So, I’m sitting there and I’ve listened to all my podcasts for the day (Ravi Zacharias, Dave Ramsey, Stand to Reason) and start looking around iTunes Radio and stumbled upon this station called Church Beat Radio.  They play urban gospel music.  Admittedly, I’ve never been a big fan of gospel music from a tast perspective, but when you put ‘urban’ in front of the word, I guess it’s a different story because I was hooked for about 2 weeks.

I’ve taken the liberty of posting the videos of a couple of my favorite tunes.  Enjoy!

1) Stay Saved; Canton Jones.  Note: Lay aside the theological inaccuracy’s, this song cracks me up.

2) Good in the Hood; Tye Tribbett. No video; just listen to the words.

3) Love Him Like I do; featuring American Idol Ruben Studdard, Mary Mary and Deitrick

Briahna

August 22 will never be just another day.  At 12:32am, Briahna Rose Kent entered the world via C-section.  It was one of those surreal experiences that moved me in ways I had not expected.

The short story of her arrival began at 5am Thursday morning when Mindy’s started feeling small pulling sensations that was essentially her continuing to dialate.  She held out calling our midwife until her appointment at 9:30 that morning.  I rode my bike to work not really thinking anything was going to happen (caveate: it was 2 days before our due date and everyone knows that first children are late, so I’m preparing to wait another 2 weeks).

10:15am I get a call at work (unusual since no one wants to talk to me)…It’s Mindy.  She can barely speak as she says, “So…(breathe)…are you ready to have a baby…(trailing off as she startes another contraction)?”

Whoa… … … I’m almost speechless because (as all men do) I’m very slowly trying to switch out of my mental “work box” and dig into my mental “wife box.”  I rode my bike home because Briahna was facing out and there are some exercises our midwife wanted her to do to try to get her to flip over.  I honestly don’t remember much of my ride home.  It’s a 18 minute ride; I think I did it in 10 (I do know my legs were very sore later).  I got home, showered real quick, packed the car and back to the hospital by 11:15.

For first time parents to be, a word of advice.  Even if you THINK you’re going to get an epidural, be forewarned that Mindy had to cope with about 2 hours of unmedicated contractions before getting into a room and the epidural started.  Moral of the story; lamaze was worth every penny for us.

Short story long, we got into the room about 1:15.  The epidural was in her by 1:45.  Life was good.

Fast forward to 8pm.  Mindy hit the 10cm mark and the big push begins.  Significant back labor because Briahna would not flip over (epidurals don’t relieve back labor) so, again, Lamaze paid off.  Mindy pushes and pushes and pushes.  11:15pm our midwife says, “I want the on call OB doctor to see if he can help because she hasn’t moved very far in the last 2 hours.”

11:30pm the doctor advises us that our baby just can’t seem to make it around the corner of the bone and keeps bumping her head on it.  He says C-section is the way to go.

12:25am  I got my scrubs on, I’m sitting there with Mindy in the OR just waiting for that baby to start crying.

12:32am I hear Briahna start to cry.  The anesthesiologist says, “If you want to peak over the curtain you can see you baby.”  The moment was surreal.  She was looking around in a daze as they clipped the cord and whisked her away to clean her up.

Moments later, they brought over our baby girl and placed her in Mindy’s arms.  We stare.  She stares back.  Her fingers were tiny and really white.

12:37am The nurse takes her and I follow behind as we go back over to do the 2nd APGAR test.  It was the first moment I started feeling the wonder of it all.  She was stripped naked and I was standing their gently stroking her forehead with my finger.  I swear she was looking right at me.  I had my first father moment where I understood a little clearer what the love of a father, and of the Father, is like.  It was a door that opened that I didn’t even know was there and a wave of love for this little girl welled up and saturated my heart.  I even started tearing up.  Surreal.

She was born on August 22, weighing 7lbs 3.7oz at 20″ in length, has auburn red hair and blue eyes (like her mother–we hope they stay that color!).

Mindy is recovering great.  Briahna is getting more adorable by the hour.  Stay tuned as I’m sure there will many stories to come.

Grace and Peace.

First and foremost, our baby girl is due in just 2 short weeks, although we’re praying for an earlier arrival.

Mindy’s mother comes on this Thursday for a month to help out and babysit the petting zoo (aka; our house) as needed during labor and delivery.  We’re looking forward to some great home cooking!

We’re coming down to the last part of our softball season and it looks like we could have a NY Giants ending.  We finished the season 7-7 with 5 of our losses coming in the first half of the season.  In our first two play-off games, we managed to 10-run rule (if you are up more than 10 runs in the 5th inning or later, game over) both teams, one of which was the #1 team in the league.  Tonight, we play the semi-finals and tomorrow (if we win) it’s the championship.  It’s going to be exciting.

Mindy stopped working a couple of weeks ago.  She will not hesitate to tell you it was not a moment too soon!  Since then, she’s been diligently getting our house cleaned to her standard but has also enjoyed getting her 11 hours of sleep every night (get it while the gettin’ is good).

WIth Mindy now at home full time, it does put significant financial pressure on us.  As we learned at church this weekend, one of pressure’s purposes is strengthen our faith in the provider of all things.  We/I need to focus not on the source of the pressure, but the power and provision of God.  Since losing my job in January, I have been anxiously (both good and bad anxiety) awaiting how God was going to work things out for the good of Mindy and me.  We have been blessed and continue to be blessed in this.

