Our two boys.

the first hour of Elijah’s life was full of introductions. Not only did we get to meet our new son, but Josiah got to meet his new brother. Elijah was born at 2:38, and Josiah happened to wake up at 2:45. He couldn’t wait any longer to see the new baby!!!




Here is a link to more pictures, all taken in the first hour of Elijah's life (or in the few minutes before) but be warned: this was a home birth, and the pictures that follow are not sterile, for lack of better words. I did leave a few out, but don’t go posting these pictures to the internet, okay?

or check out the slideshow:

All is well with the new baby. We are richly blessed. Extremely tired, as I went back to work the following day. Also, apologies about the earlier post in which I only gave Charity credit for delivering a 9 inch baby. It was 19. The blog was posted (no joke) while driving by a panera bread with free wi-fi. The day was too crazy to proofread anything.

it’s official.

Elijah Daniel was born at 2:38 this morning, Dec 20th. He weighs 9 lbs 7 oz, and is 9 inches long.


Many more pressing things than blogging….

thanks for your prayers.

We have two winners.

First, in the creativity contest, Joel Quile wins, hands, I mean hand, down.

And in the closest guess category, the winner is my sister, Shannon, who was then disqualified for disclosing unflattering information about her brother.

So Joel will soon receive a prize package, which includes University of Tennessee Bowl tickets for the upcoming bowl season. GO VOLS!

Now, the real story:

Nashville Gas decided to ignore the request for transfer of gas service, and only honor the cut-off request of the previous tenant. So they came out and shut off the gas. We discovered this when we returned to Nashville from a weekend out of town.

It was 6 pm when we got there, about 7 when we figured out the air wasn’t getting any hotter. and the hot water was icy-cold.

Nothing could be done that night, despite many calls to our property’s answering service (sub-freezing temps qualified it as an emergency, but Walmart, not our landlord, came to the midnight rescue with a 1500 watt space heater, which made the bedroom toasty. By three or four am, we starting peeling off the 14 layers of blankets we had unpacked for our indoor camping experience.

It took about 48 hours to get the gas turned on. We bathed with water from the stove, which Josiah found to be extra fun. This process also super-humidified the place, which every home needs in winter.


But here is my serious twist: Despite my complaining to everyone who would listen, including lodging complaints with the public utility commission, we were not in dire need. We had shelter; even without a space heater we would have survived.

How much worse is the situation in kashmir?

tens of thousands there will not be able to call and complain. They will die without shelter. I am truly spoiled. I am truly blessed.

A pregnant Christmas song




(and be sure to enter the contest below… winners will be announced shortly)

Everyone has their favorite Christmas songs. And the ones they dislike. The ones I like don’t get on the radio very often. As for the ones I don’t like…

I preached yesterday about the first Christmas song. And the best one. It dates back over 2000 years, and was authored by a young woman named Mary. The song is named The Magnificat, which is the first word in the Latin translation.

What sets this song apart from our Christmas songs? Everything, really.

The Magnificat was written by a woman who understood that the baby in her womb would be the Messiah, the deliverer, the revolutionary who would free his people. And like every other revolutionary who had lived before and would live after him, danger was involved.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.
And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.

Accepting this mission from God would put everything dear to Mary at risk. Her upcoming marriage. Her respect in the community. Her very own life.

And the birth was surrounded by events that would remind Mary of the dangerous territory she was treading upon. The tax of the occupying Romans, which forced her to travel by donkey when the baby was due to be born. The visit of the Magi, who left Judah secretly to avoid the threatening—and threatened—King Herod. The slaughter of the infants which forced Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to become refugees in Egypt.

He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.



And as Jesus grew, the danger grew greater. We need not recount all the episodes in which Jesus and his followers were in great danger. We need not retell the details of his torturous death.

Mary obviously knew that Jesus would turn the world upside down. She likely knew that this would come at great cost. She couldn’t have known how great the cost would be, nor could she have imagined the depth and richness of the redemption that Jesus would bring; more than just political, he brought freedom from all the powers and principalities, freedom from sin, freedom from hopelessness, freedom from fear, freedom from death.

He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.


We sing this song alongside Mary because we find ourselves in the same position as the blessed virgin. We carry within us the Messiah, who is waiting to burst forth into our world. He wants to subvert the powers and principalities, bringing everything into his dominion, through his humble, obedient, self-sacrificing love.

And like Mary, we know he is our redeemer, but we don’t know his specific purposes in our lives. We do not know if the world will receive him. We know not the danger we will face. We know not the pain we will feel.

And we can hardly imagine the redemption we will receive.

Our challenging move to Nashville (and our first blog contest!!!)

We moved to our flat in Nashville, while we await our new baby. We are off of West End Ave, 1/2 mile from Vandy, behind Outback, if you want to visit us...

After all our moves, you would think that we would have all the kinks worked out. Not so. I feel pretty stupid for believing that this move would go smoothly. Check out our history:

July 1999: Moving all my possessions from Abilene, TX to Knoxville in Kevin Porter's Isuzu Trooper. Made it from Abilene to Ft. Worth when the thing died. After a tow job to Las Colinas, KP and a couple fraternity brothers performed some midnight surgery in the Candlewood Suites parking lot to get me on the road to meet my awaiting bride. The problem: the alternator. Thank God for 24 hr. AutoZones!

