A number of times in the past sixteen months, Sallie and I have talked about some topic relating to being a dad and she says, “you should do a guest post about that”.

Judging by the last guest post I wrote here, you can see that it hasn’t happened in the past sixteen months.

This morning at church our Pastor spoke about the first of the “Fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians 5 which is love. He gave a definition of love which I thought was very good: the overflow of joy that gladly meets the need of others. It made me think of the number of times in the past sixteen months when I cared for Caroline or Sallie in ways that brought joy to my heart, knowing that their needs were being met. Maybe it was just holding Caroline for an extra hour after feeding her at bedtime because she just couldn’t quite fall asleep due to teething problems. Or taking the time to wash the large pile of dishes so that Sallie could get caught up on her blog comments or emails. I knew I was doing something that mattered to them and the sacrifice of my time to do these tasks always brought joy to me.

Pastor Charles talked about the attitude in the act of loving. What if an attitude was, “well, I’m only doing my duty” or “That’s just part of being a [insert role here]“. It’s not as joyful then, either for the giver or the givee. I’ve come to see how much a sacrifice parenting really is now that I’ve lived it for a while. And how I respond to the need determines whether the giving is done with joy or with frustration. I read a very good quote by Elton Trueblood the other day which stated that a number of the things in life that really matter do get done out of the limelight and just because they need to get done. So true. Yet, the attitude plays into the joy of living this parenthood thing.

I love biscuits. Big time. When we go to Cracker Barrel, I order an extra plate and hunker down for carb joy, rating them on a scale to 10. Last year during a visit, I needed to attend to Caroline and feed her for a while. My biscuits sat there and started to get cold. No butter melting, no warmth. The quest for a perfect “10″ biscuit would wait for the next visit. “Well, I guess sometimes being a Dad means cold biscuits,” I said. And for the next few months I used that phrase to note a moment of care for Caroline when I sacrificed something to tend to her.

I’m working at not grumbling about my “cold biscuits” in life. Especially when I’m tired or overloaded with business concerns. But when I see my little girl play peekaboo with me on the other side of the table or look at me with those eyes when she wants me to color with her, I have to stop and note that this is why I’m doing all this stuff: I’m a huge part of her world and it matters to her. What I do now sets the tone for the future.

So I’ll enjoy my “cold biscuits” while she sits in my lap as we read Counting Sheep to Sleep for the 10th time that day.

Okay, let’s shift gears and talk about heredity. We have a bib which says, “More like Mommy every day”.

So true. As I watch this little girl develop I’m amazed at how much she’s like Sallie. How she will be amused at a couple of clothing options held in front of her, and pick one with joy. Her mama’s clothing tastes are there. Or she’ll spend time looking at the beautiful pictures in books. Mama’s sense of beauty. Spoonfuls of potatoes are eaten. Mama’s love for spuds. Caroline has a definite opinion about how things should be done. Just like her mama.

Enter a new toy: a Pooh book with a music player that uses plastic discs to determine which set of songs to play. It’s like a little CD player. There’s a stop, eject, and play button. The play button will start a song and then go to the next song if you click it. So Caroline goes click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click… through several cycles of all six-or-so songs without stopping, only hearing the first few notes of each song. “She’s got my clicking genes,” Sallie says. Ho boy, if you saw Sallie with a remote at a hotel. She rapid-fires through the channels while I think, “my goodness, give the channels a chance to exist! How do you even know what’s on?” Mama’s love for channel-surfing.

Just amazing. I can only shake my head in wonder. I’ve two really fascinating women in my life. Should keep my life interesting.

Thank you to everyone who has been leaving comments and blessings and prayers on the “announcement post”. It’s been so nice to hear from so many and it’s like having a huge online “get well” card.

And we’ve appreciated those prayers. The doctor came by Friday afternoon to check up on Sallie and it was discovered that her intenstines had shut down. And she was finally cleared to eat Friday morning, too! So, with two small meals inside with nowhere to go, she was restricted to no food intake, but the IVs nourished her in the meantime. And in the last 24 hours, her system has started up so this morning the doctor is allowing limited food and liquids to get her started, and we’ll have to stay an extra night just to make sure it’s all well. He said that he hasn’t had a situation like this in many, many years.

