Elias.

A son of prayers, if there ever was one. He's still wheezy more than a baby should be (the surgeon told us that infants with TEF have softer tracheas), and his herniated belly-button might be causing us more concern than it warrants (doctors don't do anything about them until kids are four years old or so) - but overall he's been gaining weight quickly and acting more and more like his brothers and sister did at his age. I can finally write about him now, since the raw agony of panic has for the most part subsided, along with the bulk of all those feelings of foreboding I had before.

Still, the valleys of the shadow formed such a regular sort of rhythm for the last several months we can't help but feel a bit of flinching expectancy. Father, please forgive our fears, and at the same time don't lead us into temptation-deliver us from evil.

Also been feeling a general cloud of malaise - probably from lack of sleep and company - these last few weeks. Brandy has had even less sleep than I have, and the older kids have suffered quite a bit of neglect in the mornings. It's a little disappointing how much our family boat can rock after a few big waves. But still, the comforting rhythms of Thanking our Father in Heaven for our breakfast, reading to the kids before bed, or going through the first ten or so questions of the Westminster Shorter Catechism have done a lot to help us find our sea-legs again. The one thing I do miss is closer fellowship with other strong believers (or even not so strong believers).

I guess we could seek it out, but it's difficult to find time or presence of mind to arrange anything that would work, and so many friendly visits with believers we don't know so well can end up being mostly small talk.

Small talk...is it the human equivalent of canine rear-sniffing? I guess it's necessary in its way, as a sort of preliminary to real conversations that might follow; but it can be very tiring.

Going through Genesis for our weekly bible-study. Brandy can't participate as much since she's doing the bulk of baby-holding, and since bible-study hours coincide with Elias' fussy hours. Ben and Rose have been our faithful attendees for the past six months or more, others have come and gone, TJ's been so busy with his extra work at the Roaster in Camano Island he hasn't shown for a while. In a lot of ways a good bible study is a lot harder to put together than a "teaching". The organizer has to come up with questions that aren't too hard for people to understand, but aren't too easy either. Just like in a class, people are hesitant to answer the first because they think they'll get it wrong and embarrass themselves, or reluctant to answer the second kind because it's boring or degrading. Thinking of good questions is like fine-tuning a dial.

But life is Good, God has blessed us, I am full of blessings and peanut butter. The only think I want right now is Light, more Light - conscious fellowship with God in Christ.

Talked to a depressed friend yesterday, and asked him where he thought individual human worth came from. He said

"Do you want to know the "right" answer?"

Me: "I want to hear what you think the right answer is, but I want to hear your answer."

Friend: "Well, the "right" answer, 'Jesus died for our sins & we're redeemed' - but me? I have no idea."

This followed with a little more conversation in which I mentioned that I think scripture says our worth is based on us being created in God's image-not necessarily the redemption.

I also shared that when I was in a similar spiral I prayed for God to help me to feel what I knew. I also probably kept him longer than was good for either of us.

All during that conversation, I was trying to remember when I felt the same way.

Once I did. It's been such a long time though, I don't feel that way any longer and haven't for quite a while. I don't want to forget though.

It's one thing to repeat the "right" answers, or to correct someone's "right" answers, but until you've gotten inside someone's anguish and tried to really understand the problem, I've found that people (others have done this to me and I've done it-God forgive me-to others) tend to shoot over the heads of the people they're trying to help, and after blowing the smoke from their barrels with a satisfied smile, they get irritated that their patient can't see that their problem has been neatly solved. Maybe they'll reload and try again. Maybe they'll blame the patient's obstinacy. Maybe they'll blame the patient for something else.

But maybe, just maybe, there is a God in heaven,

A God who hears prayer and does, really does, something about these things.

I have a regimen of praying - or trying to pray.

Oh God, help me to stop just talking to the ceiling & beg you with something like reality for the things only you can do.

Just watched "The Fountain" with Brandy, and am struck
1.) With Eve's name "Chavvah" meaning "Life", "Living"
2.) With Oswald Chambers' definition of Love: "We have defined love, in its highest sense, as being the sovereign preference of my person for another person."

He develops this saying:
"The surest sign that God has done a work of grace in my heart is that I love Jesus Christ best, not weakly and faintly, not intellectually, but passionately, personally and devotedly, overwhelming every other love of my life."

