Preposterousness

Earlier today, I tweeted a paraphrase of the following verses:

Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"?

1 Corinthians 1:27-28

Try and stay with me here, wordplay ahead...

In reality, we're all nobodies without Christ, and we become somebody with Christ.  But the somebodies referred to here are not the somebodies we are in Christ.

They're the somebodies we allow our flesh to tell us we are, the somebodies that we haven't given over to Christ, the somebodies that our egos tell us we need to hold on to, the somebodies that we either used to be, or wished we were, or have even allowed ourselves to become right alongside the somebodies we are in Christ.

But there is nothing holy, good, or even useful in those somebodies.  Thing is, we're usually ill-equipped to see these somebodies in ourselves.  So the nobodies (who are now somebodies in Christ) come along and show us.  And speaking from my own personal experience, this is often not well received by our fleshly somebodies, and we kick against it.  I know I fought hard for a while, and then I read these verses and it was a eureka moment

Listen to the nobodies, because they know more about your somebodies than you'll ever be able to recognise without them.

Humilty comes by being able to receive counsel from somebody that you think is nobody.

I'm not sure how or when it happened, but for as long as I can remember I've been fascinated by numbers, numerology, statistics, etc.  It might partially explain why I became an accountant.

Yeah I know, pray for me. 

In particular, I have a special affinity for dates, often remembering them with annoying accuracy - especially when associated with when a particular song was in the charts, often in countries other than my own.

It's an utterly ridiculous and mostly useless gift.

However, the other day something occured to me : our beautiful daughter, Eleanor, was born on 26 July 2011, and I suspected that must be pretty close to 10 years since I first set foot in this beautiful country.

So I did a little research.  That process was surprisingly simple, because coupled with my memory for dates is my somewhat quaintly romantic penchant for keeping all the email correspondence between Diane and I going back to when we first 'met' online in May 2001. (ok, I'll admit not just those emails...most emails, some of which are now over 15 years old. Yep, keep praying for me.)  A quick review of these emails revealed my suspicion to be well-founded.

26 July 2011 marked the 10th anniversary of my very first arrival in Northern Ireland.  It wasn't just 'pretty close', it was exact.

For most, that will be little more than a curiosity.  For me, it's just one more thing to love.

For those of you who somehow follow this blog but don't follow me on Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook, I am now a dad.  Not just technically, but in fact.  Eleanor Violet Goodwin was born on 26 July 2011 at 9.45am, weighing 8lb / 3.625kgs and measuring 21.7" / 55cm.  Three weeks later, she's almost 9lb / 4kgs.

And I'm totally besotted.  But allow me to backtrack for a moment...

As I posted earlier today over on the other blog I write, it's been a busy season of life since this blog went silent earlier in the year.  Some people write to process that kind of change; I tend to get stuck in with living the change and seeing where we end up.

Much as I love writing - both words and music - seasons in life change the urgency for that writing to take place.  For several years, I wrote and finished a song pretty much every week or so.  Over the past year, surrounded by some of the finest songwriters on the planet (no, really), I've only written a couple here and there, and most of them have been for my baby daughter in the last few weeks.  It's not because I think my songs don't stand up (ok, that may be a little bit of the reason - lol), it's because the time & energy I once dedicated to songwriting has been invested in other areas of life; those requiring my time & energy more urgently, but no less passionately.  Sure, it means that my files of song seeds are overflowing because I've not planted any of the seeds from the past year, but that's ok - a fallow year lets the soil rest, ready for a bumper crop in the future, whenever that might be.

Until the God-given urgency returns, the God-given rest continues.

So this most recent season of life has seen a new job, a new house, and a new baby.  Those are pretty much the biggest things a married couple is going to do, and to have all of them happen in the space of three months (let's not get technical on the baby cooking time) has meant my time has been better spent loving my wife than writing about loving my wife.

The best gift I can give my daughter is to show her love; teaching her how much I love her mummy, how much we both love her. And that takes time. Intentional time.

It's not overly likely that this blog is going to get busy again like it was back in 2009, or even parts of 2010.  Life has changed, changed for the better, and when I do write, it's mostly going to be over on that other blog I mentioned earlier. It's a blog all about love, from a church founded on love, for a people in need of love - often more urgently than they'll ever know.

It's been a little quieter round here than even I had intended, with April and May's #oneword2011 posts just not happening.  Even blogging over on my busier blog has been kinda quiet of late.  There's lots of reasons for that, mostly just not prioritising writing time in an increasingly squeezed schedule, but still - if you'd like to read what I have written, feel free to pop over here.

Yes, that's right, I've written a post.  And it's about my One Word for 2011 - daddy, so it's appropriate that Father's Day (at least in the US & UK) is coming up this Sunday, 19 June.

But don't faint now.  Just go and read it. And make sure you read all the other dadposts by others over there this week.

We've arrived at the halfway point between conception and birth, and aside from my almost daily, completely obscure conversations with my child inside the womb, I don't know that I feel ready for our lives to be turned upside yet again, this time by something so different to previous upheavals.

After years of wanting this, after thinking it may never happen, after revelations relocations and restorations, after all of that...I just don't know. 

