Busy With Baby

Rochelle and I have been busy to the point of exhaustion with a new baby at our house. My apologies for not posting more often, but I will get back to blogging when things settle down a little.

You should probably know that just when I begin to think my wife couldn't be any more incredible, she surprises me. She cares for our daughter as if she was born for that job alone.

Keep us in your prayers!

A Baby at Christmas.

Well, she's here. Our not-so-little bundle of joy has arrived, and apparently has the lungs of an Olympic sprinter. I have never heard anything that loud in my life!! When our daughter is unhappy, everyone in our neighborhood is unhappy. She doesn't cry, though. Someone, somewhere told me that babies cry a lot. Our's doesn't. She screams! I regularly fear that the neighbors are secretly suspecting that Rochelle and I are child-abusers. We aren't, we just gave birth to a shouter...she's bound to be Pentecostal.

Anyway, I writing today to simple ask for your prayers as Ro and I begin our foray into the world of parenting. It's already more difficult and trying that I thought it could be. As Rochelle and I pray for the life of our daughter this Christmas season, let's turn our attention again to the world's most important birth--Jesus. It's His birth that gives meaning to the rest of our lives.

Moments Into Memories

My most sincere apologies for those of you who have been faithfully checking in on "The Palmer Perspective" only to find out that it was woefully missing updates. My schedule, both at work and at home, forced me to focus my attentions in other areas. Preaching (and all the other duties that come with it), youth ministry, and baby preparations have kept me up late into the night during the week and awakened me early in the mornings on the weekends. So today I decided to take a much needed break.

Rochelle and I spent the day looking for what I'm sure many soon-to-be-parents have to look for: a high quality digital camera. We had a great 35 mm camera that my brother gave us for Christmas several years ago, but it was dropped and broken. So, alas, we set out to upgrade our camera to digital quality.

When you shop with a pregnant woman, store personnel notice you and read "sucker" written across your forehead. You could feel the salesmen, sharks circling around us the minute Rochelle popped through the electronics room door with her belly shouting, "I'm nine months pregnant and might blow anytime!" They were on us like white on rice. We needed a camera, did not have long to look for one, and we didn't have a whole lot of knowledge about what we wanted. Behold, the perfect prey! First it was Wal-Mart--not enough selection. Next came Best Buy--too expensive (as are most things at Best Buy), then Sam's Club--only ONE camera please (all things aren't meant to be sold in bulk), onward to Conn's--a close relative to Best Buy, and finally Radio Shack!

We came home with a camera, but more importantly for my wife, the assurance that the first days of our daughters' life would be archived and preserved for lifetimes on end. The human hearts loves to make moments into memories. We love to revisit those minutes of mystery when we are reminded that life is about the people that you love and the time that you spend with them.

Cameras are powerful! I'm guessing that the next few holiday weeks will witness their share of families and friends sitting around tables and turkeys looking back over family albums and shoeboxes stuffed to overflowing with pictures from the past. In those moments we will realize again how fast life moves and how much we miss it. We learn again how special people are and tear over the fact that other people think we're special. There is no price that can be put on that. At least, there is no price that we would not pay!

Baseball umpire Durwood Merrill tells of his rookie year calling balls and strikes in the major leagues. In his first game, Nolan Ryan, the great fastballer himself was pitching. The second pitch of the game was so fast, Merrill never saw it. He froze, unable to make the call. Finally, he yelled, "Strike!" At which point the batter backed out of the box and said, "Ump, don't feel bad. I didn't see it either."

I think life is like that sometimes. It moves so fast you might not ever see it. But when you get a chance, when life slows down, if even for just a moment, grab a memory! Snap a picture!

A Perfect World

The baby's room is just about finished now. The paint has been pristinely brushed on the walls, the border aligned perfectly along the baseboards, the dresser stained and polyurethaned and polyurethaned and polyurethaned again. Diapers are stacked, the changing pad is waiting and the smell of joy and baby powder is in the air. You can cut the anticipation with a knife! Even our sweet beagle, Ralph, has perused the room finding the perfect place to sleep while he guards the door and window from unwanted intruders into our child's world.

It's a crazy time. Every minute I am home not doing something baby related seems wasted, every item displaying the least bit of imperfection is frustrating and carries more feelings of failure than I ever imagined possible.

