Honored by many

I went to a memorial service yesterday. I'm not going to pretend it was a big loss for me, it really wasn't, but I strongly felt that I should attend the service. Doris lived a long life, she would have been 91 in June. She was married to her husband Bob for 58yrs.

Bob and Doris attended (bob still attends) a church I attended from '97 - ~'03. Doris and I were in a woman's group together for a short time. One of the unique things about Doris wasn't the fact that she had been blind from birth, but that that didn't stop her from living life. She traveled, she was an accomplished singer and choir director. She loved to read and had the ability to memorize things like none other.

Years ago she was asked by a pastor if she ever asked the Lord to heal her blindness and allow her to see. Her answer was "I never really thought to ask". That was Doris, she didn't see her lack of ability to see as a deficit in life, it was just her life. She was in 100% acceptance of who God created her to be.

So why was it that when I heard of her passing I felt so strongly that I should attend her service. I haven't talked to her since I began attending a different church. I thinks it's all in my first thought after hearing. A woman who lived a life like Doris did; a lifetime of dedication to the Lord and 58yrs of faithful service to her husband; deserved to be honored my many.

As I sat at her service I couldn't help but think about my life (memorial/funeral services are great for that). Doris lived a simple life, she never did anything the world would see as extraordinary, and yet I'm in awe at her life. I've traveled the world and done things some people would only dream of. My life story has even been published. And yet as I think about my life there are really only three things I would like to be remembered for: 1. My love and dedication to the Lord, 2. My love and dedication to my husband, and 3. My love and dedication to my daughter.

I don't care what else anyone remembers. And I hope one day, as a result of those three things, people see it fit that my love and dedication deserves to be honored, just as Doris' was honored.

I can only imagine

There is a song by the group Mercy Me called "I can only imagine". It starts:

I can only imagine

What it will be like

When I walk

By your side

I can only imagine

What my eyes will see

When your face

Is before me

I can only imagine...

With a baby on the I can't help but imagine what she will look like, what it will be like to walk down the street holding my little girl's hand. Now technically the above song lyrics are about meeting Jesus. As the song goes on that becomes evident. But every time I hear the start of the song, I think of Imogen and start to cry.

My mind begins to wander as I day dream about my little girl. What will she be like? Smart like her daddy? Thick headed like her mommy? Musical or Artistic? What will she want to be when she grows up? Will she be a demorcrat or a rebublican?

As I pray for her, I find myself praying for me more. Praying that I don't allow myself to create expectations of who she will be. That I allow her the freedom to figure out who she is and what she wants in life.

But now, as we still have 20weeks before we get to meet her face to face......I can only imagine.

An Auntie couldn’t ask for a better 31st birthday

Daniel’s cousin Angela and I went up to visit our 5 nieces and nephews this last weekend. It took us about 8 hrs to get there and it was worth every minute of the drive. The girls were still awake when we got there and they practically jumped me when I walked in the door. Madeline said “you came!!! And you brought baby Imogen!!!”

For the whole weekend Imogen was a hot topic of conversation. The girls continually told me how much they can’t wait for her to get here and how they will teach her to play princess’. Little Naomi (4) seemed to be the most excited. She asked me if they could Skype with Imogen “so they can play”. It just warmed my heart to see how excited the girls are for their cousin to arrive.

We had a fun filled 2 ½ days. Friday was my 31st birthday so we made a birthday cake and the girls decorated it for me. They used every kind of sprinkle they could find in the house, and they put 5 candles on the top to “make a tiara”. They put up some home made decorations and made me some cards. The only thing missing from my party was my wonderful Husband (who had to stay home to study).

Every time we visit I bring a craft of some sort to do with the girls, I also bring my “box ‘o stickers” aka stickers fro the target $1 bin. This trips craft was Easter egg decorating. So we boiled a bunch of eggs, dissolved the little colored tablets in water and decorated away. I’m pretty sure the girls fingers had more dye on them by the end than the eggs. But we sure had fun. 3 Easter egg hunts followed, we couldn’t convince the girls to eat the eggs though.