Love is the sovereign preference of my person for another person, and we may be astonished to realise that love springs from a voluntary choice. Love for God does not spring naturally out of the human heart; but it is open to us to choose whether we will have the love of God imparted to us by the Holy Spirit. “. . . the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5; see also Luke 11:13). We are emphasising just now the need of voluntary choice. It is of no use to pray, “O Lord, for more love! give me love like Thine; I do want to love Thee better,” if we have not begun at the first place, and that is to choose to receive the Holy Spirit Who will shed abroad the love of God in our hearts.
Beware of the tendency of trying to do what God alone can do, and of blaming God for not doing what we alone can do. We try to save ourselves, but God only can do that; and we try to sanctify ourselves, but God only can do that. After God has done these sovereign works of grace in our hearts, we have to work them out in our lives. “. . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).
The love of God is the great mainspring, and by our voluntary choice we can have that love shed abroad in our hearts, then unless hindered by disobedience, it will go on to develop into the perfect love described in 1 Corinthians 13.
We have, then, to make the voluntary choice of receiving the Holy Spirit Who will shed abroad in our hearts the love of God, and when we have that wonderful love in our hearts, the sovereign preference for Jesus Christ, our love for others will be relative to this central love. “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5).

Pilgrim set
face to the east
before the fire's rising

Soul led soles
tread tight the stone
one way to the binding feast

Winds will cut
while earth grows cold
yet walkers won't grow weary

grim gripp'd scroll
flame writ in blood
Voice of the Elder Brother

Blade held out
bone and marrow
Edge bites through evening powers

Master's light
bleeds from within
fills children with his fire

Morning's sons
through darkness bound
To meet a Father's welcome.

Josh Garrels, everyone.
The best music I've heard since...Supertones maybe? It's really good. Words, music, worship, it's got it all. I downloaded "Jacaranda" from Itunes, and even though I could kick myself because Amazon has the download for less with higher-quality non-DRM mp3s, I don't regret buying the album at all. In fact, I can't stop listening to it!
I checked out his website & subscribed to his blog too, he seems like a really neat, really real guy overall. And a brother.

So, I highly recommend at least Jacaranda, and from what I've heard of it, "Lost Animals" too.

And Brandy just told me my nose is cold and wet like a dog. Not, mind you, like a dog's but like a dog. Since as we all know, dogs are perpetually wet.

Statistics is killing me! Well, at least it's hogging up my homework time. Lord willing, I'll continue to get good grades in it though. "West and the World" is as effortless as Western Civ. in HS, and Greek, well, I really need to devote more time to it. Especially as that's one of the main reasons I wanted to go to school.

Skipped out on a lot of homework time today, went running @ discovery park with TJ, who accused me of "going native" since I was doing a lot of jumping and sprinting-but it was so pristine and perfect out it just came natural.
Then I went out with Brandy & the kids to the Aquarium where I learned a lot about Octopi. Did you know they only live for 4 years tops? Then they spawn and die like salmon. Considering how intelligent they are I think that's sad.

Then we went to a park (yet another park) we live close to, yet have never been to before. I'll post a picture of it tomorrow.

I don't know anybody as good as you
faithfulness and truth
your beauty is a solid thing, and sure
bringing grace to plain things
practical, pure.
all the things I despised
you show, and I now see they mean more.
I always loved the equations,
but you live by the sums.
The ideals I worshipped haven't lasted
some have chipped and some have shattered
no one can reach those crazy dreams
so it's good to wake up
when visions fail
and find you.

With a whole world waiting would you lift away my fears
if I lost my place in hesitation washed away in falling years
all the people behind the faces that are fading in the rearview
has my climbing all been slipping and forgetting those I knew?
and the words, the words on fire, lying under piles of ashes
cold and grey can they be coaxed into a flame of life and passion?
Another life, another life, is what I find myself in asking
another life, a living fountain-to replace the life that's passing.

"Pie in the sky when you die". It seems that a large chunk of Christendom is feeling the buises from these sticks and stones, and avoiding the idea of after-death promises of scripture in favor of the world's vision of "Pie right now, before you die."

Though, I don't see what's wrong with pie in the sky after you die. If you get pie right now, you end up with death - hardly satisfying. In the mocked Christian version, your life doesn't end with death, but has its final realization in "pie". I'd prefer to end with pie, rather than death, thank you.

sails are slack today
perhaps the wind is higher
than the mast
or is it the slack hands
that have had their fill of rigging
and just want to hold a cup of coffee?
but the storms, they come,
though unseen
and split the unready ships in two
the sea below is hungry, waiting
the hands and arms need motivating
can't wait for the rain.

