This Halloween, be sure to remember that the harder you trick-or-treat, the higher the chance that someone’s going to take a ton of your candy and give it to a kid who stayed home and played Grand Theft Auto IV all night.
This is what I know…
People make mistakes. Consequences are inevitable and oftentimes they can be painful. When we mess up, we’d like nothing better than to move on, forget the past, and continue living without suffering the inevitable consequences. But that’s not life.
This is what I know…
My adopted son was a “mistake”. The day he was conceived, he became equal amounts baby and consequence. As he grew each day in his young mother’s womb, the world around him was waging war — not for land or money or power, but for the heartbeat that pounded life through his little chest.
This is what I know…
Some people wanted to eliminate his life. They didn’t see his existence as a choice that had already been made, instead they weighed his value in terms of a choice that was yet to be made. They didn’t see a self-inflicted consequence that needed to be faced, only an unjust punishment that should be avoided at any cost.
This is what I know…
Some people refuse to see beyond the immediate. To these people, the value of my son’s smile, his laughter, the way he kicks excitedly when I pick him up from his naps, were once on equal footing with a girl’s impulsive decision to avoid the inherent consequence of a choice she already made. Because he was of no value to them, in their eyes, he had no value at all.
This is what I know…
We almost lost him. Twice. The constant drumbeat of what some call a woman’s right to choose almost cost the world a beautiful child. This young mother sat in the waiting room of an abortion clinic two separate times. Each time she felt a tugging inside — a voice almost — that told her not to take the easy way out. We realize now with great gratitude that the tugging was done on our behalf.
This is what I know…
Some people saw a promise, not a punishment. Instead of telling her the fairytale that she could make it all just go away, they encouraged this young mother to turn her mistake into someone else’s blessing. They didn’t remove the consequence, they taught her how to find a way to make the best out of the outcome she brought upon herself. That is what life is about. Before we were ever in the picture, these people saved the life of my unborn son.
This is what I know…
In a world where hundreds of thousands of couples long to have the opportunity to adopt and make an unwanted child a part of their family, advocating abortion is possibly one of the cruelest social views one can have — both to the child and to potential parents.
This is what I know…
We may never conceive a child. Because of people who could see beyond the superficial morality of our day, and because the birth mom ultimately listened to the tugging inside her, our inability to get pregnant became a non-issue in our journey to have a child. We have been blessed by someone else’s biggest mistake — and we couldn’t be happier about it.
Tonight, Harrison and I got to spend some quality “man time” together with no Heidi around. She was at a baby shower with friends and left the two of us home for the evening. I was excited to have some special bonding time with my son.
Because men like to expend energy, we started the night of bonding by participating in a number of fun, physical activities. Harrison started with about 30 minutes of jumping time in his new Johnny Jump-Up. As you can see, he loves it.
Though I enjoyed watching him and taking pictures, I quickly realized that he was doing all the exercise and my tubby self was just sitting on the floor. Bonding should never be a one-sided affair, so I decided that I would lace up my new running shoes, put Harrison in the jogger, and pound the pavement for about an hour.
I don’t have any pictures of us in action, but to prove that I actually did run I took a photo of my shoes and new pedometer. In case you can’t read the display, it shows 3.26 miles. It’s not much, but for a budding runner who is about 50 lbs. overweight its definitely an accomplishment (especially considering that I didn’t fall over dead of a heart attack).
We returned and took some time to cool down. I set him in his Bumbo and placed it right in front of me as I stretched. He had a bit of a snooze on our run and seemed to be refreshed because he was making a lot of noise and smiling as I talked to him. Our night of father/son bonding was winding to an end and I was happy with the time we’d spent together.
As I picked Harrison up to take him into his room and change into his PJs, I realized that he had one more bonding experience planned before we officially called it a night. You remember when I said earlier that men like to bond through physical activities? Well, my son reminded me that men also like to bond through the hilarity of our bodily functions. As a vivid reminder of this fact, he did this:
If you think this looks pretty benign as far a diaper blowouts go, please know that the other half of this mess was all over my hands and forearms and extended from Harrison’s rear up into his hair. I tried to clean him up with baby wipes, but only succeeded in getting poop on everything within a 3-foot radius.
I quickly decided that two things needed to happen immediately. 1.) I needed to get the heck out of that room before my vomit became an added part of the mess, and 2.) I needed to get him into the tub because the only thing that would clean this kid properly was the pulsating massage setting on the shower head.
