Preposterousness

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.

Sometimes - very, very occasionally - I feel like this song was written for me.

Today is one of those days, and I don't really know why.  It just is.  None of my circumstance is different from yesterday, but my mindset has turned a corner.  It's just not a good corner.

Or...maybe it is.

Last night Diane & I were at Collide, basically a first-week-of-the-month meeting of all the life groups in our church.  After worshipping through song & word for an hour or so (and, gotta say, it's SO great to be back in a worship team - it's home) we split into groups of 4 or 5 and prayed for each other.  The group I joined up with were people I didn't know especially well yet, so it was a little quiet at first, but then words started to flow.

But they weren't just words, they were prophecy.  Things said that were too specifically just for me without the Holy Spirit intervening.

And now, 20 hrs later, I'm impatient that nothing's happened yet.  WHAT?!?

For someone who jokes about patience being one of my spiritual gifts, I am feeling unsettled about how little patience I have right now. I guess I'm feeling we've done our share of waiting, of hanging on, of stepping out, of cleansing, of change.  But there's more to go and I want it to happen.

Then...three hours go by between when I start writing this post and when I finish it...in that time I've been stuck in traffic caused by road closures due to a fatal accident.

And perspective is restored.  A good corner has been turned.

This morning as I conversed with God, this song came to mind.

John Mark McMillan's How He Loves with all its multiple covers and brilliance also came to mind and it's probably far more appropriate, but this song is likely a little less known so I'm posting this for your enjoyment &/or education.

I'd not thought about it for ages, probably not since seeing Little Miss Sunshine four years ago, but the simple chorus is a great way to remind myself of what God is saying all the time.

"You said 'You love me' "

And for the record I'm not suggesting there's anything even vaguely theological about the verses and the story they tell, which is one of those sad tales about lost love, because God's love - God Himself - is the exact opposite :

never ending

never distant

never conditional

never angry

never absent

perfect

He loves me.

Starting with the classic occasional blogger observation : "I can't believe it's been *xamountoftime* since my last post!", I can't believe it's been two weeks since my last post!

I can't even blame it on it having been a particularly busy two weeks by any stretch of anyone's imagination...though both Diane and I are really excited by our new church and have been meeting up with our new friends pretty regularly.

Something else I have been doing far more this past fortnight than I have since wrapping up the recording of my former church's album late last year is getting deeply immersed in music : listening, writing, observing, learning, losing myself.

All the music projects I've had on the go for various lengths of time, from 2 weeks to 2 years, have been getting reviewed & evaluated as I've soaked myself in music spanning almost everything imaginable : Satie to Little Boots, The Beatles to Florence + the Machine, Elvis to Taio Cruz, stuff you've never heard of to more stuff you've never heard of.  And yes, somewhere on that spectrum is plenty of music I don't particularly like, though it must be said that's not much as I'm a fairly eclectic music lover.

But I want, need to be challenged, stretched and extended in my musical experience.  'Cos lyrics about wearing all my favourite brands, brands, brands, brands will undoubtedly do that.

That kind of rhyming will come in handy though, since I'm planning on writing lots of children's songs - specifically Christian children's songs, something that I've been told I should do for most of my life and just never have - and by their very nature, kids' songs drive adults mad.

And being an adult, the 6 that I've written, co-written or part-written in the past 2 weeks are driving me mad already.  They're not likely to make an appearance here or on my music page before you ask, though I do hope some of those other projects I mentioned earlier will get completed along the way.

Just had to share that with you; if nothing else, it helps keeps me accountable.