There was lots of cuddling of the twins too. I can’t wait until they are old enough to do crafts too. They are getting so big it’s crazy. They should be talking in no time, we practiced “auntie” a lot this weekend.

Daniel and I plan on trying to make a few more visits to see them all before August. We’ll see how well I can do in the car as I get more and more pregnant.

Overall, it was great birthday.

Is there another topic?

Daniel and I were talking about our blog the other day. We're looking at buying a domain and making a whole website. Then we got to talking about whether or not we want to each have our own blog or have one together. Daniel thinks it's funnier to have one together, him with Theology posts and me with posts about Imogen. He asked if I was going to become "one of those mommy bloggers". that comment made me laugh.

I was talking with my friend Patti about 2wks after we found i was having a baby and saying to her that I suddenly have no other topic of conversation except the baby. And that has not changed. I don't know what else to talk about. My life has been engulfed by the fact that we are having a baby. Every few days I think of something to blog about, non baby related, and it ends up being about Imogen. I have not posted a few blogs just because I was trying to not to blog about her. But alas, I have failed. I just have no other topic of conversation. Everything I think about these days always comes back to Imogen.

Oh and I have a request of you all: Please pray for Daniel and I. We need sleep. I seem to be suffereing from "pregnancy insomnia" also known as "nature's cruel trick". Personally I would like to be sleeping as much as possible now since sleep will be a thing of the past come September. Anyhow, it's really effecting both of us. My lack of sleep ends up keeping Daniel up cause I'm tossing and turning. Usually by 3am I head for the couch so I stop waking him up. I don't do well with little sleep, I kind of turn into a toddler who skipped their nap; I cry and throw fits for no real reason. And poor Daniel is working and in graduate school, he really needs good sleep to be able to focus.

All that to say, please pray that we get some deep solid sleep.

Could parenthood be better than this?

For many years the idea of having my own kids was not an idea I was willing to entertain. I did however want to be an auntie. That seemed like the best deal of them all. As an Auntie I could get al the great parts of kids and leave discipline and meltdowns to their parents. Win Win right?

When I met Daniel he already had 2 nieces, Madeline and Julia. I still remember the day I met them, it was at Disneyland. Madeline the goofy outgoing one, wasn’t to sure of what to think about me, and Julia the mousey, shy one, took to me right away. Though I wasn’t yet their Auntie I loved getting to know these little girls, knowing that they just may become my nieces one day too.

It was very soon after that I moved to El Salvador. While I was in El Salvador my Aunthood exploded. My cousin Kim got pregnant, my brothers wife got pregnant and Daniel’s sister gave birth to another little girl. I still remember the day that my brother called me in El Salvador to tell me. “Hello Aunite” he says. “hey bro” (I thought he was referring to me being an auntie for Kim’s baby). He says it again “HELLO AUNTIE” this time with a little force. “wait WHAT!!!” I started screaming. Once I figure out what he was telling me I was beyond excited!! I went running though the Teen Challenge center where I worked yelling “voy estar una tia” seeing as I worked with all men, they humored me and listened to me talk about how excited I was.

When I came home for a 3wk furlough, Daniel and I took the drive to go meet Naomi. His then 1 month old niece. Daniel and I weren’t engaged yet, but I was still excited to meet another little girl that soon be my niece. We hung out and played with the girls for a few days and I fell more in love with all of them.

In November 2006 not long after returning from El Salvador for good, my first nephew was born, Tristin. I still remember the day he was born. It was Thanksgiving day. He was so tiny, I held him and we made faces at one another. I few weeks later I became his very first babysitter, while his mom (my cousin Kim) ran to the bank. She called me twice to check on him, but I didn’t mind, as long as we got to cuddle on the couch.

6 months later my bother became a dad when my niece Penny was born. Still to this day her birth has been the most emotional for me, probably because it was my brother’s daughter. There was a lot going on that day and I only had about 5 mins with Penny, I cried the whole time I held her. I’m not sure I’d loved another human that much in my life.