After his impromptu bath, I took my freshly-cleaned child back into the room — which now had a foreboding green cloud billowing from the door — to get a clean diaper, the baby lotion, and his pajamas. I snapped this photo on my way back out:
After this unplanned 30-minute interruption of frantic screaming (me), dry heaving (also me), and joyous splashing in poop-water (that would be Harrison), I finally held my son in my arms, fed him his bottle, prayed over him, kissed his sweet sleepy face, and laid him down for the night.
Sometimes the things you least expect make the best memories. I’m sure I will remember this night as long as I live.
For those of us who don’t quite understand how the economy got to where it is today:
Thanks to Jeff Schinella for pointing me to this video.
The Visiting Team
According to a 2006 study by the American Church Research Project, less than 14% of Arizonans attend a Christian church on any given weekend. That’s 86% of our friends and our neighbors who don’t have the time, energy, or most importantly, the desire to darken the door of a local church. The rest of the nation doesn’t fare much better.
All of these are contributing factors in their own right, but to me the two biggest reasons we are losing the hearts and minds of the American public are:
2.) This deep-seeded fear of labels has changed our focus. Christians are increasingly more concerned with whether or not we’re culturally relevant than whether or not we’re Biblically relevant. You see, biblical relevance has a higher tendency to cause people to be labeled intolerant or hateful because the Bible is a counter-cultural text. Cultural relevance, however, concerns itself more with how we are viewed by society and prompts us to avoid being counter-cultural so that we can be in good standing with them.
What happens in response to this can only be explained as Christians shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of standing up and making it clear to the world that our stance is nothing like the stance of Phelps, many Christians treat his worldview as if it were a legitimate and embarrassing segment of our religion — because that is what the media says. So instead of saying plainly that those views are in direct opposition to our beliefs, we validate society’s accusation of our homophobic status by believing ourselves that Christians by and large are gay-haters.
As an example, here’s an exact quote from Derrick’s recent post: “You see… for Christians… homosexuality is like the plague. We stay so far from it, like we’ll get Satan coodies [sic] if we actually meet a gay person. The thought of having gay friends makes us feel dirty… kinda like listening to a “secular” song and liking it. “ (Read it in complete context)
While I do not for a second doubt Derrick’s heart behind this, it makes me cringe a bit because it sounds exactly like what one might hear on a college campus or from the lips of Bill Maher. Derrick says it to challenge his fellow Christians to consider their attitude toward gays, and I love that. What kills me is that the ever-growing non-Christian world doesn’t make that distinction, but instead uses this sort of statement as “proof” that they were right about us in the first place — and the stigma of homophobic Christians sinks deeper into the mindset of society.
Unfortunately, the average American isn’t likely to experience another perspective on Christianity unless they attend a church, which they’re far less likely to do now because who would want to spend their weekend hanging around a bunch of judgmental gay-haters anyway?
A Christian’s understanding of right and wrong is supposed to be determined by the Bible, while Secularists are — within themselves — the ultimate source for right and wrong. This worldview of moral relativism has slowly crept into mainstream Christian thought as evidenced by the popular notion that Christ says plainly that we are never to judge others, just love them (“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” ~Matthew 7:1). Non-Christians love to cherry-pick this verse, and most Christians tend to shrink back when they hear it for fear that the words “intolerant”, “unloving”, or “judgmental” will be thrown around next.
Christians, does Jesus really command us to refrain from holding people to any standards? Taking this verse alone and out of a broader Biblical context might suggest just that. But what, then, do you do with John 7:24 where Jesus says, “ Stop judging according to outward appearances; rather judge according to righteous judgment”? This verse taken alone seems to argue that he does call us to judge. So what’s the deal?
What I believe the verses on judging teach is that if you say to someone, “I’m going to hold you to such-and-such standard,” then you need to be ready and willing to be held to that same standard. Let me give you a personal illustration of this:
I’ll be honest – I’m about 50 pounds overweight and I rarely eat healthy or exercise. If a friend of mine is also overweight and I constantly badger him about the fattening foods he eats or the exercises he should be doing, but don’t put those standards into practice myself, what good am I? Before I hold my friend to a standard (judge him), I need to prepare myself to be judged by the same standard. Using my fitness illustration, this verse might sound more like, “Don’t criticize your buddy’s love handles, or he’ll have the right to criticize your man-boobs.”
I don’t think Christians can avoid having to uphold standards, but I think its clear that we need to promote our Biblical values while remembering to live them out (and we need to be ready to be judged by them as well). We need to worry less about cultural relevance where each person is his own value system, and worry more about the values given to mankind through the Bible.
