The Procrastination GPS

Most technology is designed to make work and life more efficient. But let's face it - we don't always want more efficiency; there are things in life we'd just as soon put off. Where is the market for those of us who want to avoid uncomfortable engagements, escape boring work, and dodge unappetising people? Sure, technology lets us procrastinate by goofing off on social media, playing Candy Crush, or writing silly blogs. But, as the driverless revolution hasn't happened yet, you can't (or shouldn't!) do these things in the car.

That's why I propose that GPS devices have a procrastination function. Here's the vision:

Have an office meeting you'd prefer to avoid? Have a date that you wish you hadn't said yes to? Forced to shop at IKEA? Want 26 more minutes of peace before you have to pick up the kids? Might you AGAIN run into that American guy who thinks he has something intelligent to say about life in Germany? The technology is there to help you avoid confrontation. You can be passive-aggressive without actually being accused of being passive-aggressive!

Simply hop into the car and press the procrastination button on your GPS (conveniently labelled "quickest route" - wink wink). This will guarantee the longest possible way to your destination while making it seem to anyone tracking your movement that you are making progress. It will take you to side streets, alleys, country roads, and those long driveways that lead to cow barns, tangling your route until that uncomfortable meeting is adjourned. The procrastination GPS will lead you along roads with minimal mobile phone functionality, and, should an accident or construction site cause a spontaneous traffic jam, this wonderful device will guide you to it. It will also have a soothing voice that says things like, "you could use another coffee, couldn't you?" or "I know a place where gas is really cheap!" or "how about a massage?" or "did you leave the toaster on?"

The procrastination GPS comes standard with three audio books as well as MP3s of the 10 most popular episodes of This American Life. It can easily be transferred to your Smart Phone should you have to walk or use public transportation. (Train 133 has a two hour delay! Don't forget to buy a magazine!)

So don't wait. Let's make a GPS device for all of us who would rather put something off. Otherwise, we'll be forced to pull over and play Candy Crush at the Rest Stop.

Pumpkin Spice Latte Recipe

So, I'm quite content here in the land of beer and spreadable meat, but I note that my American friends, though they haven't yet traded their flip flops for college hoodies, are indulging in pumpkin spice lattes. I never knew summer was one of those things people want to end early. Don't worry, the Germans will wear their lederhosen and sandals (albeit with socks) through the end of Oktoberfest.

I, too, have tried the famed pumpkin spice latte. Based on what I've tasted, I think I've come up with the recipe.

For a grande sized pumpkin spiced latte:
One teaspoon of extra-sweetened pumpkin pie filling
Eleven teaspoons of bleached white sugar
Twelve tablespoons of the brown, granular sugar that comes in brown packaging that makes you feel bio-cultural-superior for using it
Three coffee beans, ground
Two cups of cream
Three cups of brown sugar
Six cubes of caramel
Six sugar cubes
Pumpkin spice mix (a pinch of cinnamon, a pinch of ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and seventeen teaspoons of sugar, mixed)
One package of condensed milk, sweetened
Two tablespoons of maple syrup
A generous dollop of whipped cream

So enjoy your pumpkin spice latte. Your dentist will thank you.

 

 

We Are Known

"Nothing that is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops."

I.

I couldn't help but think of this Judgment Day prophecy as I read about the Ashley Madison hack. The Judgment Day isn't here yet, but millions of families are experiencing their own smaller version. This week's Economist frets: "People will lose their jobs. Celebrity magazines and gossip columnists will have a field day." It's been worse, tragically. Despair has apparently driven some of the customers to suicide. The newspaper continues: "But perhaps the greatest significance of this episode is that it illustrates, more vividly than ever before, the woeful state of internet security." Well, yes, Ashley Madison is the umpteenth dead canary on the subject of cyber safety, and maybe this one has given the tech industry a jolt of urgency that will keep our data safer in the future if that's possible. Ashley Madison itself is surely ruined, and if the hackers have tossed this horrible website on the digital ash heap, then something good beyond improved data security has come about.

Meanwhile, and I think more significantly, we are warned, by the hack and by that repellent prophecy: Things have a way of coming to the light, and one way or another, they will.

II.

The Economist's editorial echoes the prophecy: "No doubt some people signed up on a whim, while going through a rough patch in a relationship, or while drunk. In the past, the mere contemplation of infidelity left no physical traces. But now millions of people's thoughts and deeds are open to public scrutiny." Proclaimed on the housetops.

Technology's brought the housetops closer, hasn't it? A hacker with a grudge could easily publish my digital profile - how I spend my time and money, where, when, and what I click. Companies have that information and use it for advertising, but it could also be used for embarrassment or worse. I find that thought as horrifying as the Bible verse. Sure, I try, in my tweeting and posting, to shape the image of the thoughtful, funny, family man who occasionally has something interesting to say. But my inner thoughts and behaviour are more than this, much of which I would like to remain covered, even if there are plenty of corporations and government agencies who (if inclined) could piece all of these together and click post. To be so fully known and not on my terms but on the terms of some anonymous institution or prankster is a hellish thought, and the network of machines I'm writing on has a much better memory than we do.

III.

Ironically, Ashley Madison's customers were probably driven by a desire to be known. It's a tension we all feel. We're petrified of being found out, and we're disturbed by how much soulless corporations, government agencies, insurers, and employers have on us, what someone with the computer know-how could dig up on us - even if we have, more or less, nothing to hide. There are intimate thoughts and feelings that belong to our inner selves that, if someone knew, could be used as cutting weapons to the most fragile part of our beings.

Still, we want to be known. We want eyes that see, hands that touch, hearts that feel these parts of us and acknowledge, understand, affirm, correct, forgive, and love. That's what we're to do for each other. That's what friendship is for, and that's also what marriage is for.

I suspect that most adulterers are in it for more than carnal passion (as delightful as that is). The Biblical euphemism for sex is "to know," and that hints at the truth that sex is, or is meant to be, a deeper knowledge of someone, that souls entangle themselves together as bodies do, oneness in a deeper sense. That's why we holy rollers keep insisting that sex and marriage are one in the same and physical unity consummates spiritual unity. The search for sex elsewhere, then, even if it's just pictures or mental images, could be a search for deeper knowledge, whatever we tell ourselves otherwise.

IV.

The author of Hebrews writes that sin "easily entangles us." How true, and this includes infidelity, which can be the results of "series of bad decisions" anyone can make, including creating an Ashley Madison profile "on a whim, while going through a rough patch... while drunk." Ashley Madison is designed to make this deadly entanglement easier. (It's ironic that a website designed as a platform for infidelity couldn't be faithful with its own users' data) The downfall of the website, of course, won't end a human failing that's old and popular; it's supply for an insidious, common demand. But there's a better way of knowing and being known.