A Day in the Life of Me.

Today, I counted to 1,000 for Josiah. Well, now that I think of it, it was 1,020. I can't remember why we got on the subject, but he asked me how you counted to 1,000, and I told him it's like counting to 100 ten times. Then he asked me to show him. I started, expecting him to get bored at about two hundred, but no - he sat there watching me, sucking his thumb on and off, for the whole ten minutes or however long it took. Then I counted to 20, to make sure he knew that 1000 wasn't as high as I could count. Which doesn't really make sense, but it made him happy. For most of the time Jaelle was annoyed because the sound of me counting was interfering with her watching the "Planet Earth" DVD. But it ended when I hit about 700 so she went into the bedroom to look at books. (She can't read yet, but she'll just sit and look at books)
After counting to 1,020, Josiah wanted to gunfight. So we did, with these Nerf guns we got him for his birthday. He's a really good shot, he shot me just as much as I shot him - I guess I'm a larger target, but still, that's pretty good. But that's also what he spends most of his time doing, shooting. He got to be a really good shot with his little toy bow too.
Then Brandy came home, and after stuffing the kids with sandwiches and me watching a few gunfighting scenes from westerns or john woo movies with Josiah at his request. The last one was from a movie I've never seen in Chinese with Chow Yun Fat, and I got really into it but then it cut out at the crucial moment. Then the kids took a nap after getting me to pray for them, and Brandy and I sat down to watch the third disk of "Lost" with some cheesy bean dip, chips, and a couple glasses of wine, but not before Brandy sent off the application for the apartment in Queen Ann that we're going for. Then I took my one and a half hour nap, & Brandy was able to snuggle with me for the first five minutes which was nice. Then I woke up to go to work, listening to "Enter the Worship Circle" #2 and thinking again that I should really start picking up the guitar again. And also thinking and praying that I really want to feel what I'm singing and wondering why I don't always and in what areas my relationship to Jesus Christ and the Father is deficient - and wondering about the nature of faith and how C.S. Lewis said that what pleases God most is when a man feels utterly abandoned by God but keeps on believing and obeying, and how O. Chambers says (over and over again) that we aren't meant to live in the "mountaintop experience" but to live in the light of it in the valley, where we spend most of our time. Then I thought about that song I love by Derek Webb "Wedding Dress", and thought about the most recent music by him, how he's become a little too cool for me, all anti-war pro-gay and S-word saying. Then I wondered about Martin Luther and the lawfulness of saying such words, and Then I thought about that mini-sermon "Others May, You Cannot" thing and about my conversation with Nate Musson the other day.
And now, I'm at dispatch refreshing my memorization of Titus amidst incoming calls and manning the reception desk.

I woke up at 11am this morning. I was going to go to the DMV -but it closes at 12noon on Saturdays. It's just as well, since I still don't have the proper documentation.

I got offered the 40hr/wk position at work-and took it.
I also got my personal size reference ESV bible in the mail, I'm pretty excited about it. It's just the right size, and it's signature bound. (That means it's stitched in little folded bundles called "signatures" to the spine, rather than glued to the backing. Stitched bindings last longer)

Met a kid on the bus the other day, his name was Aaron. He was a black kid (I say "Kid", but he was in his early twenties) from Michigan-apparently a pretty tough neighborhood in Grand Rapids. He's a Christian, has been from when he was a boy, and started the conversation by saying he liked my shirt & saw me reading my bible & thought that was cool. He reminded me of Averill from St Paul. We got to talking, and he asked for my cell #. I pray for him that things go well, he said he's having some hard times here in WA. I was very glad for his company on the bus, since I haven't really run across any believers to talk to on the bus here so far. It also made me want to give Averill a call. It's so strange to think that there are these people who have affected and been affected by you, who've had heart to heart conversations and shared the good and bad with you, who've had real communion with the Lord Jesus Christ with you, that just drift away from you until they're hard to remember.

I can say I really miss a lot of the people from Minnesota ("a lot" being about 20). I've spent a longer time there than any other place I've ever lived, and that's where I walked through the door into Life, where I met my first Christian friends, my mentors and heroes, my first close friendships in Jesus, my great adventures, the place where I was able to give help to those who needed it, and really get to know people. And now there's so much space between us, space and time. I wish I had a better memory, I wish I put the one I have to better use.