If it were up to Rochelle and me, our daughter would live in a perfect world. She would have a perfect childhood; wonderful and magical. She would never be harmed. She would have no scars; physical or emotional. She would somehow manage to overcome the immense faults of her parents (at least the immense faults of her dad ) that are bound to be passed on. We want her to have a perfect world! That's why we've worked so hard on the part of her world we might be able to manage; her room.

We have no illusions. We know that our faults will hurt her. All parents somehow wound their children. Like extended family passing photos at a holiday gathering, children cannot be handled with love without being fingerprinted by their handlers.

That's why Jesus teaches us to forgive! So that as we look back at the photo album of our lives, we can remember the incredible instances God has given us and love the people whose prints have smudged the pictures.

It's in those moments when life on earth is a snapshot of life in Heaven. Now that's a perfect world.

Baseball Family

My wife, Rochelle, hates the baseball postseason! Not because she loses her husband to late-night, extra-inning games but because she loses herself. It seems that in recent years the baseball playoffs have had heart-pounding, heart-breaking drama.

The much belied slow pace of the regular season becomes palpable moments of pregnant expectation in the playoffs. Each moment hangs like a curveball without enough zip. Cameras pan the pained faces of the crowd as pitch after pitch carries the blessing or the curse of winning or losing. It's agonizing. It's wonderful.

You can't do that in football...it's too fast. It won't happen in basketball...the shot clock is ticking. Don't expect it in golf...it's too quite. Forget soccer...I think we already have!

Only baseball has that magic drama of team against team, and one-on-one.

Rochelle is drawn in, like a moth to a flame to the tense drama only baseball can provide. She sits and watches, rises and falls with every late inning pitch--hoping to death that the Yankees will lose. They hardly ever do.

It is in those moments that I am most aware of family unity. I grew up in a baseball family. I'm an Atlanta Braves fan because my mom was. Rochelle grew up in a football family. Rochelle is a Dallas Cowboy's fan because her dad was. Parents shape us in more ways than we know. Adults pass along their love for sports and sports teams as easily as they pass the bread around the kitchen table.

Working with parents in a church setting, I'm often approached about how to pass down the faith from one generation to the next. We all want to know the magic formula for faithful children. I'm not sure if there is one. There are a thousand theories and none of them are fool-proof. But I think the answer may be more simple that I ever realized: love the thing you love and let your children know you love it!

That's what we do with sports. We might be on to something.

Hungry? Why Wait?

G.K. Chesterton once said, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." It seems that all of us seek transcendence through tangible means. It's people, or possessions, or power. But we never find the taste that will satisfy our hunger. We are people of indulgence because we are seekers at heart. We want to find the one thing that will bring us wholeness.

Recently I have been reading through the Sermon on the Mount and something has jumped off the page. Jesus says, "blessed (a word meaning 'happy') are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness."

Most of us spend our time chasing phantom dreams of power and influence, far fewer of us hunger for righteousness. I wonder if we would find the scratch that would finally cure the itch if we took Jesus seriously?

It's more than apparent that pursuing the other lovers of life will not and cannot make us happy: a drinker keeps drinking, a eater keeps eating, the greedy never stop cheating and the unfaithful spouse keep being unfaithful. Our endless courtship with undesirable lovers often leaves us believing that the desirous one would not want us. Nothing could be farther from the truth. God pursues us with a relentless, ferocious longing to win our hearts.

It seems that if we were at all astute, we would chose the God who has already chosen us. As Oswald Chambers has written, "There is only One Being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ."

Humble Hero

Being from Atlanta, and a Braves fan, October always brings me a sense of fulfillment or resentment about my hometown team. The truth is I was a Braves fan before my family moved from the coast of Mississippi to the capital of Georgia. I started young. I can still name the starting lineup for the Braves from 1982--I was in second grade.

In the summer, our lives dripped baseball like a cold glass of water on a sunny Mississippi afternoon. And each night as we returned home, my mom would flip on the television to the SuperStation. Intermingled with countless commercials from Georgia companies compelling consumers to buy outdated records, were the Atlanta Braves--and they were terrible. They did much more losing than winning, except for the occasional offensive break-out wherein they might score 18 runs. That would be soon followed by an a ten game streak of minimal scoring.

The only bright spot for the Braves was Dale Murphy, my hero. I loved Murphy! He was tall, great with the glove and batted in the four spot. I batted in the four spot, too. He was the clean-up man. He was the guy responsible for driving in the runs, producing the offense--he was "The Man." Every little boy wants to be THE MAN! I was no exception. Dale Murphy hit home runs, won Gold Gloves and won the National League's Most Valuable Player Award two consecutive years.