V.

I'm a Christian, because to be a Christian is to revel in being known and deeply loved. The Psalmist sings:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!  

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;    you discern my thoughts from afar.... 

Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before,  and lay your hand upon me.

If this is true, then it is either extremely scary or unspeakably joyous. I don't know how it makes you feel, but the Psalmist rejoices, and I do to. This knowledge isn't for maximising customer service, and it isn't to sell to a third party. It isn't for a list of enemies of the state. It is not to commodify us or use us or manipulate or hurt. This is the knowledge of Love himself, who is the ultimate Lover, because he knows us like no other, because he made us. He sees and delights in his workmanship, our talents, our potential, our joys, our humour, our place. Yes, he is well aware of our wretchedness. He knows the extent of our unfaithfulness, whether or not we find our names on hacked spreadsheets. Still, in his love he has drawn near, and we're invited to turn away from all that has warped us and delight in his love and, in doing so, be what we're created to be.

If this is true, then all will be known, one way or another, even the parts they haven't managed to digitise. This should discomfort us, except that, though we're known, but we're also loved in places nothing on this earth can reach.

VI.

There's a reminder here, not only for the married, but for anyone in relationship. As far as appropriate and possible, let's know our colleagues, our friends, our family members, and our spouses, and love their wonderful parts and do so in spite of their horrid parts. For those of us who are married, this means pursuing and receiving intimate knowledge with our spouses and not nurturing hopes to find it elsewhere. It means going on the difficult, patient, and wonderful journey of knowing and loving another person, and in doing so, giving them a foretaste of the love of God.

No, I Won't Let Business Jargon Dominate the Way I Communicate

Recently, a friend of mine worried that, as an MBA candidate, I won't be able to escape adding business jargon to every sentence I produce. Every sentence I speak, he warned, will start sounding like I memorized the latest fad-speak from that new must-read management guru or one of those blog posts designed to help you to be a better leader and enhance your productivity.

Don't worry. I may be incubating in business jargon, but I won't let it change me! And I have good reasons for this. 

Let me unpack the difficulties with business jargon. Business jargon fails to align end user desires with the marketing intention of my communication targets. This results in a loss of communication value which disrupts the synergy I normally have with my ideation partner. Such disruption means that both myself and my communication partner fail to ideate to the scale that we are accustomed to and our productivity falters. Another result of the loss of communication value is a lack of bandwidth available to accomplish the day's deliverable, which could cause me to lose leverage with communication customers.

Likely, if some business evangelists are utilizing business jargon beyond their building capabilities, they won't be able to circle back to their core competencies on their own. They need a change agent willing to give them the face time needed to provide a life hack to see that their interests are aligned to a more customer-centric, value-producing style of communication. The change agent will reach out with a holistic approach to sustainable communication, streamlining words and sentences in ways that make the end user feel empowered. The key pivot point is a strategy of organic communication vocabulary that breaks through the clutter for maximum impact. Once sustainable communication becomes part of their DNA, each sentence, email, or text will have a positive value-added for a greater return on investment, enabling communicators to develop their own personal brand and emerge as thought leaders. Communication sustainability will provide the right end-user solutions to every enterprise.

So don't worry - moving forward, I won't be drinking the Kool-Aid of Business Jargon, because communication transparency is a win-win for everyone involved.

Kindled

A long time ago, in a world different than our own, there arose a reading tablet called Kindle. You might remember those times - Blackberry was the hottest smart phone, Tony Soprano was the hottest antihero, Apple computers were white and plastic and came with tiny, colorful iPods. Back then, though a Kindle was an expensive luxury that I, a late-adapter from the lower-rungs of the nonprofit world, could not afford, I was under no illusion about the future of reading - electric readers would take over for the same reasons MP3s took over - mobility, access, frugality, and choice would move the masses from the page to the screen. But I lamented my affection for the book in book form, and worried about further isolation and individualism that these devices promote.

Well, I finally joined the last decade when my in-laws gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas. There's a bespectacled book bore in me that doesn't want to admit the device's advantages, first of which are a healthier back for not lugging around three hardbacks when I go to the supermarket. The sheer volume available is breathtaking - a book-lover is the proverbial kid in the candy store. I started to consume: The entire Sherlock Holmes for €2.99! Hey, I haven't read The Three Musketeers yet! (still haven't, but the pixely plot awaits my time and inclination, and hey, it was free.) Oooo, a journalist I like just tweeted a Kindle book deal - click, click, BUY! Ohhhh... an internet connection.... I won't be too long....

Choice is also the problem, you know. The opportunity cost of sitting and enjoying a good book is not just any work I could be doing or any relationship I could be building, but the thousands upon thousands of books plus the World Wide Web at my fingers. Not only do I not need to get up to distract myself - I don't even need to move my head. That nagging voice of "would you rather..." or, "you could always begin this again...", not to mention, "has anybody liked my clever Facebook post yet?" is now inseparable from the book I'm actually reading. They share the same page. With an electronic reading device, suppressing this voice requires an extra and unwelcome force of will to reach the patient pleasure of good literature.

Good literature is a patient pleasure, and that is why it's so rewarding. Like marriage, friendship, art, worship, or a good meal, it's a pleasure that can start slow, requiring a thousand tiny steps of faith, faith that our world's most urgent noises can be ignored at this one moment and the moment after that in order to get there. Oh, but once you get there! It is a deep, abiding, and enriching experience, and there is nothing else like it. For this, I am thankful for authors. Aside from those who were willing to have a real relationship with me, it's hard to think of anyone who has done me more of a kindness than to write something well for me to read. I've experienced this on my Kindle, of course, and the best prose finally quiets my distracted mind and gets me to stop thinking about how pixels are less personal than paper. The distance, however, is greater.

There's another problem. I own a Kindle Fire, which is useful for me as a grad student because it can process academic documents for research. However, the Fire also means Amazon advertising. We're used to the intrusion of adverts in magazines, radio, and television, but a good book is sacred ground. Sure, I supposed you can advertise after some bubble-gum mystery thriller, and I love reading those. But after I finished Home by Marilynne Robinson, I wanted my heart and mind to be left undisturbed. My finishing the last precious, perfect sentence was the worst, I mean the worst moment to flood my screen with, "if you liked this book, you'll love...." type ads. I wanted to sit on my couch and continue to feel. I didn't want to consume.