With that in mind, I have been spending my work hours listening to Dave Ramsey, a financial guru who operates on God’s and grandma’s principles of handling money (“Giving you the same financial advice your grandmother would, only we keep our teeth in”).  I highly recommend either him or Crown Ministries as a way to get your stinking finances in order so that if do find yourself out of work or in some sort of emergency, God won’t have to work so hard (or rather God won’t have to make you work so hard).

Mom and Dad are back from PA for a month and are about to start their Tour De Grandchild before heading back to their next assignment in Nebraska.  We look forward to seeing them tomorrow and again after Briahna gets here.

Grace and Peace.

Articles of interest/humor:

20 Ways to make the most of your groceries without spending a cent

20 Creepy Baby Products

Get Rich by Saving every $5 bill

What NOT to tell your 2 year old

Head Scratching Anti-Terror Measure for Airplanes

Video:

The Jedi Gym (Thanks, Christian Dashiell)

Chimp Head on a Roomba (quite strange)

Misc.

Tiger Stripes – Crazy Opticals

Hopefully, next week I won’t be so lazy (not that that would effect these blogs, it’s more of a personal goal)

Grace and Peace.

Someone asked him if he was a five point Calvinist.  First off, there is no other kind of Calvinist(I’m sure I’m missing something here.  I’m not a vigilant student of the issue so you’ll have to take his word for it).  If you understand fully what the five points of Calvinism are, J. I. Packer summarizes by saying it is the God saves sinners.  Secondly, he wanted to clarify exactly what is and what IS NOT a Calvinist.

Calvinism is not to be confused with determinism.  He states that many people believe that the alternatives are simple, if you believe in pre-destination, you cannot believe in free-will since all our decisions have been made for us in advance.  There is more to it and to make his point, he asks two very simple questions;

1) Have you ever willfully chosen to sin when you could have chosen not to sin?  Yes, both human experience and the Bible tell us this.

2) Is it possible to chose to never sin?  No.  If you have doubts about this, read Romans 7.

So, in the first sense, we exercise our free-will to sin (although this is not true in every circumstance), but in the second sense, it was inevitable that we WOULD sin.  And it is our sin that separates us from God.

The whole world has chosen to sin when they could have done otherwise, so God sent Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sins and extends that free-will choice to all of us.  But not everyone will choose to accept his free gift and this is where election/pre-destination comes into play.  God knows who will and who will not choose him and therefore extends this grace to those who will accept it.

I’ll insert my own thoughts here.  Regarding this whole issue, I’ve preferred to stand on the sidelines during said debates.  Since I don’t have the answer key to who is and is not ‘elect,’ I assume EVERYONE is ‘elect’ and if they are not to the point of salvation, I try to influence their free will toward the choice of salvation.

Thoughts? Don’t be shy in making comments.

Grace and Peace.

*Anyone unfamiliar with Stand to Reason, it is a fantanstic apologetic ministry.  They teach a great method of discussing faith and philosophy without beating people over the head with the bible (most times, I find that beating people with anything is counterproductive…most times)

Our church did a DVD series from Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage with Mark Gungor (I highly recommend this as it was very education and hillarious).  A summary of his observations follows:

Men are visual.  The entire experience they are taking snap shots of everything they see and feel and store them in their RAM as the precedent to live up to; after all, this is their only point of reference.  There is generally no strong emotional connection because, well, they are men (Mark is quick to point out he is generalizing and not pigeon holing every man).  After the initial experience, men generally try to recreate the initial photos they took.

Women experience sex differently because while men connect physically, women connect emotionally and associate those emotions AFTER sex has taken place.  If there is no emotional association for a women (as is the case with most unmarried sexually active people), women gradually lose desire for sex because it doesn’t mean anything.

Contrast this with God’s plan.  The man has to work for it, commit to it and win the girl.  The girl knows the man is invested and willing to commit to her.  And there’s a big celebration, a big deal and everyone is there.  Everything is capped off with consummation.  The man’s point of reference is just one woman, his first experience with the one person he will be with the rest of his life and the woman makes a strong emotional connection because sex actually means something.  Everybody wins.

It was something I had never heard before.  There is obviously a larger context and since I don’t want to restate all 5 sessions of Mark’s sessions, I’ll just recommend the DVD series again.

Grace and Peace

Rumors are that Good Morning America, the Today Show and perhaps Fox and Friends are all sending crews out to cover this historic event.  Ripley’s and the Guiness Book of World records are also involved, as well as local media outlets.

What’s my connection?  Kent attends Westside Church and was a part of a men’s group I attended while I was out of work.  He is also a good friend of Mark Knowles, owner of Smart Solutions, the company I now work for (we designed and hosts the event website, couchballoons.com)

Check it out!

Someone asked me what this blog would be about. I think it’ll be a random collection of thoughts and reflections having to do my own life, theology, philosophy and sports.  The beauty of the blogging world is that if you have a pulse and a computer, you can blog.  The question then becomes, will anyone other than my mother read this?  To that I say, that really wouldn’t bother me (because I love my mother).

If you are new to the blogging world, I recommend getting a Google Reader account.  It’s like an ‘inbox’ for Weblogs (or Blogs).  There are a lot of great blogs out there and the nice thing is that they are short for people with short attention spans like…(where was I?)

Oh, and the official lame title of this Blog is ‘Chris in Christianity; Putting Chris in Christianity’ (it’s almost sacreligious, but not really).

Grace and peace.