It’s such a God-thing that in the midst of the challenges of the last 72 hours and such that we see such graces. We know even more that our choice of doctor was a blessing from the Lord. He listened and knew that Sallie was in tune with how her body was so sensitive, and he let the others in the surgery know that this could be a tough one, or as he put it “she is not a beginner’s patient”! Only God could have provided a doctor who “gets it”. Sallie is so thankful for this.

The hospital staff has been a great blessing, too. We’ve had some great nurses to work with.

But the best grace is…. Caroline. We’ve said a few times that a c-section is “the surgery with a prize”. Most surgeries are for correction or removal. This one gives you a bundle of love! Last evening I held her for a couple hours and she snuggled in my arms and made me feel like a million bucks. And Sallie finally got the chance, a couple chances actually, to hold her next to her chest. And just after she was fed and changed before we took her down to the nursery for the night, she opened her eyes, turned her head, and for a long time just stared at Sallie, lying still, all her energy used to study her mama. That moment was special. We saw into her heart at that moment, and it was the most wonderful way to end the day.

We even talked about it after a nurse check at 3 am. Something special happened at that moment. For so long her eyes have been mostly closed. Now she’s starting to study the 8-12″ that the say she’s able to see.

I’ve really taken to feeding her. She’s a guzzler! And I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle diaper changes. I’ve seen the clips on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” of dads gagging over the diaper changing. But you know what?… when you’re in love, that kind of stuff just doesn’t matter. I actually find it kind of fun.

We were quite amused when one of the nurse aids came in an said, “Oh, what a cute little peanut”! And “Peanut” was a big hit in the nursery a couple nights ago when we provided her picture outfit for the 4 am photographer visit. Everyone in the nursery was raving over her cute sweater and jeans with flower cuffs. So, even the staff is being blessed by Caroline!

We’ll see what happens over the next 24 hours and we’ll probably be home tomorrow.

Sallie hasn’t had the chance to check her email over the last four days, even with the wireless system here at the hospital. Something in the hospital setup hasn’t allowed our mail to work and I don’t know why, but I was home for a few hours yesterday to get some sleep and found it works fine in our house, so it’s the hospital’s fault that any email correspondence hasn’t happened. She’ll get back to her mail soon, and it’s probably going to be a bit before she get’s caught up again. She’s been a little busy the last few days…

Our sweet little Peanut is finally here with us!

Caroline Elisabeth was delivered by c-section yesterday, September 28 at 12:13 p.m. She weighed 8 lbs. 8 oz. and was 21 inches long. She has lots of hair and is cute as a bug in a rug!

Caroline Elisabeth means “a joyous song of the fullness of God” and we think that describes her perfectly. We are both completely in love with her and can hardly believe she is ours to keep.

What a day it was. We arrived early at the hospital to make sure that Sallie’s glucose levels were maintained and would not bottom-out before surgery. Our surgery was right on schedule, but it did not go as well as we had hoped to experience. The spinal block didn’t take as the doctors had intended, so the later part of the procedure became very uncomfortable for Sallie as she started to feel what was being done. General anesthesia was given to finish closing Sallie up, and she spent the rest of the day very tired with a harder recovery than expected, not getting to hold Caroline as much as she had hoped.

But Caroline is here and we praise God for a safe delivery. We’re enjoying this cute little girl that God has graciously given to us. Especially when we were beginning to wonder if having a child was part of God’s plan for us!

Sallie and I appreciate how much you have supported us with kind words and prayers. Keep praying for a good recovery for Sallie, and for the change in our lives. This is just incredible.

We look forward to sharing more pictures and stories in the days ahead!

Sallie mentioned recently that we’ve come to a point in our pregnancy where Little Miss Peanut would have a chance of making it if she was born prematurely. This is a great comfort, but we want her to remain in Mommy for the next 14 weeks and grow to full-term and be healthy. Okay, maybe 12 weeks – we’re really looking forward to meeting her!

I look at Sallie’s baby bump and can see that we’re heading into the home stretch. This is really a wonderful time of anticipation. And Little Miss Peanut is really bumping around in there! Sallie is cherishing this time.

Sallie mentioned in a recent post about our journey through childlessness that our journey is not over yet. We’re not “out of the woods” yet. But when do we really come “out of the woods”? As much as we don’t like to think about it, there is no guarantee that any child will live a full life after she’s born.

