As if life weren't interesting enough ... - Kerry

Well, Kerry and Lara fans (yes, all five of you), the wait is over. While I have been remiss in my blogging commitment, the events of the last four weeks, I think, justify my brief break. I don't want to just fill up blogspace with meaningless literary wanderings. I have wanted, from the beginning, for this blog to tell a significant and meaningful story of God's provision, blessing, guidance, and just overall goodness. I think few things trump the events of the last four weeks in telling just that story.

On Saturday morning July 11th, Lara nudged me awake to show me a pregnancy test that had two lines instead of the usual one we had come to expect. It's difficult to express the blend of feelings of relief, elation, and terror that started to come over me in that instant. We have been off of any contraceptive since the summer of 2005 - more than four years of leaving children in the hands of God. That fact in itself explains the the relief and elation. But my terror was not, as you might expect, deriving from the supposed next question that enters a man's mind, namely "How are we going to pay for this?" I can honestly say that this question has not plagued me. If God can provide $13,000, and if God can give us this child, He can also provide the money to pay for it. No, my terror was more a concern for this child to make it past the first trimester and be born, for everything to be okay with it. That terror only grew until the moment we went for our first sonagram last Tuesday, July 28. Despite reason, I was fearful that the little bit of blood Lara had seen a few days before had been a miscarriage. I knew they were going to look in there and not be able to find a baby. I knew that it was going to be implanted in the filopian tubes or in the cervix. I knew something must be wrong.

But there it was, implanted exactly where it should have been, with a heartbeat at 111 beats per minute. It wasn't as old as we thought it was going to be (we were off by two weeks, thinking it would be eight weeks along instead of six), but it was perfectly formed and perfectly functioning, apparently developing exactly as babies have since Eve first conceived Cain. Then, I began to really trust that God was not going to give me a stone when I had asked for bread. This is a consistent faith issue with me, somehow thinking that God is waiting to jinx me, just to show that He is sovereign and that I should be faithful no matter what. This is also why I truly wish that the insider Christian joke about not praying for patience (since that is the surest way to get the capricious God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to jinx you with a test of your patience - ha ha isn't that funny) would just go away and never return from the abyss which spawned it. It's bad theology, and not helpful in the least.

So now we have a baby on the way, due March 23, 2010 (that's 3/23 - and all sorts of Bible verses come to mind). When most people hear about this, they're immediate reaction tends to be in the realm of cancelling Scotland plans because this complicates things too much. On the contrary, this is totally perfect. First of all, it is conspicuous that God waited until we were totally committed to going to Scotland to give us a child. I think that had we already had children, we might not have even considered doing what we are doing. But honestly, I think it will be easier for us to do this in Scotland than in our current situation. Lara was already planning to work freelance, meaning flexible (if busy) schedule, we are covered under the NHS healthcare of Scotland since I am a student, and the baby is due at a time when, perhaps, my schedule will be a little more flexible during those exhausting and stressful first few months.

I'm certain that the second part of everyone's gut reaction has to do with dollar (or should I say pound) signs. I will tell you that money has been on our minds, but God is handling it, and every time Lara or I try to take this problem on ourselves, it does not work out. A great example came about a couple of weeks ago. A car dealership in Henderson, TX (which, for my many out of state and international fans, is about a 45 minute drive southeast from Tyler) sent me an advertisement which guaranteed a prize of some sort if I just came by. The prize could have been a car, $2,500 in cash, or a couple of other things, including (most likely) a Walmart gift card worth up to $1,000. I thought to myself, "Well, it's on my day off, and what can it hurt?" So I went. It was raining when I arrived at the dealership, and business looked slow. A man greeted me and brought me inside where he began to give me the sales pitch for why they were doing the deal they were doing and so on. Then he asked me what sort of vehicle I might be interested in. Honestly, I said, my wife and I are selling everything we own and moving to Scotland, so I really am not interested in any vehicle, just the prize. He took it graciously and departed to get my prize. It was, not surprisingly, a Walmart gift card, but he did not know what the value was, I would have to call to get the balance. He did know that the value could be anywhere between $5 and $1000. So I got in the truck and got out my cell phone to call the number on the card. After entering a ridiculous amount of numbers the generic female voice told me that the balance on the card was ... $5. Not even enough to pay for the gas I would use as a result of this little excursion. I laughed and immediately called Lara to tell her. In the end, it was yet another gentle reminder that God was in control, not chance, not the economy, not me. And deep down in the very center of my being, I believe that. I have peace about this move to Scotland, and I have peace about this baby.

But while I'm not concerned about how to pay for it, there is something that concerns me, and that is the lack of overwhelming emotion I've had. I was expecting that once Lara was pregnant, I would instantly feel deep and inexpressible joy which showed itself in laughter and tears. I expected to feel superlative wonder at God's creative handiwork in the conception of a child. I expected to be obsessed morning and evening with thoughts of the baby. Instead, aside from a few moments where I nearly teared up, most of what I've felt at a very deep level is numbness, and there have been days where I hardly thought about the baby at all. This bothers me. I feel like it reflects on my preparedness to be a dad. It's just so hard to feel those extreme emotions right now with everything else that is going on. From the move to Scotland to Lara's mother to my grandfather to other family drama to the Lifeway store I work at preparing to move (which, by the way, provides probably 75% of my day-to-day stress), I don't really feel like I have anything left to give. But if I can't give that sort of emotional attention to my baby, what kind of dad am I? These are likely irrational thoughts, questions that will be resolved in time. I just feel less and less capable of doing something so incredibly important as parenting a child the more I become acquainted with my own shortcomings. But God has expressed a great deal of faith in us by entrusting this baby to our care. I know that He is faithful to bring that which He begins unto full maturity, and that includes both my baby and me.