This Post is Long!
Yeah, sorry about that.
I could honestly keep going for another ten paragraphs because there are so many tangents and details that I could discuss. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to consolidate my thoughts and still communicate clearly. I have very deep convictions on the Christian worldview and the reasons why I think were losing the fight for the hearts, minds, and souls of the American people. For the sake of my fingers and your eyes, I’ll have to leave this post as it stands now and hope that it has caused some people to think twice about their views.
If you have any comments, rebuttals, or criticisms, I welcome them — though I’m not prepared to accept any workout or dieting advice at this time 
.
Thanks for reading.
Arguably one of today’s most talented illusionists, David Blaine can be seen on TV and all over YouTube performing incredible bits of street magic that always generate confusion and wonderment with onlookers. His tricks are very unique and complex, and he pulls them off with a deadpan effortlessness that gives him an increased air of mysticism (and sometimes creepiness).
Tonight, ABC had a two-hour special on Blaine’s career that ended with a never before seen stunt/illusion called the “Dive of Death”. For the one hour and 55 minutes leading up to the final performance, they showed the typical stock footage clips of him walking up to people on the street and performing for them, intermingled with childhood photos and him doing a voice-over of how he became interested in magic. While most of the tricks were interesting, two hours of this got old pretty quickly.
Finally, the time for the last stunt had arrived and Heidi and I sat on the edge of our seats to watch the illusion we had been waiting two hours to see. The host had been promo-ing the final trick before every commercial break saying that, while no one but David knew what the “Dive of Death” was going to be, it was sure to be incredible. Our time investment in the program was proof enough that we were looking forward to seeing it.
And then it happened — we witnessed the greatest illusion of all time.
The true illusion was not the “Dive of Death” as the network would have you believe. No, the true illusion was the promise that if we sat through the entire program, we would see something remarkable. That’s right, we sat in our living room for 120 minutes to see Blaine’s lamest stunt of all time. I can’t even explain with words how benign it was.
As the final credits rolled, Heidi and I sat in a completely different form of wonderment than we expected, and both of us wondered how in the world we allowed ourselves to be unwitting participants in the greatest illusion of all time.
I realize that this is all over the internet, but I just had to post this video here because it cracks me up. If you are offended at PG-13 dialogue, then you probably never watch Saturday Night Live and won’t be missing out by clicking along to the next blog on your list anyway.
For the rest of you sickos, enjoy:
Please forgive me in advance for the Splenda commercial.
Today we had the dedication ceremony for Harrison at our church. Below is the text of a letter that I read aloud to him at the beginning of the private ceremony. Heidi wrote these words last week, and I believe that they are among of the most powerful and inspired words I will ever read:
Harrison,
A few months ago, we adopted you into our family. We don’t know why God didn’t allow mommy to carry you in her tummy, but we do know that God designed you specifically to be a part of our family. You were intended from the very start to be with us, and we have prayed for you for many years. But, our adoption of you is not the most important one you will ever have. We pray that one day you will be adopted into the family of God, by accepting the gift of Jesus Christ as your Heavenly Father. And one day, we pray you understand, that we are united by a bond that cannot be broken — not because of the blood that flows through our veins, but because of the blood that flowed down the cross.
Love,
Mommy and Daddy
Photos from the dedication and more thoughts from Heidi can be found here.
Bloggers are interesting people.
We like to think that our thoughts and our writings make a difference in the world. From time to time, we have the proclivity to develop a slightly over-inflated ego about our own self-importance (come on now all you bloggers, just admit it). It’s easy to slip into saying things like, “You really need to check out my latest blog post,” or “You mean you haven’t ever visited my blog?” We don’t mean to sound conceited, we just think you would benefit from hearing our thoughts on life.
Winning you as a reader is a small badge of honor. If you actually subscribe* to our blog, we feel like we’ve just earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. We love to feel important.
A friend of mine has this shirt and it cracks me up because it unapologetically smacks us bloggers across the face with the reality of our actual importance:
This applies to most bloggers. However, if you are some one like Jon Edmiston you have an actual following and your thoughts actually are important to the world.
The rest of us hate envy people like him.
*You can subscribe to this blog through an aggregator like Bloglines or use the links on the right to get you connected to the words and musings of Michael Gray. Hey, I may be shameless, but I’m not stupid. I’m hoping to break the 20 subscriber barrier! Woot!
