What Day Is It?

Well, I think it's Thursday, but I'm not really sure. It's been a great and wonderful and challenging week all wrapped into one.

Great, because I have a beautiful wife and a gem of a little boy.

Wonderful, because God has really blessed us in so many incredible ways. We have amazing friends and family, food to eat, clothes to wear, and a healthy baby who...so far...has not cried a ton and is eating well and sleeping pretty well.

Challenging, because while he sleeps well, it's on a completely different schedule than we're used to. A typical night is like this:

9:45 - Jen tells me she is going to bed.
10:30 - She wakes up to feed Isaac and I change his diaper.
11:15 - I debate whether or not I should go to bed now or wait until his next feeding at around 1:00am.
11:20 - I go to bed.
1:00am - We wake up, get peed on. I go to bed, Jen feeds the little tyke.
1:45am - Jen goes to bed. I am, of course, completely asleep at this point.
4:00am - We wake up, get peed on again. I debate if it's worth going back to bed or staying up, but then I think how crazy it would be to NOT sleep.
4:45am - Jen goes back to bed.
7:00am - We get up. Same story. I think about how next week, when I go back to work, I'll have to stay up from this point on. I get slightly depressed, but then I fall asleep after changing his diaper. Jen doesn't have that option.
7:45am - Jen goes back to bed.
9:00am - I wake up. For some reason, I just can't sleep too long when the sun is up, even if I'm tired.

And for the rest of the day, Jen tries to catch up on sleep while I do all the fun housekeeping stuff. Man...I have a new appreciation for how much work my wife does! I think I'm doing a load of laundry a day, watering all the plants, I vacumned all the floors today...crazy.

Since I'm used to staying up to odd hours (late nights and early mornings), it's not so bad for me. Plus, I get a bit more sleep than Jen, as you can see. Still, the strange 3 hour cycle of food and diapers is a hard adjustment. I wonder if we'd have been any more prepared if Isaac had been born two weeks later... probably not.

Anyway, that's been our life for the past few days. I should add that if you have called and left a message...we have not forgotten you! We have a list of people to call back on our fridge, and whenever we have time and the juice to talk we try to get a name or two off the list :). Thank you all for your calls. It's been such a blessing to know that you are all praying for us!

In the midst of all this, Jen an I have been focusing on one key idea. We read from Psalm 27 today and I was just reminded again that everything we are doing is not about us, but about God and his glory. In the joys and the challenges, our goal is not to seek some cultural standard of happiness or to avoid pain...our goal is to seek the Lord--to give Him honor. We want to parent our son in a way that honors God. And this week has been teaching me, again, that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

So, on a personal note, I guess that's where I've been at...trying--in the diapers and sleepless nights and chores and visits from family and friends--to find my satisfaction in God, in his goodness, his faithfulness, and his Word to me.

Because of the physical demands, it's been a bit harder for Jen, so please pray that she too would find the joy of the Lord in all of this right now.