It's good to have a wife, someone who shares my experiences like no one else. So much of understanding and communication has to do with shared experience. Commonality in our vocabulary, our stories, our values, our joys and terrors are largely dependent on common experience. And shared experience isn't something you can go to school to learn, or pay to get, it only comes with commitment, and a shared life.
Granted, we don't share all our experiences, I don't really know very well what it's like to stay home all day and take care of the kids, go to the grocery store, cook and clean, and Brandy doesn't know what it's like at my work or on the bus, but I guess that's probably why we spend the time listening to the stories of each other's days-to do our best to gain what common experience we can through imagination.

Watched "Gandhi" last night with Brandy. After a little research I found he was influenced by G.K. Chesterton and Sundar Singh, it also became clear that what set him apart most from other men were not the Koran's or Vedic teachings, but rather the teachings of Jesus that he attempted to follow. His non-violence was based in the gospels, which he freely admitted. But I still don't know what to think of even that interpretation of Jesus' words. I haven't known for 27 years for sure how Jesus meant for us to carry that out, and I haven't really ever changed my position on violence-using it only to protect the weak. I pray and hope I'm not wrong, but unless I have a revelation I don't think there's enough in scripture to call for strict nonresistance. It would cost too much for such an uncertain interpretation that seems in other parts of scripture to be contradicted.

Sometimes I feel like I have a very, very weak grasp on reality and sanity. I felt that way for part of this afternoon. The only times I don't feel that way is when I'm acting on stimulus-response mode, or when I'm in open communication with Jesus. I was having a hard time until I flipped to John 8:12 where Jesus says, "I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Jesus says that if we follow him, all that darkness and confusion will disappear as His light shows us what everything really is, and is like. And not only will we see all of that by the light, but we'll Have that light. I forget sometimes what it was like before. When I didn't know what the meaning of life was, or what I wanted to do, what I should do. I'm grateful for the difference. Right after reading and trying to memorize that verse, I started reading a Biography of Eberhard Arnold that quoted Jesus' words in John 8:12. I took that as a confirmation.

Just got back from my first responder class.

I asked a lot of questions this time. Probably the biggest impression I came out of it with is that Man is mortal. Very mortal. They were describing all the ways in which one might be seriously injured, for example a stab about two or three inches deep into the center line of the body could pierce the aorta, and kill you in less than a minute, or a broken femur can pierce the femoral artery and do the same. There were quite a few more examples until I raised my hand and asked "Is there any part of the body that isn't vulnerable?!" The answer was basically a no. Then they explained (while we were practicing on the mannequins) that CPR in a lot of cases is simply keeping the organs alive and viable for harvesting because more than half of the time with an unconscious, non-breathing no-heartbeat person they're not going to live. CPR by itself rarely saves anyone whose got no heartbeat, what it does is keep the brain and other vital organs oxygenated til they can get a defibrillator to re-start the heart.

All this got me looking at everyone a lot more carefully, how delicate we are! We're like tissue paper in water, just a little bit of hard current & we're torn to pieces. I found myself acting very gently towards the mannequins, they're shaped like people, so I want to treat them like people-especially the chil & infant mannequins, I feel a lot of compassion on them, even though they're not "real". I carry the infant mannequins like babies, and make sure to set them down gently. It's wierd, but I can't imagine acting any other way, I would feel like I was losing my humanity if I threw them around like some people do. I even defended the baby mannequins when another guy called them ugly babies.

I remember being like that even when I was little, I had stuffed animals and I would treat them like they were alive, I would get furiously upset, scream and fight and cry, if someone was being rough with them or pretending to hurt them. I was that way with animals too. Even back when I didn't want to have any babies of my own (when I was young) and didn't see what was cute or endearing about babies, I still felt an innate protectiveness towards them. I didn't really want to be around them, but I knew they had a claim on me. I knew they deserved my help and protection by the very fact that they existed. I didn't like the fact that they were sticky and stinky, but I would have died protecting them.

I would much rather be this way than any other. I dont want to change. I think Jesus is that way too- "A bruised reed he would not break, a smoldering flax he would not quench."

Why do people have to die? I will be very happy when they don't anymore. It's so horrible to think that human beings will be in hell - but I suppose they will have rejected the gift of humanity so completely by that time that they won't really be human beings anymore.

Its so good to know that Jesus will raise the dead, to never die, that people will be alive and protected, never to be attacked again.