When Little Miss Peanut is born, the Lord won’t be telling us, “Here she is. You’ll have a great full life with her… and wait ’til you see the grandchildren she’ll give you in 2031.” We don’t get those guarantees. So how are we to face these realities?

When I married Sallie, I was so thankful that the Lord had brought me His best. Then I started to struggle with the fear of losing her. In a sense, I felt in my heart an attitude of “Thank you God for bringing me such a wonderful wife. Now… please don’t take her away!” It’s not about gratitude at that moment. It’s more about something that Sallie’s father and I discuss at times: control.

We all want control. Much of life is about trying to be in control. We all want to feel we are in control of our circumstances. Our income will be stable, our children obedient, our home all organized, the government will do the right thing, Al Queda will never attack us again like on 9-11, etc. James 4:14 is very clear when it tells us that we do not know what will happen tomorrow, so we get no assurances or ultimate control over our circumstances. But, we are encouraged to deal with them with the Lord’s help one day at a time. Our lives will contain trouble at times, and Paul tells us how to respond to life in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.” We deal with life as it actually happens, not as it might happen.

That’s why I can rejoice with Kristen and her husband over their long-awaited pregnancy, and their joy over this miracle is so wonderful to read about. After so many years of waiting to find my wife, and then so many years of waiting to have a baby, I finally get to be a Daddy… and at the age of 43! This is happy news and it has been a great experience to see others rejoice with me!

So now as we face the last few months of our pregnancy, we could be tempted by the Enemy to worry needlessly and take away our joy and anticipation of meeting Little Miss Peanut. But instead we choose to rejoice at the hope of our soon-to-be-born little girl!

Today is Sallie’s birthday and it’s time for my annual tribute to her. I guess we can call it the annual tribute since this is the second Sallie birthday since Two Talent Living was launched.

Sallie is a very sensitive person, both physically and spiritually. I’m not surprised that morning sickness and such has been a little hard on her because she has a delicate system. There was an incident in our early married days that illustrates how finely-tuned Sallie’s senses and perceptions are.

I often called Sallie “Princess” since that’s one of the meanings of her name, besides “favored grace”. So this post about Sallie is a “Princess and the Pea” story.

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Once upon a time in a northeast Grand Rapids apartment lived a young, newly-married couple. As they prepared to go to bed one evening, the husband was already in bed and pondered putting his bride to the test to see if she was really as sensitive about a matter as she claimed to be and which he found a little hard to believe: the distinctiveness of different pillows. The wife was starting to comment, “Did you put my pillows on my side?” when he made the bed each morning. The husband found it hard to believe that there was any significant difference among the pillows. Only one of the pillows was a little different from the other three and the wife always used that pillow as it was her favorite. He wanted to find out if she really was as discriminating in her senses as she claimed to be.

So on this evening, as he lay in bed while she was in the bathroom, the husband decided to switch the wife’s favorite pillow with one of his own to really see if her sensitivity was of the level she professed. The unsuspecting wife came in the bedroom, finished her routine and got into bed. She was tired and immediately hunkered down for the night. She laid her head on the two pillows, facing toward her husband. He waited to see if she would respond, believing that she wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t be THAT sensitive.

Within a few seconds, she lifted her head with a quizzical look on her face, aware that something wasn’t right. She immediately pulled up the edge of the pillow case and looked at the pillow inside.

The husband laughed out loud and said, “Unbelievable! You really CAN tell the difference!”

“Don’t you know the story of The Princess and the Pea?” asked the wife as she retrieved her favorite pillow and gave her husband a warning look of “don’t you dare fool around with my sleeping arrangements!”

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That was a funny moment in our early marriage and we joke about it often. One of the things I love about Sallie is her unpredictability and her quick wit. It’s very, very hard to get the best of her and I really don’t get frustrated by it, but in those rare moments when I do get the best of her in jest, it’s priceless. Rare, but priceless.

A good wife remains a mystery to her husband in some ways. Sallie does that well in the area of competitive fun and it keeps things interesting. For some strange reason, I don’t mind being the one who “loses” most of the time. I guess it’s the laughter which results from the incident that I find priceless.

So on this birthday of my Sallie Ann, I wish her God’s continued blessings as I continue to commit to being her soul mate, best friend, and beloved husband. The fun challenge continues…

I love you, my Princess.