I'm writing these words as someone who will still continue to kindle. (I'm using the word as a verb completely divorced from its original meaning. You're welcome, Amazon.) The physical experience of reading is comfortable - better than the competitors I've seen and better than the Amazon app on the iPad. As much as I poke fun at the tyranny of choice, it has given me access to books that would be otherwise more difficult to reach, particularly here in Germany. Moreover, it's become part of my regular devotional ritual. I hope it's not sacrilegious to say that I find the digital Book of Common Prayer more navigable than the paper form, and it's also handy when I'm reading devotional literature, which can be bulky in paper form. Ironically, the discipline of simply setting aside time to read Scripture diminishes the problems I have with distractions and advertising that I have with novels. I may, of course, use the classic print and page form the next time I buy the kind of fiction that I expect to be a great read. And yes, I do worry about the company's competitive practice and treatment of workers (some good discussion here on the NYTimes Editorial page during Amazon's dispute with Hachette and it's not an infrequent conversation topic during my studies - may collect my thoughts for a later post).

It's part of our humanity to be surprised by rapid change - printing presses, trains, steam ships, automobiles, all sorts of horrible machines of war, and it tangles our minds to drift with the times, all the while wondering what's happening to our souls. I could be trying to have my cake and eat it, but I have hope that the irreversible digitisation of reading won't take its soul.

Loving Language in a Time of Commerce (or Happy National Grammar Day)

Once, when I taught upper-intermediate English to a design team at a major German auto company, one of my students showed me a grammar mistake in an email from an American colleague. This group of students was advanced enough for me to run a pretty tight ship, grammar-wise, so he was a bit amused that his native-speaker colleague would make the sort of grammar faux pas I would always pounce on during class.

Of course, the grammar mistake wasn't all that important. It didn't inhibit communication in anyway; the colleagues could continue business as normal. In commerce, it's clear communication that counts. I even read, in a Business English textbook of all places, that poorly-written emails are a sign of someone moving up the corporate ladder. Well-written emails reveal someone with too much time on their hands, but non-capitalized words clumsily spat out on a smart phone - that's a person with places to be.

Still, I loved unpacking little grammar secrets and the purposes of "why-we-do-this-when-in-German-you-do-that" mutual detective games in my English classes. It was great fun. But at the end of the day, I know that the need for international business is not elegance but to just do enough to overcome Babel, even if it ain't always pretty.  (I consider "ain't" a pretty part of the English language, but that could be a byproduct of my Appalachian)

This is thrilling, of course. There's communication! People who once may have never understood each other understand each other now! This also part of the dual nature of being an ESL teacher. I love language, especially written prose, but I also love it when people use language as is, discovering different channels and springs of communication along the way in our eternal effort to be understood.

This is partly why I blog, because my own electronic scribble creations are an outlet for me. There's a danger, though. I so wish I could be a real grammar snob and publicly rage against those native-English writers who fail to achieve every literal jot and tittle. For me, a fun way to spend the afternoon is a comma discussion by way of a memoir on the website for America's best source for all things prose. But a blog is a bad way to brag, especially about grammar. I bet, in fact, that as soon as I upload this, regardless of rereads by my wife and me, some grammar mistake will pop out like a pimple on my website, and a real grammar snob, if he had even bothered to read that far, would have to bite his fist to stop screaming. My writing goes on in fits and starts, a patch here, a paragraph here, an idea that occurred to me when I should have been thinking about something else, months of busyness when ideas collect like pollen waiting for the Spring, and some ideas are even remembered. Little time for editing, for prying my big-picture brain into a detail-oriented mentality. So I hit publish, hoping that the "you'res" aren't "yours" or that I didn't confuse "affect" and "effect," all the while wondering if I should mail Bill Gates a thank-you-note for blessing the world with spell check. Then, if I catch a mistake post-publish, I put on a hair-shirt and whip my own back 39 times. Ok, I don't do that, and I know the world doesn't care, but I can tell you that vanity-reading your own stuff isn't good for the soul.

Then, there's foreign languages. Over half of my MBA courses are in English (yippee!), but most of them are taught by non-native speakers, so the lectures are peppered with grammar mistakes which, as an English language trainer, I can analyse, explain, and suggest improvements. But I say nothing, not only to keep my professors' good graces, and not only because their mistakes rarely inhibit communication, but also because, often enough, it's my turn to speak German, and, and C1 fluent that I am, there's no way this side of heaven that I am going to get every detail of this language right. I'll never remember every gender of every non-gendered object, I'll continue to mix up their backwards numbers, and I insist that the differenced in pronunciation between o and ö is zero, null, nil, nada, and nothing. I am in deep need of grammar grace - at the university, at my church, in my family, and in any future employment.

Good writing with good grammar is beautiful. I can recognize it in German, even if I'll never produce it myself, and I can strive for it, however imperfectly, in English. The letter of the law, in language as in elsewhere, shows purpose, making communication effective, elegant, and enjoyable. But in our world of international commerce, international friendships, and international families, we get to communicate with each other, even if we'll never be maestros, and our strivings are beautiful in and of themselves. What should we do otherwise? In language, as with anything else in life, the best way forward is to love both the law and the person who will never perfectly fulfil it. We need to be full of grace and truth, and for this, we have an example.

Meanwhile, should you catch me in grammatical error, your welcome to point it out.

Germany vs. the USA - the Maternity Ward Edition

The main difference is the screaming. There's more of it in Germany.

Let me explain. My first daughter was born back in the good ol' US of A, while the second was born here in Deutschland, so I've gotten a front row seat to the birthing philosophies and practices of both medical systems.

In the United States, we pay good money for medical services, and for that reason, these medical services should be as painless as possible. This is, of course, the purpose of medical services, to painlessly prop up our bodies, regardless of condition, so that we can fulfil our purpose by getting back to work as soon as possible. Americans agree with classical economists with this purpose, that all things work together for the good of those who love profit and work hard according to its service. For this reason, Americans put great trust in profitable technologies to solve all our problems. Take, for instance, genetically modified food. Americans understand, and have seen irrefutable scientific evidence, that the only way to feed the ever-growing world population is to invest heavily in genetically modified foods, because what's natural has no way of keeping up with our industrial ways. This philosophy is also applied to birth. My German wife wanted to have a natural birth (we'll contrast the key German philosophy later), which was a novelty for all the midwives in the hospital. ("midwives" themselves were a novelty - what will those hipsters think of next?) Sure, the midwives were trained in the advantages of doing things naturally, but to actually have a woman in a hospital in America who wanted to be natural (and wasn't forced due to a speedy labor in the taxi cab) was exciting! Now, our daughter would be born on New Year's Day, and the hospital was full, perhaps because a number of families wanted their children to be the first born in the New Year (we didn't win that competition). But, there wasn't the kind of screaming you see in the movies. All the other moms sat placidly in their beds with needles in their spines, awaiting the child emerge with minimal resistance. From the silence, you'd think they were all waiting in those transport capsules from Alien. The screams from our end of the maternity ward must have been disconcerting.