Boy, did I want to be Dale Murphy. What could be better than getting paid to play baseball for a living? On my first trip to Atlanta, I found an autographed baseball signed by Murphy under the bed of the hotel. A day later I got the real thing. Dale Murphy signed it for me before my family watched the Braves fold like a cheap accordion at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. I love those balls. Even today they sit alongside myriad Little League trophies my brother and I won as children. They are trophies unto themselves. Something about those balls belongs with my childhood--they are too precious of memories to be tarnished by "maturity."

Dale Murphy was more to me than a picture of a great ball player. When the Braves traded him as his career was coming to a close, I remember feeling hurt and betrayed (kids do not know and do not care about the business side of heroism). I pledged to never watch the Braves again. In search of their own redemption, the Atlanta Braves celebrated 'Dale Murphy Day,' shortly after the slugger retired. I watched every minute of it. The team showed a montage of highlights from Murphy's career. There were great catches, terrific throws, and of course, hundreds of homers. Any sane person would question why the Braves traded him in the first place. Then I remember very distinctly what Dale Murphy said immediately after the highlight reel. He said, "they only showed the good stuff, I probably struck out one-hundred times for every home run."

It was at that moment that Dale Murphy taught me his greatest lesson: humility. I learned in an instant that it was okay to fail at something, but it's not okay to stop trying. Murphy attributed all of his success to God, not his own abilities. Truthfully, I don't remember any plays Dale Murphy made, but I do recall what he said. And every time I feel a twinge in my ego to take a little credit for something I may have done well, I hear Dale Murphy in my ear telling me, "it wasn't your ability, it was God." I think that's what heroes are supposed to do!

Mosquitoes

It was like a plague! Friday night my garage was the Red Cross for mosquitoes in need of a fresh blood transfusion. My wife and I spent the evening hours Friday staining a newly bought dresser and changing table for our soon-to-arrive tax deduction. We thought it would be a good idea to save a few hundred dollars and stain the dresser ourselves. So after work Friday, we tucked our dog away in the backyard, opened the garage door for fresh air and popped open a new can of Rosewood stain.

I thought the staining would take about an hour--it took three. It was a three-hour buffet of blood, and every mosquito in Houston must have been on the guest list. We sanded, scrubbed and stained as these flying vampires feasted on our flesh.

A funny thing happened while Rochelle and I allowed ourselves to be dinner for bugs. I was reminded of my childhood along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. My brother and I were children of the outdoors, it was the only place we wanted to be. From sunrise to sunset we longed to be outside and my legs are permanently scarred from the thousands of mosquito bites I endured as a child. A minute taken to put on insect repellent was a minute too long for a third grader. I would bolt out the door without any preparation and my arms and legs paid the price.

The memory of each of those scars is special to me. They remind me of drippingly humid afternoon baseball practices that soaked through sunset into evening. Those marks remind me of playing touch football under the glowing street lamps of El Camino Drive. The world, at least my slice of it, was a safer place then. The dark of night posed no greater threat than the noon-day sun. That's why my legs bear their scars. We would play baseball, ride dirt bikes, and throw footballs under the dawning moon of the Mississippi summer.

Childhood has to be the best part of life! For His own divine reasons, God calls us into His banquet table and let's us eat dessert first.

I suppose the mosquitoes of Friday night swarmed at a good time for me. I was reminded of the wonderment of my childhood as Rochelle and I prepare for childhood again. Hopefully, our hearts can regain the daring playfulness and moments of miracles that are so often lost in adulthood. More importantly, we hope that our child can experience a childhood of beauty and magic.

The early years of my life are among my fondest memories. I was blissfully ignorant of war, death, taxes and mortgages. All there was was summer, baseball and mosquitoes.

10 Reasons

Recently I was reading articles from one of my favorite websites, The Ooze. I was amazed by the honesty and accuracy of a great article by John O'Keefe, entitled, "10 Reasons Why Your Church Sucks."

O'Keefe recounts having lunch with a friend when the two are approached by a leader at his former church. This is the friend's response after being prodded by the church leaders' incessant and invalidating questions.

