It's been one week

Joshua was born last week, and it's been one wonderful week, I tell ya. Between the diaper changes and middle-of-the-night feedings, I don't know I've ever been more in love or more excited to be married to Kelly! Joshua has done well in his first week of life, and he's feeling more comfortable in his own skin and in his surroundings.

Kelly and I are so thankful for friends who've come and spent time, helped out, cleaned, and brought groceries. We're so thankful for God's provision and his church in Memphis!

IT'S BABY TIME!

Kelly and I are in the Labory & Delivery room waiting for our son to be born. We've been watching for him to come over the past week, and it looks like he's definitely going to be an independent thinker. Kelly had consistent contractions all day yesterday, but he was still content to stay with Mami. Well, this morning, he decided that he's ready to join us; we've been telling him over the past two weeks that he'd have much more room to play in his room than inside Mami. :)

At any rate, he's coming TODAY!!! We're so excited!!!! As we were driving to the hospital, I told Kelly that today definitely changes the entire course of our lives.

Welcome 2011!

Welcome back to On My Own Two Feet. It's been almost two years since my last post, and a lot has happened in that time. I wrote my last post from my little living room in my apartment in the Cuatro Caminos neighborhood of Madrid. I was an assistant English teacher and had been married barely six months. We were attending Oasis Madrid Church, and we had our whole lives ahead of us.

Since March 2009, my wife and I moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in order for me to start teaching at a charter school. Since moving to Memphis, we have had heartaches and triumphs. I am now writing from the den in the house we bought; my wife is now nine months pregnant with our first child, and the car we bought is in our driveway. I'm about to start a new job--my school let me go since they had to "divert resources" to other areas, and Spanish is not a required subject in middle school.

And I turn 30 in seven weeks.

I feel like I've spent so much of the past 10 years trying to prove that I was old enough to take on life. I'd always had friends older than me, and after I graduated college, I moved to Spain to start a new life and grad school. Now that I'm on the other end of my 20s, I feel like I'm not trying as hard to prove that I'm old enough. With my son being born soon, I feel like I have a pass to be young and learn new things as he learns.

forgiveness

i´m glad i´m not God because there are some things i don´t know i could forgive. at least, i don´t know if i could forgive without first doling out consequences or making someone pay for their past, then no longer remembering their wrongdoings.

this comes about after reading of the guilty plea of josef fritzl, the "monster of amstetten," in austria, who locked his daughter away for 24 years and raped her continuously. if he repented and turned his life to Jesus, who is the author and perfector of our faith and through whom we are reconciled to God the Father, he would be as equal a co-heir with Christ in his kingdom as i would be. as a human, i don´t like that idea very much because of the pain he has caused not only his daughter, but her children. these victims now live in a different part of the country with new identities and are receiving intense counseling, but what about the scars of their past?

scars heal our wounds and help make us new, but they also mark a part of our past; each one has a story. Jesus´ blood washes clean our wounds of sin and makes us a new creation! it´s the great wonder of salvation, and it´s freely given to us without holding anything over our heads. that´s another thing that´s hard to reconcile as humans--a free gift.

just wait

i've heard a lot in my life about waiting. i've waited to get through my illness. i've waited for a wife. i've waited for my studies. i've waited for my job as an auxiliar to be processed. i've waited for residency and for residency to be renewed. there's been a lot of waiting in my life.

one thing i've learned about waiting is that the waiting itself is part of the journey, not just a holding pattern before things start. i've tried to seek the Lord in times of waiting to listen to what he has to say to me and learn from the experience as a preparation for the next step.

just wait.

Air 1's verse of the day

"For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him. "

Philippians 2:13, NLT

beauty in the broken

today's title comes from the starfield album "beauty in the broken". they have one song entitled "the hand that holds the world". i thought of this song as today, abruptly, my hips started feeling heavy and kind of hurting. it's 90% humidity today with a 40-70% chance of rain, too.

i found this verse in james 1:18: He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

God chose us through truth to be the light of his creation. i can dig that when i'm hurting. it's not my fault. it's not his, either. i'm just trying to hold onto his hand. job 12:10 says: "In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind."

satan, in Jesus' name we renounce your works and the control you may have over this world. we reclaim the power of his Kingdom on this earth and declare victory in Jesus' name!