Of course, for all our technology, no one noticed that our daughter was "sunny-side-up", i.E. facing the wrong way, until she was almost out. Moreover, and this is serious, a huge hole in America's healthcare system is postpartum care for mothers. Sure, we have all the appropriate vaccines and follow-up visits for the baby, good on-sight training and support groups for those who have trouble breast feeding... But rebuilding the woman's body through support and exercise is foreign to our system, yet it's such a boon to a woman's health, family, and happiness. Postpartum exercises is nothing but yoga for the yuppies who can afford it. Changing this seems like a pro-woman, pro-family, pro-life kind of policy we could all agree on.

Superior mother-care aside, Germany still has its own quirks. In Germany, medical service is almost an embarrassing necessity, sort of a sell-out. We have friends who send their daughter in our local "forest" kindergarten, where the little tikes forage around in the freezing rain and all the crafts involve tying sticks and leaves together with twine, and this is much more natural and therefore better than doing anything in a building. I'm surprised that they don't have forest hospitals, where patients lay on piles of leaves and surgery is performed with sharpened sticks, because it's natürlich. The word natürlich has a deeper, richer meaning than the English word "natural." It harkens back to a nobler time where we weren't so reliant on tablets and mobiles and shots and clothes, and people weren't so obsessed with bourgeois notions like pain avoidance or morality rates. Natürlich is better. Take, for instance, genetically modified food. Germans understand, and have seen irrefutable scientific evidence, that the only way to feed the ever-growing world population is to stop any and all investment in genetically modified food and go back to doing food the natürliche way that has fed mankind through the ages. Nonetheless, Germans, like everyone else, want to live and be comfortable, so they begrudgingly accept medical technology to keep us alive and warm and comfortable (gemütlich, which is almost as an important natürlich over here - if you have a product that can manage to be gemütlich and natürlich, believe me, it'll sell well here - but many things in Germany seem to be a struggle between Natürlichkeit and Gemütlichkeit). As having a baby is a natural process, however, Natürlichkeit trumps Gemütlichkeit, as we could tell during our hospital visit when the midwives (standard-issue over here) bragged about their hospital's low rate of epidurals. They went on to cite statistics about the horrifyingly high rate of epidurals by those snaggle-tooth, hill-billy American women who, for some backwards reason (probably involving fast food and a general lack of discipine), are reluctant to embrace the immense, natürlich, pain Mother Nature has ordained for them. Hence the screams. When we were waiting for my wife's labor pains to get going (no drugs, of course, only the help of the cocktail, which was sehr natürlich), we heard the mom ahead of us screaming like she was going through an exorcism. Oh, but in Germany, my wife got a hot tub to sit in during the process, so I guess there was a little Gemütlichkeit after all.

After the birth, however, the advantages of Natürlichkeit are clear. Our basic insurance covered standard midwife visits and, as I write this, my wife is at her postpartum gymnastics class, rebuilding and restrengthening her body with peer and professional support. Both systems, of course, helped bring a beautiful little girl each into the world and so for them, through all the quirks, I give thanks.

Notes on the Second - VII. Horrible, Horrible Thoughts

In the background of our hospital stay, you can think of parenting as a sequence of horrible thoughts. We all have horrible thoughts about the things we care about, like the way my fellow students and I are having exam-time nightmares about impossible questions and train delays. Parents' horrible thoughts are not here for a season, though; they stay background like the colors of your walls. We have (and I think I can speak of "we" here) horrible thoughts, because horrible things happen to people, and when these things happen to babies, to any children, then this new, common, transcendent, and entangling love that I've described elsewhere is ripped out of the chests of parents and communities, irreplaceable.

In my own experience, baby's complete dependence and vulnerability make the horrible thoughts so pressing, because in many cases, I'm the one responsible. What if I slip and fall down the stairs while I'm holding her? What if I nod off on the couch and she slides off my lap? What if she's not swaddled properly and she pulls the blanket over her head? What if the bedroom temperature isn't precisely 18 degrees Celsius, which we read somewhere is the least dangerous temperature for babies to sleep in? What if I touch her after eating peanut butter only to discover an acute peanut allergy? What if I left the coffee machine on because I was in a hurry not to be late for an exam and the house burns down with the three most important people in my life inside it?

Such questions circle my brain like dancing devils, and though anxiety is health-reducing bit devilment, I've surprisingly found these horrible, horrible thoughts to work towards something else entirely. A horrible thought ambushes me when I'm minding my own business, and then I cringe and I say, "Oh, God," not as a swear, but as a prayer. My child is at the mercy of everything from my own powers of concentration to diseases in nature still unrecorded, and so I plead to God for mercy. The babies under my roof have increased my prayers in frequency and intensity, the entangling love for them entangling our very beings into his sovereignty. This is not a get-out-of-trouble card, and I'm under no illusions that these things can't or won't happen to us. Nor is this an excuse for fatalism, and our prayers have the opposite effect, promoting a careful and engaging sort of love between parent and child. Rather, this is a sober kind of hope, not always comforting but always providing a an unanswerable form of joy, that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A few days ago, I was walking home, lost in thoughts about my university exams when I was almost killed. I was crossing the street, legally, when a car made a hasty and illegal turn. Had I not been awakened and jumped out of the way, I would have been hit. The car screeched to a halt a good thirty feet to late then pulled over. The driver didn't get out, but I can assume she was as shocked as I was. This experience is not uncommon - it happened to my wife back in the U.S. But it served as a reminder that however adult and in control we are, our situation is precarious.

This precariousness makes love all the more costly, and this is acted out in family and community as we do things to make each other happy, better, and alive. Drinks with friends, jokes among my co-students, an episode of Dr. Who while feeling my wife's warmth against my thigh, playing Frozen with my daughter - all of these things shine through the precariousness like the sun on a summer morning. It deepens the joy of holding my own baby daughter, ten pounds of helpless, human warmth, in my arms. Horrible thoughts are drowned out by the knowledge that this moment with the Second is an unmatchable gift.