I am excited, and I am enjoying the emotional rollercoaster because rollercoasters rock, but I still don't feel ready - and I'm not sure I really can be anyway.

I am smiling at being called daddy by friends, and overall I am feeling good about imminent parenthood, but one thing nags me. 

Have I got a father's heart?

(OK - plenty more things nag me, but mainly this one thing)

"...and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children..." - Luke 1:17, ESV 

I watch other fathers more closely than I did.  Not judging, just observing :)

I read about God's father heart. I listen to my pastor teaching about the Father's heart.

I look at the photos of my child's feet, face, arms, legs, brain, heart as they form - everything in its right place - and I realise this is a journey for me too : just as my child's heart is forming, so is a new heart within me.

Who knew being unemployed could be so busy?  I've even slacked on maintaining what has become my main blogging output these past few weeks...

There's plenty of opportunities to be totally freaked out, scared, full of fear and a whole host of other negative things as Diane & I race toward parenthood in what looks like one of the least "successful" periods of our lives.

And I'd be lying if I said my mind had all been peachy-keen these past few months. It's stupid to deny the reality of your emotions & feelings, because Jesus does His best work when we're completely open & vulnerable before Him.

In reality, in the ways that really count, we're doing much better than when it looked like we were doing well. I'm completely convinced the reason we're expecting our first child this year and not at any time during the previous 6 years is because this is where we're meant to be - mentally, spiritually.

There's something odd about becoming a parent later in life; no matter how average & normal it now may be, having your first child in your late 30s isn't really normal. I've had many conversations about how parenthood involves many eureka moments of how God sees us. Just like life before marriage, life before children kinda feels like you're missing out on something. Well, we know we've missed out on things...we're just about to find out what, huh!

But no matter what, as this daddy prepares for fatherhood and seeks to provide for his family, things that currently feel a long way off - like somewhere to live, a way of paying for that somewhere, a few other minor details (EEEKKKK!) - at the forefront of my mind is my namesake's desire to be a man after God's own heart.

For He's told me, plain as day, "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you".

If Daddy says it, daddy would be a fool not to do it.

But be assured the majority of posts on this blog during the coming year will be related to #OneWord2011, with the next post coming soon.

Just give me a wee moment for my head to stop spinning.

Time for my monthly post of Preposterousness.

As predicted, my last post on Dec 1 was the last one for 2010, and thus this post comes after my first white Christmas and the start of what will be my first full year as a resident of the northern hemisphere (providing all proceeds as expected...)

And after a year of much change, 2011 will certainly be another.

Last year my word was discipline, and it certainly took some of that to get through everything 2010 brought our way, though I know the word and all it involves didn't shape my approach to life as deeply as it should have.

So, this year my word is...

Well, I know what it is, but I'm not able to tell you just yet.   Oooo the mystery...

Consider this my statement of intention to be part of Alece's One Word 2011 community, with another post to come by the end of the month.

(I know, two posts on this dormant blog in a month! It won't know what to do with itself...)

I will say that the word I've chosen isn't the first word I thought of for my One Word - that being "love" - but I will most certainly need lots of love to be successful in having my One Word 2011 pervade my life as well as it should.  I've been mini-blogging about love for the past couple of months over on my church's blog, and I can tell you that being focussed so intently on love, specifically God's love, is good for the soul.

Very very good.

For what has become my monthly post on Preposterousness, a list of nothingness wherein I obscurely mention random things :

• While I appear to have stopped blogging, in fact I've almost blogged more in the last month than I have since I started blogging 2 years ago.  It's just that none of it is here.  Instead, it's all over here on my church's blog.
• Every post on this blog since July has had something in common, other than the fact that I've written them.  Can you work out what it is?
• Many of my friends have expressed their disbelief at this being my first cold Christmas season.  I'm loving it!  It all makes much more sense; for while Australia and other southern hemisphere nations have their own Christmas traditions to suit the climate, a huge amount of what we are exposed to is sourced from up north.
• While much of the world is winding up for Christmas, and my homeland is winding up then down in typical summer holiday stylee, Diane and I are winding up for some other exciting things involving tight deadlines, code, design, direction & lots of amazing people we get to work with over the coming months.
• In case you somehow missed it - what with Thanksgiving, Black Friday & Cyber Monday - we just launched an iPhone app for church.  It's been super fun learning everything that involves and then getting it done.  An Android version is to follow soon.  Perhaps even end-of-this-week soon.

A five point list is short for me, and that seems enough reason to leave it there. This may well be the last post (on this blog) before 2011 commences in just a few short weeks.  If so, enjoy the rest of 2010.  If not, enjoy the days between now and then.

It's November.  Twenty years ago, Morrissey told us that it spawned a monster, so here's a monster for your viewing entertainment...

In other news, most of my blogging and online, non-work related activity recently has been going into the smartphone app Diane & I are working on with Subsplash for our church.  The mini-blog posts that will feature in the app can be found here.

But when the app is released in a couple of weeks (initially for iPhone/iPad, but Android should follow soon after) it will be way more fun to read them on your phone, right?

Of course.