First he said, your church is totally irrelevant to the community. You all talk a good game, but you do not see the dynamic of the community changing around you. Second, your church is filled with poor leaders and over bearing bullies who believe the best way to get anything done is to frighten people. All you have are people who will tell you what to do, and not lead us in doing it. Third, your church has no vision. You guys are just dead in the water. Fourth, your church is old. Your church is filled with old people who have no reason to move ahead. They have more life behind them then they do ahead of them. Fifth, your church is inbred. The people my age in your church are all related to the older people so change is impossible. People who are part of the outside don't feel welcomed into the inside and voice an opinion; it's filled with mama's boys. Sixth, your church is more concerned about image than reality. You all seem to be more concerned with the condition of the building then with building the condition of your people. The carpet looks great, because no food is allowed near it. The stain glass is wonderful; because you spend more money on cleaning and maintaining it then you do on mission work. Seventh, your church sees no need for change. You are all happy in your fortress and are not interested in opening your doors to the outside. Evangelism is a dead concept, and community is only those inside the building. Eighth, your church doesn't share a relevant message for a relevant time. You are so concerned with doctrine, you are not allowing me to explore the faith and question the unquestionable. Ninth, your church doesn't care about me as a person, only as a checkbook. Over the time I was with the church I heard more sermons on how much I should be giving and not one on how much you were willing to give up. The only time I had anyone from your church visit me was when pledge time came around and you needed me to increase my giving. It got to the point were I felt no matter what I gave it would never be enough. Tenth, your church is all politics and infighting. Things only get done if you can muster enough political support form others to get your point to be heard, press your issues and lobby for approval. You have to wheel and deal to get anything done.

WOW! This guy fillets his old church. Unfortunately, his critique is all to familiar for many churches. The institutional church has been blessed with Jesus and oftentimes traded Him for counterfeit comfort. It's become a country club with a cross.

My prayer is that every church, everywhere continue to convert and re-convert the church of our Lord. It is the only way we can be the place of peace, love and purpose God calls us to be.

Woeful, Wonderful Worship

Wednesday night is one of the best parts of my week. Our student ministry has a mid-week meeting called VineLife. It is essentially a youth praise and worship service. It's very simple in nature; we play a game, share prayer request and worship.

Occasionally, like yesterday, the worship leader and I will step out and introduce and new song. Last night we did two. One was great! The second wasn't so great. Few of our kids knew it, the leader had just learned it and it's not the easiest song to sing. The song wasn't bad, it was just new.

Surprisingly, no one said anything about this subtle stumble in our worship service. Well, that' not quite true. Several of them spoke later about how excited they were to learn it and they looked forward to singing it again.

I've never had an adult become excited after a service didn't go well. Somewhere in adulthood we forget that life with God is about passion and not the perfection of our (and others') performance.

That's the beauty of a child-like faith! Kids seem to know that life with God is going to have glorious stumbles and moments of magic and adventure. They don't expect Christianity to fit into the nicely ornamented charm-boxes so many of us call life. Kids instinctively know that faith is something to be lived, something that moves and flows. That's why they have so much trouble sitting still in church.

They know that Jesus is passionate, risky, wild and free. They know that with Jesus, nothing can be bottled or hermetically sealed. So when things don't go exactly as planned it's no surprise to them. They would never try to fit God into a DayRunner or financial statement. It's much more joyful to let the wind blow where it pleases.

As Dan Taylor puts it, "Mistaking this active life of faith for an institutionally backed and culturally bound belief system is similar to reducing the Mona Lisa to paint-by-numbers."

Divine Danger

For the last month I've been flipping through the photo album of the life of David, the king of Israel, as told in I and II Samuel. A few of those snapshots have made their way into sermons that my congregation has been gracious enough not to cough and write notes through (at least not too much).

David was a man after God's own heart, which might lead some of us to think that God's anointing would guarantee that David's scrapbook would be stuffed with perfect pictures. We might expect his life to exemplify the easy exchange of faithfulness and fulfillment that some of those purple-suited preachers promise on television. Isn't that the way it is supposed to work? We do our part and God does His! Isn't life with God supposed to be comfortable and safe? The problem is that God is far to loving and passionate to not be dangerous.

Brent Curtis and John Eldredge put it this way:

"When we think of God being good, we perhaps picture someone like Al on the popular TV program,Home Improvement. He is someone who carefully plans out each task ahead of time and has all the proper tools and safety equipment in place; someone who has thought out every possible danger ahead of time and made allowances to ensure our safety as his workmate; someone who goes to bed early, gets plenty of rest, and wears flannel shirts as a mark of reliability."

