"we" is wonderful

I don't plan on blabbing on this blog only about our firstborn but our product of conception is kind of a big deal. Its a common occurrence among humans to reproduce but as common as it is, it is so unusual for Christa and me. It is strange and beautiful to be involved first-hand and, as we are one, to be responsible for all 26 chromosomes. Pregnancy is typical yet so foreign. Its the newest and coolest thing we've experienced since... well, since we've been doing what married people do. Which is also awesome. The act is even better because we didn't invent the act. God is a God of pleasure. I believe God delights in our pleasure. And one of the pleasures is to be blessed with such a common, curious addition to our family. This five pound baby is a big deal.

Its our last, first pregnancy. If its our only pregnancy, it will be our best. The growing human in Christa's uterus is unbelievable to me. The past few weeks, Christa has told me on the phone, "we'll be home soon", or "we are at the store", or we've been taking a nap."

"We" is wonderful.

Wherever she goes, Christa has been accompanied since August by someone we haven't officially met. Mama's had a well-behaved and friendly tag-a-long for the past 34 weeks.

And I love when she says "we".


Recently, our conceived product was pretty heavily involved in our first Christmas letter:

Hi.
I want to tell you a bit about 2008 from my perspective. I have experienced unspeakable joy, miraculous growth, new challenges and divine blessings this year. I was always warm. I never doubted my safety. I was given no responsibilities. I ate and slept at will. I didn’t worry. I did not pay taxes. I did not even think to care about this year’s election. I had wide open availability all year to do as I pleased. I have thoroughly impressed myself all year. I have been fully alive and enjoyed each minute.

My creator is good to give me such a great year. He must be really smart.
Recently, I have begun eavesdropping on everyone around me. I heard my mom and dad have been married since December 30th of 2007 and I can tell they really like each other. I overheard, following their promise of life-long commitment to each other, they had an amazing time along the Caribbean in the jungle of Costa Rica and in the jagged San Juan Mountains of Telluride. I hope they take me along next time.

I look forward to getting to know them. I expect to join Mom and Dad for bike rides, camping trips, morning coffee, reading nights and cooking lessons soon. I can tell my dad is romancing my mom despite his regular blunders. He is learning how to better lead and love my mom and I think they will learn even more once I arrive. I know he is lucky to have my mom. I think we’re going to have a very fun time together though I don’t know why they didn’t invite me into their lives until just August of this year.

At first they talked about moving out of the city and into the suburbs but I think their experience living in Denver has opened their eyes and hearts to the needs of an urban community and to the command to love their neighbors. I observe they have been blessed with an incredible church in the downtown area. In between my naps, I have been impressed with the challenging sermons, friendly and accepting people and lives that are being changed.

Life is a gift. That’s what I can hear my parents say about me. And the joy, growth, challenges and blessings I mentioned earlier are also present in my parents’ lives. I hope you and yours consider Christ’s life as the best and most important gift this year. Christmas is a time to make much of Christ’s birth. How good it is when we make less of ourselves and more of Him. I get the feeling our purpose on earth is greater than pleasing ourselves and no less than glorifying God. While difficult for my little developing brain to sort out, my 155 beats-per-minute heart is convinced in this.

Despite my parents’ effort to anticipate my arrival, they can’t fully understand the new challenges and abundant joy they are about to experience as parents until I am in their arms. They undoubtedly will continue to thank my Creator for the gift of my life but more importantly, for the gift and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. May we all celebrate and contemplate this reality, truth and hope more than ever.

Before I go to ingest more amniotic fluid, I need to ask that somebody please talk some sense into my dad prior to mid-May. After my mom’s water breaks, he intends to ride bikes to the hospital and then he wants to deliver me personally. If that wasn’t crazy enough, he has plans for a family cross country bike trip for 2012. My training wheels will surely put me at a severe disadvantage.

Merry Christmas!

Love,
“Pipsqueak” Payne

the supreme adventure

We have considered naming our offspring after GK Chesterton. Chesterton was a godly man. A wise man. An excellent and unique writer. Chesterton is dead. But three of his books sit on our shelf and often in our laps, at home. He is an author that demands the reader to read each paragraph at least three times to decipher what he is saying. Christa and I enjoy his writings quite a bit and we actually have about a dozen Chesterton sentences and paragraphs posted throughout our little house. He wrote from a common sense perspective but his truthful humor, his wisdom, his convicting commentary is seemingly uncommon. He was provoking and his material is relevant as ever: family, war, politics, sex, marriage, economics, art, love, crime. I recommend you purchase and diligently study his contributions.

As for naming our first-born after this Brit, this is another conversation.

No part of Gilbert-Keith-Chesterton resembles the 21st century. Not that we are only looking for a post-modern name to keep up with the trends of society. But no part of GKC's name sounds great with "Payne". We take our role as the name-giver very seriously. Adam got to name each and every member of animalia and we get to name one mammal. We're working on it. It's been fun. It's still a secret. Of course we're not the first couple to determine what an appropriate, meaningful, and strong/beautiful name should be. This naming-your-kid-thing has been done 100 billion times in human history. We do though, want our kid to like his/her name. TBD in late April/early May.

Naming aside, I want to share an excellent paragraph from our dead friend. When I compiled our wedding reception slide show, I included a few Chesterton quotes that seemed to compliment our mood and our perspective. Here is one of them...

"The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale." Heretics, page 143.

I can't believe we are where we are. We're family. We're healthy. We are richly blessed. We're eager to love our little man/woman to death because that's all we know. It's what parents do. First they name their kid and then they love their kid with all they've got. Chesterton, you're right. It is a supreme adventure. And it is splendid. A trap? But a good trap. With lots of aunts and uncles. We're waiting in that bush, ready to leap. The fairy tale is about to encounter an addition to the story.

a house

Our little one, the five-pounder attached to the placenta and drinking amniotic fluid, is pushing out on the inside of his house a lot lately. Its not cliche to me anymore; that beautiful scene of a young mother and father stopping everything they're doing to lay on the floor of the house to feel a new human being push on mom's tummy from the inside. I read we get our fingerprints from pushing on the inside of the womb. Our baby's "house" feeds, warms, protects and is also the fingerprint machine.
How in the heck does that work?
I can't pretend that doesn't shock me. I spend all day acting like nothing in this world is surprising or moving or abnormal, that everything around us is like it is because it is. But this fingerprinting process disables my auto-pilot. This is incredible. We got our unique and permanent fingerprints, which are good for identification and ball-gripping purposes, by moving our fingers across our mother's womb as little human beings. I love thinking about the wonderful waving and winding lines our 33 week old offspring is developing as he runs his fingertips across his mama.