoch. We are huddled on my hospital bed. Paul’s smile lights the picture, mine is softer, sleepy and cradled between us, his face slightly obscured by the swaddling blanket, is our first born child, a son and the beginning of our sanctification.

1. I taught the deep breathing technique I learned in my birth class to all of my children to help them relax, especially when they are in pain. It helps, if only to give them something to think about.

2. When I taught English in Japan my commitment was that when my students accosted Americans they would shout, “Hello!” rather than “Herro!”

3. Sometimes when I speak at my MOPS group I remind the women that they are off the clock and you can see them all relax a little more.

Birdie grabbed her brother, “Christopher, let’s make a deal. I don’t tease you and you don’t tease me.”

He thought for a second, stuck out his hand and said, “Agreed.”

They shook on it.

I’ll keep you posted.

For my mother-in-law, Barb. She has a terrible nose bleed and is going to the hospital.

My mother did the same thing in May and was fine.

Barb has an aneurysm which makes it…I don’t know.

Thank you.