This is the seventh and final chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second - VI. The First

When the first came, our new family was an insulated little bubble of three people, one of them new. Sure, we had enormous help from family and friends - especially the heroic grandmothers and fabulous meals from our D.C. church friends. But while they were constantly coming in and out of our little bubble, our little family strengthened like a three-fold cord.

Now, the first is five years old, and because of her, if our bubble isn't porous, it doesn't exist. She's blossomed into the richness of life that five years has to offer, the delights of learning and play and discovering things like characters and stories and science. Then, there are the challenges of discipline, disease, and the normal, everyday hassle of getting her ready for kindergarten.

Her new little sister has been thrust upon all of these things, and there's a strange paradox here. On one hand, she's old enough to be aware of what's going on, to know how to behave around her (gentle! quiet!), while avoiding the jealousies of younger older siblings. On the other hand, she's too young to really adjust her own life and habits for the change. She needs help and attention every morning, she needs and wants to play with her parents, she has moods, gets sick, gets excited, and, for the first time in her life, has become a picky eater. This of course, damages the sense of "mama-and-papa-against-the-world" was there for the first week of the First's life, and the Papa's supporting role is something like....

DoSomethingDoAnythingToDistractOrEntertainHerSoThatHerLittleSisterCanFinallyLearnToBreastfeedProperlyInPeaceExceptNotAnotherEpisodeOfSeanTheSheepBecauseShe'sSomehowInABadMoodAfterWatchingSeanTheSheepEvenThoughSheLovesItAndIKnowIt'sMuchTooColdToGoOutsideSoHelpHerPutOnHerPrincessDressAndColorButPleaseDon'tMakeTooMuchNoise!!!!!

Then, sickness entered the picture. The First came home from kindergarten (that oversized petri dish) with a nasty fever and a stiff neck. It got worse, and on Sunday, we took her to the hospital. By the grace of God, our own paediatrician was on hospital duty there, and the stiff neck signalled meningitis to him. The next day, my oldest daughter and I checked into the hospital, where we would stay for the next few days. My wife and youngest daughter stayed at home, still learning to feed and drink. It was a sad, sad situation - separation, hospital food, nightmares darkening our thoughts. There was, though, a warmth strengthening my bones at the time, and I think it was the knowledge that by simply being there I was where I ought to be and what I ought to be, and this confidence is foreign to me. A father and husband, present, within fear and sickness and suffering, standing against the effects of the Fall like a palm tree in a thunderstorm.

I wasn't alone of course - friendly and competent medical staff, my in-laws were heroes, and my wife was able to visit the hospital, and when we brought home a nasty intestinal disease from the hospital, everyone suffered but the baby, protected beautifully by my wife's milk. The antibiotics worked their magic on my oldest daughter, and we still don't know if it was actually meningitis, even though several doctors worked like Dr. House throughout the week to find out. Now, we're healthy, even if rumours of other diseases here in our neighbourhood tempt us to barricade our house 'til spring, and when we actually stop to think about it (and stopping to think is challenging when you have small kids), we're deeply thankful. My mother-in-law is convinced that our prayers helped my older daughter as much as the antibiotics. One doesn't exclude the other, and we did indeed pray.

There's another thought that helps, one that my wife brought home from the midwife that led her birthing classes. Whatever new amount of stress a little baby brings to her older sister, we've given them both an incredible gift. The love of a sister (or a brother) is not something you can easily replicate. And of course, every little girl's favorite film right now is about sisterly love, and from my daughter's Elsa dress to the way she kisses her little sister (gentle! quiet!), we get some nice reminders. As the midwife said, the sibling relationship is often the longest relationship someone can have.

This is the sixth chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second - V. Chunk

Five years ago, after the first was born, I chunked up. A lot of dads do. If you don't believe me, go to Facebook and look at pictures of your new-father friends. Then watch from the day of birth until about three months as the papa's cheeks swell, love handles pour over the side of his skinny jeans, and all his shirts start to develop little mouths between the buttons as if screaming for help. The new mom shrinks, the new baby grows, the new dad expands. I never got really fat, but it's enough chunk for me to get a little queasy-cringy every time someone breaks out the photo album. Moving to Germany and regular exercise, among other thing, has kept me reasonably fit sense, and I want to keep it that way. This time around I'm determined to avoid the chunk.

Papa-chunking is hard to avoid though, and there are two reasons. One is a new kind of tiredness; the other is a vague sense of karma. First the tiredness. During stressful seasons at work or study, I'm tired, but I need exercise. There comes a point when my brain can't take it anymore until I put my running shoes on and burn five kilometers like I'm Lola. New baby tiredness is different. It comes from staying up late with a baby intent on exercising her new lungs just to give'em a spin. When she's finally swaddled and asleep, I'm exhausted. Keep in mind, I've done very little physical activity except catch her every time she does those scary little newborn trust falls from my chest. Additionally, I've paced around and sang to her and watched terrible early-morning television that I'd have been better off not knowing about in the first placed. After she's finally quiet, swaddled, and sleeping, I'm not ready to hit the running trail, the weight machine, the basketball court, or however else we men keep our college boy figures. I'm ready to pass out on the hallway floor or ready to eat, and this is where the vague sense of karma comes in.

The vague sense of karma is the big reason for papa-chunking. After all, holding and comforting a tiny little human being for three and a quarter hours while she cries her little heart out is a GOOD. EFFEN. DEED. And because it's a good deed, I deserve seven cookies, three pieces of that good cheese we were saving for New Years, four spoonfuls of peanut butter (plus a couple of illicit swipes with the index finger), a hunk of that good peppery salami, a Magnum bar, and a bottle of beer to wash it all down. And my vague sense of karma tells me that if there is any sense of sovereign justice in the world, this three-and-a-half minute snack will have zero effect on my waste line.

So this time round, I haven't shunned the jogging trail, even though part of me wishes I could stay on our couch until my funeral. And, even though it's the Christmas season, I like to think I've held the binge-eating in check. Stay away, papa-chunk. You're not welcome here.