Your David

I’m the gardener in our family. Sure, Sallie comes out and helps from time to time, but mostly it’s my domain. Recently I was checking the pansy pots to pull off the old blossoms and check for weeds. Our pansies this year have been phenomenal; they’ve been so robust that I’ve started to call them “shrubs”.

The pots look out-of-control at the start. There are so many blossoms at various stages. First, I pluck the withering blossoms. For a few moments it seems like I’m not making any progress because I find more to pull in areas where I’ve already been. I work some more, and then the pot becomes simpler to view because I’ve worked on the clutter of blossoms. The good ones become dominant and the pot starts to look lighter, brighter. Pull a few more old blossoms and now there’s order in nature again. At least for this pot.

I’ve learned that weeding is an ongoing part of life. I can be a packrat. Every now and then I need to re-evaluate whether something is worth holding on to or not. Sometimes an item’s value may be practical or it could be sentimental.

Saturday I went through my office closet and weeded out the shelves. At first the task seemed overwhelming as there were so many magazines, office supplies, computer supplies, etc. But, one-by-one, I reviewed items and determined whether they held any value for me anymore. Yeah, those older Family Handyman magazines are too good to throw out. No, I don’t need to keep these 5-year-old out-of-date system software disks for the old computer I just replaced. After a while, I had a bag of papers for recycling, a trash can filled with unrecylables, and several items that I might be able to sell on eBay.

It can take a while to sort through items, but there is great freedom in weeding out the unnecessary things in our lives. It makes our lives less cluttered, more organized, and gives us a sense of feeling lighter. I’ve also learned that an item that seems worth keeping at one point in life may become less important later on. Sometimes I’ll keep an item just because I’m not ready to part with it, yet.

I had kept most of my art projects from design school but eventually I have weeded them down to just a few of my favorites. Over time some of the drawings didn’t seem as important to keep, or I finally realized I didn’t care to look at a particular item anymore. If I kept some of these pieces, it would be more out of a sense of “I worked hard on that, it would be a shame to throw it away”. But if I don’t really care for a piece any more, why keep it? And years later I don’t miss those pieces, proving that they didn’t hold that kind of sentimental value.

A simpler life means not keeping things around unnecessarily. Weeding can be a good exercise to help you keep what you truly value in life, and to have the freedom (and sometimes courage) to let go of what you don’t need. And a smaller collection of items is much easier to enjoy.

Just like a good pot of flowers.

Sallie has been writing lately about the choices we’ve made to simplify our lives. One of the consequences was presented to me in an episode that happened this week when I was out visiting one of our business clients. Since I was on the south side of town for the meeting, I was near a new freeway that had opened up earlier this year. My curiosity about trying it out was piqued so I decided to use it as an alternate way to get home.

It was interesting for a few moments to see my former stomping grounds from the high-speed route that had been created through it. But then a feeling of being overwhelmed started to come over me as I approached the exit to leave the new freeway and head north on the established freeway. The sense of traveling at high speeds and negotiating heavy traffic was starting to get to me and I still had another ten miles to go, through downtown no less.

This was the first time in several months that I had been on a freeway for more than a few minutes. Occasionally we use one of the local freeways to get from a relatively close point A to point B, but this was a longer drive than usual. Several years ago I lived on the south side and had a half-hour freeway commute to my job on the north side. Now since I’m self-employed and work at home I rarely use the urban freeways anymore. It’s amazing how I’m no longer desensitized to highway stress.

This also applies to movie theaters. Sallie and I have only seen a few movies in theaters over the last several years, primarily because most of what Hollywood comes out with has been pretty worthless. If it seems worth seeing, we would rather rent the DVD later and watch it at home (and pay less).

We decided to see “Princess Diaries 2� last year in the theaters. We thought the first movie was cute and fun and it would be neat to see the sequel. During the film we both felt overwhelmed by the experience. The large theater with the huge crowd, the loud volume and the constant movement on a huge screen made it an unpleasant experience. (Not to mention the fact that the film wound up coming across as a propaganda film for feminism – all that was missing was a bra-burning scene at the end, but I digress…)

It’s amazing what happens when we remove ourselves from the noise and clutter of certain activities, whether by choice or by life circumstances removing us from them. We don’t realize how much activity and noise we tolerate in our lives. These two incidents are reminders to me of how much the changes we’ve made have affected us and have made us more sensitive in the best sense of the word.

I enjoy my peaceful life and my 15-second commute upstairs.