December 1999: I became We, and a Trooper full of stuff became a 15 foot budget truck, towing our car behind, as we moved to Abilene for me to finish school. All went well until we hit Ft. Worth. Then our eardrums were burst by the piercing oil alarm. Apparently, the truck dumped all five gallons of oil of diesel oil (all of which landed on our car). After refilling, we made it to Weatherford, and the alarm resumed. After spending the night, and spending the day waiting on a repair, the truck was determined irreparable, and a replacement truck was dispatched. Again, Kevin Porter, driving back from Dallas with his wife Rebekah, saved the day, as he helped me transfer everything from truck to truck. Budget paid for that move, and the $20 car wash.

July 2000: Moved into house on Sayles Blvd., in Abilene, using Kevin Porter’s truck to premove all our belongings, until we made our final move-in, which we made after a trip to Tennessee. We brought back lots of frozen goodies from Grandmother, and the top layer of our wedding cake to be consumed on August 7, our first anniversary. We drove into Abilene late at night to find a house with no A/C and no refrigerator. The delivery people forgot about us, and the AC quit. So we ate the cake on our front porch, a month early, and mourned the loss of the goodies, which could not match the Abilene heat in a house with no A/C. We promptly sweated off all weight gained through eating the entire top layer of a cake in one night. Have I mentioned that it is hot in Texas in July?

December 2000: After moving cross town to an apartment (Kevin Porter helped, of course), we expected speedy transfer of our phone service. It took five weeks. I spent hours outside on payphones in the West Texas winter wind, waiting for help from phone company people. Every time they asked if they could call me back. They just didn’t get it. Thankfully, the Public Utilities Commission yelled at the right people, and they became apologetic, and gave us free phone service for a while.

August 2001: While not technically a move, our return to Abilene after our summer in Africa felt like one. We stopped in Tennessee on our way back, stocked with goodies from Grandmother’s freezer. We got into Abilene at 2:00 am. We opened the door of our apartment and were greeted by an odd odor. And no lights. No power. It took no time to determine that the odor was emanating from the refrigerator. So we slept by an open window (August in Abilene is worse than July), and in the morning learned that an electrical storm… in June… must have thrown the breaker). Charity tried to clean the freezer. The maintenance man was called in, as there was some rotting stuff in the compressor issues to resolve. His actual words:

“WOOOEEE!!! That will gag the buzzards right off the gut wagon!!!!”

So he closed the freezer door, and hauled the whole thing off to the dump.

Incidentally, Kevin Porter was keeping an eye on the apartment while we were gone. He came during daylight, so he never had to try the lights. And being the honest man he is, he never was tempted to help himself to a drink from the fridge. And having been my college roommate, he thought the smell did not need to be investigated.

September 2001: Another 15 foot truck, this time to Vegas. Kevin Porter carried our 1970’s recliner down the stairs for us, and all was well until we stopped to pick up our tow dolly on our way out of Abilene. In a cost-saving move, we rented a budget truck from Dallas (only they have diesel, big gas savings!!!) and were going to use a U-Haul tow dolly (half the price of budget’s). U-Haul had no problem with this arrangement (they asked what it would be pulled behind, and I informed them it would be behind a 15 ft. Budget truck. No problem, they said. Until we hooked the thing up and loaded the car onto it. An overzealous manager, who had memorized corporate policies, came outside and informed us we had to offload the car, as their policy would not allow them to attach a u-haul trailer to the competition. I protested to everyone I could, and seriously considered committing my first felony, as I considered (no joke) stealing the trailer. Many other felonies also came to mind. Ultimately, my tirade inside the store stayed within legal limits. We had no choice but to caravan to Las Vegas. Charity drove the Honda, which would not have been so bad, except the A/C wasn’t working.

Did you know that the route from Abilene to Las Vegas crosses every desert in North America?

(side note: I should have known better than to rent from the Abilene U-haul. A few months earlier, I had helped a man move that rented from them. He was assured over and over again that he would receive a truck with automatic transmission. When he picked up the truck, they only had stick shifters. This would not have been so bad, except the man renting the truck did not have a right arm. And to add to this poor man’s misfortune: he woke up one morning to find his loaded moving truck gone. Stolen. The police investigated, and determined that U-haul had decided to pick up the truck a few days early without contacting anyone. DON”T RENT FROM U-HAUL!!!).

Also, the Budget truck starting leaking oil in New Mexico.

May 2004: Moving from Vegas to Tennessee. Charity and Josiah flew, and I drove a budget truck, with a budget car dolly behind. Budget even hooked our car to the trailer. Unfortunately, they left the car’s parking brake on (the tow dolly drags the back wheels of the towed car. In this case, it literally drags them). As I turned into our apartment complex, a couple miles from Budget Truck Rental, I caught a glimpse of our car in the mirror. Bizarre. Smoke coming from the car. And the truck is moving, and the car is moving, but the car wheels aren’t. Thankfully, if I needed to make a trip back to the truck place, I had two solid black lines to guide the way.

So that brings us to December, 2005, and our move from Grundy County to Nashville. And the contest of the day:

Who can guess what problem we ran into this time? If noone answers correctly, the most creative answer will win. And if noone answers at all, the prize will go to Kevin and Rebekah Porter, who were unable to bail us out, this time.