By the time Daniel and I got married, we had 4 nieces and 1 nephew. For the next couple years that was it, we loved and played with those 5. I think the best part of my day was anytime I heard the word Auntie. In 2009 we get a text message from Daniel’s sister “we’re having twins!!” Two more little nephews to add to our collection. Toby & Trevor were born in March 2010. They were 2 wks old when we made the drive to meet them. They were still in the hospital, we visited them twice a day for 3 days. After that we made a few changes to our schedule so we could see the 3 girls and 2 boys once a month. We put a lot of miles on the car, but it was worth it hear “Aunt Regina, come play stickers with me”.

Then it happened again, just one month after Daniel and I found out I was pregnant, my brother’s wife Tiffany gave birth to their son Duncan. He was 1 day old when Penny “took me” to meet her brother. He’s still so tiny and squeaky. Watching Penny’s love for her baby brother warms my heart.

I can’t wait to hear “Auntie” come out of Duncan, Toby and Trevor. Not long after Penny was born I was thinking about my deep love for my nieces and nephews, totaling 8 now. Why do I love them so much. I realized that seeing as I never saw myself having kids of my own, being an Aunt was in my mind the closest I was going to get to parenthood. So I took all my love and poured it into being an Aunt.

But what ended up happening is those kids sideswiped me with awesomeness. I fell so in love with being an Aunt, I started to want kids of my own. Being an Aunt turned out to be better than I even imagined. And now that Daniel and I are adding our own little person to niece/nephew herd, I can’t help but think if it is even possible to love Imogen more than I love my nieces & nephews. I have talked to enough people to know that we will have a deeper love for her, but how is that possible!! I look forward to parenthood even if I have to have the meltdowns and the discipline and Imogen’s aunties and uncles get all the fun.

My sister Kelly And I holding Penny the day after she was born

Me and Tristin, the day he was born

Julia, Naomi, Madeline

We have been given the Logos

Coming from a background in philosophy, it would be an understatement to say that I think critical thought and reason play a very important part in our faith. Epistemology, or what we may know and how we come to that knowledge is very important to me. I believe it is no small coincidence that the evangelist of John begins his account with “In the beginning was the Logos.” The book of Romans declares that the Lord can be known through observation of the world. It is also no coincidence that our primary means of understanding the Lord comes through orderly written accounts full of form, structure, and reason. The Lord is a God of reason and order. Thus, it is logical that we come to an understanding of God through orderly and rational means.

Be that as it may, void of God's presence, pure reason fails. There is a lifetime of knowledge at our disposal, and insufficient time to comprehend it. Rational people are confronted with numerous reasonably held, yet incompatible truth claims. Simply put, hyper rationalism, or modernism driven to its natural conclusion, is overwhelming. This leads well meaning, rational people to choose one truth claim among many reasonable options, in essence resulting in postmodernism.

Postmodern thought is an ever increasing reality in our society, even amongst the conservatively rational western church. Theists and non theists both have reasonable arguments for their position.* A rational follower of Christ may make a reasonable, well defended claim for either a secure or an ‘abiding’ salvation. Likewise for free will, predestination, or various combinations of the two. There are numerous truth claims that may be reasonably held, even though our belief system holds that there is one truth.

Overwhelmed by the cacophony of truth claims, the average person of faith puts their trust in one claim that seems reasonable, and timidly holds it. We have the faculties to understand God to an extent, but regardless of what we may know, ‘His ways are above our ways.’ Put another way, the absolute truth we believe in is beyond us. We must accept that, fundamentally, the Lord is as much a mystery as He is comprehensible. Fueled by postmodernism, this has generated a movement within faith I call neo-mysticism. Where reason fails, mystery abounds.