(At this point, the blogger takes a break to throw away the wrappers from the three chocolate Santas Clauses he took to write this post)

This is the fifth chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second - IV. She's So Friendly

Part of the purpose of this post is to "treasure these things in our hearts", which sleeplessness, stress, and an unfortunate bout of disease have made difficult this week.* The sleeplessness, at least, serves a purpose. The times when I am awake with her are little treasures in and of themselves, the first father-daughter moments where I have her all to myself. Whenever I first look into her wakeful eyes, the first word that comes to mind is "friendly." I never thought an infant could have any sort of friendly disposition, but she does. It's as if she says, "I'm content to let you be who you are, and I want to get to know that part of you better." The sentiment reveals itself not only in the way she looks up at me, but also in the way she coos and grunts when she's hungry. She cries a lot as a colicky little thing, but crying for her seems to be a last resort. She's a friendly person who would rather communicate through less intrusive means. I'll play the little baby games; I stick my tongue out, and she mimics me. I experiment with different voices to see how she reacts. I show her different patterns. And of course, I sing.

Babies aren't carry ons or blocks of wood. They're little people with little personalities, and it's the privilege of a parent to treasure these things so early.

This is the fourth chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

*This sentence was written in mid-December. Chapter 6 has the details.

Notes on the Second - III. Woman

Awe is the appropriate response a thoughtful man has to the woman he married. Awe usually requires a certain thoughtfulness. Being thoughtful means using your thoughts to poke through the stress and distractions and day-to-day muddle that makes everything too urgent for awe. When we can't do this, events come along to bring it out. My sense of awe, neglected like I neglect this blog, focused and compounded upon itself while watching my wife give birth. Most dads would agree with me here.

The cocktail worked so quickly that we had no time for drugs or anything else. The birth was going to be all natural, with the help from a midwife, a doctor, and a hot tub. It's hard for a man not to feel so unessential to the process, even as I brought her water and gave her a shoulder to lean on. We walked back and forth, we tried different positions and "labor massages," and in the end, pretty much anything we planned didn't really work, other than to say: "full steam ahead!" The midwife was a hero, making a little moan every time my wife yelled in agony, which apparently helped, and spoke words of comfort through the torturous fear between labor pains.

The screams came from every part of her body and soul. They contained fear, pain, determination, and love, somehow shameless and proud at the same time. In labor, there's a sense of irrational urgency, and yet a wise, determined patience. In all of these paradoxes, the culmination of the 9-month process of giving life, the woman in labor is more animal, more angel, and more human than a man could ever be.

During the final pushes, she grabbed my shoulder as the doctor and midwife directed traffic. "Grabbed" - no. She crushed my shoulder between her fingers. It hurt for a week, though that'll elicit no sympathy from a birthing woman.

At the end of it all, my daughter emerged from my wife. They let me cut the cord, and they sat her on my wife's broken body for her first meal. There were tears and greetings and pictures and weighings. We had a new person to get to know, but my wife was nine months ahead of me.

This is the third chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second - II. The Cocktail

We have friends who lovingly refer to one of their sons as their "margarita baby." You laugh, because you know. Your decision to get pregnant may have been lubricated by a cocktail (or three). Well, in Germany (and perhaps other back-to-nature oriented northern European countries), there's a cocktail for the end of the pregnancy. No, it's not Mommy's little Jägermeister to ease the her into a stupor so she can forget the experience. It's the labor-inducing cocktail, and it works. (In fact, don't go googling it and making it for yourself at home, which may be tempting with 9-months and nothing moving. We've heard of mothers going for the home cocktail, resulting in some unwanted, unsafe, home births.)

It works, but it's not delicious, according my wife. The back story: My wife's water broke the morning of my daughter's birth, so we packed what was still left to pack, sent our first daughter with her grandmother, and moseyed on over to the hospital, hoping the labor pains would come soon. Well, the pains were there, but they were too wimpy to take on woman. By the afternoon, the midwife, for no extra tip, poured the cocktail. My wife sipped it down over the next hour - it's mostly nut oils, which isn't exactly "great taste, less filling." But I repeat: it works. Not only does it work, but from what I understand, the labor pains it induces are less painful than those from the medical procedure we were familiar with from having our first daughter in the States. But Labor pains they were, and my wife suddenly became capable of balling up steel beams with her fingers.

This is the second chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second - I. The Waiting

Our second child was late. Ok, late is a stupid term. Every doctor, nurse, and midwife we talked to reminded us that the "due date" was really just the middle of a range, and real earliness or lateness can involve a lot of unpleasantness. She came eight days after the due date, which isn't late. It's right on time, like a wizard.

But it felt late, especially when the doctor told my wife, eight days before the due date that "THE BABY IS LOW! GET READY! IT'LL COME AT ANY MOMENT!!!" We spent the following to weeks like Olympic sprinters waiting for the gun, head down, bottoms up, cleats sharp. This stressed us, especially as we invited everyone around us to get in sprint position - my in-laws, who were to pitch in with our first child during the labor adventures, my co-students, who were ready to pitch in with my projects and take copious notes should I suddenly get called to the hospital.

From then on, every conversation began with a look of expectation. "Is the baby there?" My daughter's kindergarten, university, church, street. Texts and Facebook, Email (remember Email?). It could get tedious. "No, not yet. My wife is uncomfortable, but she and the child are healthy. She's due the 13th, but it could be up to ten days after it." Every time. Tedious, but part of me loved it and not just the part of me that craves your approval. I loved it, because it's much better than the alternative. Those around us saw my family - my unborn child, my wife, my daughter, me - as something worth caring about. That old question, "how are you doing?" honestly asked, means something.

This is the first chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second

I. The Waiting

Our second child was late. Ok, late is a stupid term. Every doctor, nurse, and midwife we talked to reminded us that the "due date" was really just the middle of a range, and real earliness or lateness can involve a lot of unpleasantness. She came eight days after the due date, which isn't late. It's right on time, like a wizard.

But it felt late, especially when the doctor told my wife, eight days before the due date that "THE BABY IS LOW! GET READY! IT'LL COME AT ANY MOMENT!!!" We spent the following to weeks like Olympic sprinters waiting for the gun, head down, bottoms up, cleats sharp. This stressed us, especially as we invited everyone around us to get in sprint position - my in-laws, who were to pitch in with our first child during the labor adventures, my co-students, who were ready to pitch in with my projects and take copious notes should I suddenly get called to the hospital.

From then on, every conversation began with a look of expectation. "Is the baby there?" My daughter's kindergarten, university, church, street. Texts and Facebook, Email (remember Email?). It could get tedious. "No, not yet. My wife is uncomfortable, but she and the child are healthy. She's due the 13th, but it could be up to ten days after it." Every time. Tedious, but part of me loved it and not just the part of me that craves your approval. I loved it, because it's much better than the alternative. Those around us saw my family - my unborn child, my wife, my daughter, me - as something worth caring about. That old question, "how are you doing?" honestly asked, means something.