"Being in partnership with God, though, often feels much more like being Mel Gibson's sidekick in the movie Lethal Weapon. In His determination to deal with the bad guy, he leaps from seventh-story balconies into swimming pools, surprised that we would have any hesitation in following after him. Like Indiana Jones's love interest in the movies, we find ourselves caught up in an adventure of heroic proportions with a God who both seduces us with his boldness and energy and repels us with his willingness to place us in mortal danger, suspended over pits of snakes."

God lives and loves adventure! That's why David's video yearbook has him darting in and out of caves, running for his life, fighting battles, killing giants and dancing before the Lord.

Life with God has never been safe. But oh, what an adventure!

The word on street is that a baby will be arriving at our house sometime in November. My wife, Rochelle, is well into her seventh month. We are entering the home stretch marks!

A child--even before she arrives--radically shifts your priorities. For instance, before Ro became pregnant, we planned and dreamed of an Alaskan cruise. I had thoughts of setting sail on a city on the sea. I panted for breath-taking views of snow-capped mountains shooting out of ice-crusted earth. I wanted to see God's overflowing beauty reflected in the open waters of the sea.

Having grown up in Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas, I thought I would see God at his grandest in Alaska. The tall pines of Mississippi, the red clay of Georgia and the desert brown of Texas never had given me that sense.

However, the financial necessities of baby-dom have arrested that dream for the time being. Our cruise turned into a crib, a car seat and cutesy clothes for a little girl.

I remember having a moment of immense selfishness, thinking to myself about how I missed Alaska. Then Rochelle grabbed my hand in the early hours of the morning and placed it on her stomach. Just then, my daughter-to-be kicked (she's bound to be the cutest little girl EVER), and Alaska melted away.

Rochelle beamed! Her smile is heaven's horizon.

That moment reminded me that God is grand--everywhere, always! May those who have eyes to see, see Him!

Every morning immediately after his 5 am potty break, my dog, Ralph nestles himself against my left leg. Like clockwork, he warms himself under our covers and into my heart. I've never really liked dogs. I bought Ralph for my wife's birthday last year--she is a lifelong dog lover. I figured that if I got her something she loved, her love for me would only increase.

Every day I see or realize something divine in living life with a pet. Each day I catch a glimpse of God through a 13-inch beagle. In many ways, Ralph has been the bearer of Good News in our home.

This morning as Ralph snored his day away, I was struck with the incredible trust he has in me. I am much larger and stronger than he is, but he has no fear that I might become malicious and hurt him. I make all the rules--some he likes (the 9 pm snack), some he's not so crazy about (he can't sleep in the bed at night), but he responds well to each of them. No barking, no pouting.

Ralph is a breathing toy. I tug his ears, play with his nose and make him chase his own tail. He never flinches. He knows I wasn't created to hurt him.

I've had to do many things to Ralph that I wish I didn't have to do. I've held him down while his vet performed the most invasive procedures. I've had to withhold meals on Dr.'s orders. I've had to bring him near strangulation when he once got too aggressive with my wife. In those moments, there is no way he can understand that what I'm doing isn't meant to cause pain. It is meant to heal and protect.

Each time I return home, Ralph races to door, eyes shining and tail waging. He rockets off the floor like Sputnik, jumping to near head high just to say "hello." He's glad to have the company of those who care for him.

So this morning as he dreamed of chasing rabbits and treeing bunnies I was reminded about trust. I thought about the myriad times I have failed to trust God. I secretly believed He wasn't there or didn't care. Ralph reminds me that my assessment couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm mindful of God's care for me during every trip to the vet's office as I take care of my dog.

Ralph whispers to me that when my mind's VCR replays scenes of suffering, God was there. He was there doing for my well-being the thing that had to be done. He was caring for me in situations when I could not care for myself.

Now surely, the question of suffering cannot be answered through the life of a short-haired dog (if it can be answered fully at all). But if a dog, who endured tremendous suffering before we adopted him, can learn to trust again, maybe I can too.

The Palmer Perspective is a new venture, set out in the hopes that this will be a place to unearth the relics of goodness and pleasure of our Lord on earth. Like most westerners, I have seen all the harm and evil that vast technologies like the Internet can create--or rather illuminate--and desire an oasis of goodness. A place where those who seek wonderment and faithfulness can find respite from a world retreating from the pleasures only our Lord can provide.

My hope is for people to be drawn nearer to whom they were created to be--a truer version of themselves. Let's enjoy the journey together.

--Sean