The result, for the Church, is a body that rests increasingly on feeling and preference over reason. The church is at least partially responsible for this shift. Well meaning theologians, in fear of relativistic theology, proclaim their viewpoints more vociferously, drastically narrowing their definition of orthodox doctrine. The body of Christ is left confused and alienated by the resulting battles. It is not that the body of Christ lacks an evangelical mind. Rather, the body has been driven by fear to avoid using it. Instead, blind faith is put in the Holy Spirit for guidance. I say blind, not as an insult, but rather as a course navigated by spiritual compass, but no map.

We need a more balanced approach. What God has revealed of Himself has been overwhelmingly logical. Still, we must leave room for the mysterious workings of the Spirit. We must accept postmodernism, in a sense. Science and reason can only go so far in understanding God. By definition, God is beyond any quantifiable measure or logical principle. Any right belief in the Lord of heaven must account for that.

They that worship shall do so ‘in Spirit and truth.’ Any personal revelation provided by the Spirit must be interpreted in light of truth, of what may be rationally known. These truths should include the precedence of tradition as a guide marker, without elevating tradition to equality with truth. Tradition is the map to our spiritual compass. While our spiritual parents may have wandered off course at times, their journey informs ours.

'What we see is a dim image in a mirror.' We should accept that our spiritual vision is clouded by the very nature of our humanity. As such, we should be humble in any claims of absolute truth. Rather, we should understand that there are tiers of belief. First tier beliefs like the deity of Christ and His atoning sacrifice are non negotiable. Baptism by immersion or sprinkling is.

We must recognize that we have been given the Logos so that we may know of the Lord, and His goodness. We must always approach that Logos with the humility of His inherent wonder and mystery. We must recognize that the course we navigate was plotted and followed by millennia of sojourners before us.

* I am an ardent apologist. I hold that the rational, reasonable belief is that the God of the Bible is the absolute truth. I am not a relativist in an absolute sense. I speak of reasonable arguments for competing doctrines and non theistic paradigms to develop the point that the byproduct of hyper rationalism is nonsensical, and thereby absurd. Please do not misconstrue my statements to mean that I am not a defender of absolute truth.

Is a dog ever just a dog?

The last two days I have been participating in class called Awaken with my church. There was about 40 of us going through our lives looking at how out past hurts have shaped us to who we are today. I've been through this process before and have always been able to see how different difficult situations in my life have molded me. Last night as I began looking at my "life map" I began focusing on one particular painful experience. The death of my dog Argos.

Argos passed away in Nov 2006 from Leukemia, I was 26. Her death was one of the hardests losses I've ever experienced. She was so much more than just a dog to me. I got her when I was 17 yrs old, her and I were inseprable, we were partners, she went most everywhere with me. For a long time she was the only living being I trusted.

The day put her down we were sitting in the exam room at the Vet with the dr who gave her to me. He and my parents talked about how much I needed her for those 9 yrs of my life. I needed her far more than she needed me.

I talked it out with a friend of mine today, trying to figure out how Argos' death molded my life. We came to the realization that her death was a significant shift in my life. At the time of her death, I handed my trust from her and me agianst the world to trusting Daniel as my partner. He and I were engaged just weeks after her death.

Thinking about Argos got me to thinking about Basho. It took 3 yrs for me to get to a place where I was ready for another dog. I love Basho, he's the perfect family dog. I look forward to seeing Imogen grow up playing with her puppy Basho. He's become a great addition to our family. He's a great little backpacking buddy, and we've enjoyed taking him on family vacations.

But as I got to thinking about him today I realized that my relationship with Basho is very different than my relationship with Argos was. It's like, he's just a dog. Argos was my partner, Basho is our family dog. I love him, but he's different. I got to thinking about Imogen. Reality is, he will probably mean a lot more to her than he does to us. Basho will be Imogen's big brother, her best friend. Chances are Basho will help her learn to walk, he'll sit there and listen to her while she reads him books, they'll probably fight over toys and even take naps together.

Basho and Argos are nothing a like (except in color). They both will have served very different purposes in my life, special in their own way. No two memories of them will be the same. I hope we are blessed to have Basho for many years to come. I can't wait to see the relationship between Imogen and Basho unfold.