II. The Cocktail

We have friends who lovingly refer to one of their sons as their "margarita baby." You laugh, because you know. Your decision to get pregnant may have been lubricated by a cocktail (or three). Well, in Germany (and perhaps other back-to-nature oriented northern European countries), there's a cocktail for the end of the pregnancy. No, it's not Mommy's little Jägermeister to ease the her into a stupor so she can forget the experience. It's the labor-inducing cocktail, and it works. (In fact, don't go googling it and making it for yourself at home, which may be tempting with 9-months and nothing moving. We've heard of mothers going for the home cocktail, resulting in some unwanted, and unsafe, home births.)

It works, but it's not delicious, according my wife. The back story: My wife's water broke the morning of my daughter's birth, so we packed what was still left to pack, sent our first daughter with her grandmother, and moseyed on over to the hospital, hoping the labor pains would come soon. Well, the pains were there, but they were too wimpy to take on woman. By the afternoon, the midwife, for no extra tip, poured the cocktail. My wife sipped it down over the next hour - it's mostly nut oils, which isn't exactly "great taste, less filling." But I repeat: it works. Not only does it work, but from what I understand, the labor pains it induces are less painful than those from the medical procedure we were familiar with from having our first daughter in the States. But Labor pains they were, and my wife suddenly became capable of balling up steel beams with her fingers.

III. Woman

Awe is the appropriate response a thoughtful man has to the woman he married. Awe usually requires a certain thoughtfulness. Being thoughtful means using your thoughts to poke through the stress and distractions and day-to-day muddle that makes everything too urgent for awe. When we can't do this,  events come along to bring it out. My sense of awe, neglected like I neglect this blog, focused and compounded upon itself while watching my wife give birth. Most dads would agree with me here.

The cocktail worked so quickly that we had no time for drugs or anything else. The birth was going to be all natural, with the help from a midwife, a doctor, and a hot tub. It's hard for a man not to feel so unessential to the process, even as I brought her water and gave her a shoulder to lean on. We walked back and forth, we tried different positions and "labor massages," and in the end, pretty much anything we planned didn't really work, other than to say: "full steam ahead!" The midwife was a hero, making a little moan every time my wife yelled in agony, which apparently helped, and spoke words of comfort through the torturous fear between labor pains.

The screams came from every part of her body and soul. They contained fear, pain, determination, and love, somehow shameless and proud at the same time. In labor, there's a sense of irrational urgency, and yet a wise, determined patience. In all of these paradoxes, the culmination of the 9-month process of giving life, the woman in labor is more animal, more angel, and more human than a man could ever be.

During the final pushes, she grabbed my shoulder as the doctor and midwife directed traffic. "Grabbed" - no. She crushed my shoulder between her fingers. It hurt for a week, though that'll elicit no sympathy from a birthing woman.

At the end of it all, my daughter emerged from my wife. They let me cut the cord, and they sat her on my wife's broken body for her first meal. There were tears and greetings and pictures and weighings. We had a new person to get to know, but my wife was nine months ahead of me.

IV. She's so Friendly

Part of the purpose of this post is to "treasure these things in our hearts", which sleeplessness, stress, and an unfortunate bout of disease have made difficult this week. The sleeplessness, at least, serves a purpose. The times when I am awake with her are little treasures in and of themselves, the first father-daughter moments where I have her all to myself. Whenever I first look into her wakeful eyes, the first word that comes to mind is "friendly." I never thought an infant could have any sort of friendly disposition, but she does. It's as if she says, "I'm content to let you be who you are, and I want to get to know that part of you better." The sentiment reveals itself in the way she looks, even in the way she coos and grunts when she's hungry. She cries a lot as a colicky little thing, but crying for her seems to be a last resort. She's a friendly person who would rather communicate through less intrusive means. I'll play the little baby games; I stick my tongue out, and she mimics me. I experiment with different voices to see how she reacts. I show her different patterns. And of course, I sing.

Babies aren't carry ons or blocks of wood. They're little people with little personalities, and it's the privilege of a parent to treasure these things so early.

V. Chunk

Five years ago, after the first was born, I chunked up. A lot of dads do. If you don't believe me, go to Facebook and look at pictures of your new-father friends. Then watch from the day of birth until about three months as the papa's cheeks swell, love handles pour over the side of his skinny jeans, and all his shirts start to develop little mouths between the buttons as if screaming for help. The new mom shrinks, the new baby grows, the new dad expands. I never got really fat, but it's enough chunk for me to get a little queasy-cringy every time someone breaks out the photo album. Moving to Germany and regular exercise, among other thing, has kept me reasonably fit sense, and I want to keep it that way. This time around I'm determined to avoid the chunk.

Papa-chunking is hard to avoid though, and there are two reasons. One is a new kind of tiredness; the other is a vague sense of karma. First the tiredness. During stressful seasons at work or study, I'm tired, but I need exercise. There comes a point when my brain can't take it anymore until I put my running shoes on and burn five kilometers like I'm Lola. New baby tiredness is different. It comes from staying up late with a baby intent on exercising her new lungs just to give'em a spin. When she's finally swaddled and asleep, I'm exhausted. Keep in mind, I've done very little physical activity except catch her every time she does those scary little newborn trust falls from my chest. Additionally, I've paced around and sang to her and watched terrible early-morning television that I'd have been better off not knowing about in the first placed. After she's finally quiet, swaddled, and sleeping, I'm not ready to hit the running trail, the weight machine, the basketball court, or however else we men keep our college boy figures. I'm ready to pass out on the hallway floor or ready to eat, and this is where the vague sense of karma comes in.

The vague sense of karma is the big reason for papa-chunking. After all, holding and comforting a tiny little human being for three and a quarter hours while she cries her little heart out is a GOOD. EFFEN. DEED. And because it's a good deed, I deserve seven cookies, three pieces of that good cheese we were saving for New Years, four spoonfuls of peanut butter (plus a couple of illicit swipes with the index finger), a hunk of that good peppery salami, a Magnum bar, and a bottle of beer to wash it all down. And my vague sense of karma tells me that if there is any sense of sovereign justice in the world, this three-and-a-half minute snack will have zero effect on my waste line.

So this time round, I haven't shunned the jogging trail, even though part of me wishes I could stay on our couch until my funeral. And, even though it's the Christmas season, I like to think I've held the binge-eating in check. Stay away, papa-chunk. You're not welcome here.

(At this point, the blogger takes a break to throw away the wrappers from the three chocolate Santas Clauses he took to write this post)

VI. The First

When the first came, our new family was an insulated little bubble of three people, one of them new. Sure, we had enormous help from family and friends - especially the heroic grandmothers and fabulous meals from our D.C. church friends. But while they were constantly coming in and out of our little bubble, our little family strengthened like a three-fold cord.

Now, the first is five years old, and because of her, if our bubble isn't porous, it doesn't exist. She's blossomed into the richness of life that five years has to offer, the delights of learning and play and discovering things like characters and stories and science. Then, there are the challenges of discipline, disease, and the normal, everyday hassle of getting her ready for kindergarten.

Her new little sister has been thrust upon all of these things, and there's a strange paradox here. On one hand, she's old enough to be aware of what's going on, to know how to behave around her (gentle! quiet!), while avoiding the jealousies of younger older siblings. On the other hand, she's too young to really adjust her own life and habits for the change. She needs help and attention every morning, she needs and wants to play with her parents, she has moods, gets sick, gets excited, and, for the first time in her life, has become a picky eater. This of course, damages the sense of "mama-and-papa-against-the-world" was there for the first week of the First's life, and the Papa's supporting role is something like....

DoSomethingDoAnythingToDistractOrEntertainHerSoThatHerLittleSisterCanFinallyLearnToBreastfeedProperlyInPeaceExceptNotAnotherEpisodeOfSeanTheSheepBecauseShe'sSomehowInABadMoodAfterWatchingSeanTheSheepEvenThoughSheLovesItAndIKnowIt'sMuchTooColdToGoOutsideSoHelpHerPutOnHerPrincessDressAndColorButPleaseDon'tMakeTooMuchNoise!!!!!

Then, sickness entered the picture. The First came home from kindergarten (that oversized petri dish) with a nasty fever and a stiff neck. It got worse, and on Sunday, we took her to the hospital. By the grace of God, our own paediatrician was on hospital duty there, and the stiff neck signalled meningitis to him. The next day, my oldest daughter and I checked into the hospital, where we would stay for the next few days. My wife and youngest daughter stayed at home, still learning to feed and drink. It was a sad, sad situation - separation, hospital food, nightmares darkening our thoughts. There was, though, a warmth strengthening my bones at the time, and I think it was the knowledge that by simply being there I was where I ought to be and what I ought to be, and this confidence is foreign to me. A father and husband, present, within fear and sickness and suffering, standing against the effects of the Fall like a palm tree in a thunderstorm.

I wasn't alone of course - friendly and competent medical staff, my in-laws were heroes, and my wife was able to visit the hospital, and when we brought home a nasty intestinal disease from the hospital, everyone suffered but the baby, protected beautifully by my wife's milk. The antibiotics worked their magic on my oldest daughter, and we still don't know if it was actually meningitis, even though several doctors worked like Dr. House throughout the week to find out. Now, we're healthy, even if rumours of other diseases here in our neighbourhood tempt us to barricade our house 'til spring, and when we actually stop to think about it (and stopping to think is challenging when you have small kids), we're deeply thankful. My mother-in-law is convinced that our prayers helped my older daughter as much as the antibiotics. One doesn't exclude the other, and we did indeed pray.

There's another thought that helps, one that my wife brought home from the midwife that led her birthing classes. Whatever new amount of stress a little baby brings to her older sister, we've given them both an incredible gift. The love of a sister (or a brother) is not something you can easily replicate. And of course, every little girl's favorite film right now is about sisterly love, and from my daughter's Elsa dress to the way she kisses her little sister (gentle! quiet!), we get some nice reminders. As the midwife said, the sibling relationship is often the longest relationship someone can have.

VII. Horrible, Horrible Thoughts

In the background of our hospital stay, you can think of parenting as a sequence of horrible thoughts. We all have horrible thoughts about the things we care about, like the way my fellow students and I are having exam-time nightmares about impossible questions and train delays. Parents' horrible thoughts are not here for a season, though; they stay background like the colors of your walls. We have (and I think I can speak of "we" here) horrible thoughts, because horrible things happen to people, and when these things happen to babies, to any children, then this new, common, transcendent, and entangling love that I've described elsewhere is ripped out of the chests of parents and communities, irreplaceable.

In my own experience, baby's complete dependence and vulnerability make the horrible thoughts so pressing, because in many cases, I'm the one responsible. What if I slip and fall down the stairs while I'm holding her? What if I nod off on the couch and she slides off my lap? What if she's not swaddled properly and she pulls the blanket over her head? What if the bedroom temperature isn't precisely 18 degrees Celsius, which we read somewhere is the least dangerous temperature for babies to sleep in? What if I touch her after eating peanut butter only to discover an acute peanut allergy? What if I left the coffee machine on because I was in a hurry not to be late for an exam and the house burns down with the three most important people in my life inside it?

Such questions circle my brain like dancing devils, and though anxiety is health-reducing bit devilment, I've surprisingly found these horrible, horrible thoughts to work towards something else entirely. A horrible thought ambushes me when I'm minding my own business, and then I cringe and I say, "Oh, God," not as a swear, but as a prayer. My child is at the mercy of everything from my own powers of concentration to diseases in nature still unrecorded, and so I plead to God for mercy. The babies under my roof have increased my prayers in frequency and intensity, the entangling love for them entangling our very beings into his sovereignty. This is not a get-out-of-trouble card, and I'm under no illusions that these things can't or won't happen to us. Nor is this an excuse for fatalism, and our prayers have the opposite effect, promoting a careful and engaging sort of love between parent and child. Rather, this is a sober kind of hope, not always comforting but always providing a an unanswerable form of joy, that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A few days ago, I was walking home, lost in thoughts about my university exams when I was almost killed. I was crossing the street, legally, when a car made a hasty and illegal turn. Had I not been awakened and jumped out of the way, I would have been hit. The car screeched to a halt a good thirty feet to late then pulled over. The driver didn't get out, but I can assume she was as shocked as I was. This experience is not uncommon - it happened to my wife back in the U.S. But it served as a reminder that however adult and in control we are, our situation is precarious.

This precariousness makes love all the more costly, and this is acted out in family and community as we do things to make each other happy, better, and alive. Drinks with friends, jokes among my co-students, an episode of Dr. Who while feeling my wife's warmth against my thigh, playing Frozen with my daughter - all of these things shine through the precariousness like the sun on a summer morning. It deepens the joy of holding my own baby daughter, ten pounds of helpless, human warmth, in my arms. Horrible thoughts are drowned out by the knowledge that this moment with the Second is an unmatchable gift.