A Time for Pause

"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." Hebrews 12:4

"Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." Philippians 2:12

The past two and a half weeks have been atypical. Week one was busy: the husband was perfecting his résumé, making calls and networking, and applying for jobs on whatever job site was available. In week two, God was so gracious to our family. After a weekend of our wavering back and forth from peace to panic (the former as a result of our submitting to God our heavy hearts and the latter as a result of assessing the reality before us), God gave us hope: Lee was called for four interviews, one of them ended up lasting 2.5 hours long. The nights, as a result, involved Lee studying. He anticipated every possible question the interviewers would ask him and spent hours typing out his answers, then memorizing them. (I felt like the tables had turned somewhat: the past two years, it was me who was spending hours in the evening studying…)

Of course, we realized that even though Lee was temporarily unemployed, this extra time with family was invaluable. For once, during our family time, Lee’s Blackberry was not going off because of emails or phone calls. For once, on a weekday—not one, but a series of them—Nathaniel woke up in the morning, was laid on his mommy and daddy’s bed, and both of us were encircling him. Nathaniel would turn from one side to the other, talking to me, then talking to Daddy, then touching both of our faces. I, for one, was grateful that Nathaniel got more windows to get to know Daddy better.

At the same time, during this time in which Lee was laid off, we couldn’t treat it as a sort of vacation. We didn’t dare go shopping nor go out to eat nice meals—not when we had no idea when income was going to start coming in again.

In Lee’s prayers, he prays for God to humble him, to give him peace during this whole job search process. He was mentally drained. Interview after interview, he felt the pressure to prove himself to somebody—all over again. Not only did he have to do it, he needed to—he had a family to think about. One night, when he took a break, he and I sat on the family room couch to watch television; suddenly, he started breathing hard. It was all too familiar. Over a year ago, I went to the doctor’s because I had experienced shortness of breath. After some tests, the doctor told me that my irregular breathing was a result of stress. It was the same for Lee. I asked him whether he was okay—he said that most of the time, his head told him that everything was going to be okay—but every now and then, his imagination took the best of him, and he would lapse—momentary panic.

By the end of week two, I felt like a solemn cloud of calmness came over our household. Not because any solid news came in telling us that we were okay, but because we were somehow resigned to the fact that this was a time in which God wanted to teach us something. Our family has been incredibly blessed over the past several years. Lee has never been unemployed for as long as we’ve been together. He’s only experienced promotions and salary increases in the past decade. It wasn’t so much that “we were due,” as Lee once pragmatically remarked, but that God wanted us to stop and listen. Not that we haven’t thanked God in our prayers for the blessings He’s showered upon us, but sometimes, I have to say, that might not be enough. For an instant, however momentary it was or will be one day when we look back at this, we were anxious about the future. Even when we were telling ourselves there was no reason to be anxious (we had so much family who were ready and willing to help us) yet to know that what we had could disappear—SNAP—just like that.

The message was loud and clear.

Two weeks after Nathaniel was born, last year May, Lee got a call from a recruiter for a job opportunity. At the time, he had already spent five years at a job that was gradually sucking the energy out of him. Sixty to eighty-hour work weeks, incessant calls on his Blackberry that didn’t give our family a moment of quietness. Lee began to hate his job. It was normal for him to go through the Sunday blues, in which he dreaded going back to the office again. Work-life balance was non-existent. When our baby son was born, and this call from a recruiter came in, and after three rounds of intense interviews, Lee was eventually hired—we thought—this was a blessing from God: same title, more pay, less hours. Who knew it existed?

Not only that, but for once, Lee liked his job. He was eager to see the fruits of his labor. He had every intention of committing himself to this company for several years. Then suddenly, seven months later, they present to him a release form, terminating him, not having hinted at all even hours before that this was going to happen. Just like that. He lost his job.

Last week, I had asked Lee: “Knowing that they were going to let you go seven months after taking this job, do you regret having taken it?” With no hesitation at all, he replied, “No.” Though he shook his head in disbelief and frustration that they had done this to him, he was nonetheless thankful for the opportunity that was granted to him and the new networks he had made as a result. In fact, in the past couple of weeks, he’s gone out numerous times with his colleagues from the company that laid him off—with those who were also laid off and the staff who were still there but now were uncertain about their futures.

What occurred to both of us as a result of this ordeal is how things aren’t always what they seem. On the surface, circumstances give every semblance of security: a big fancy office, a comfortable salary, the praise of superiors, a promise of bonuses, good rapport with colleagues. But such tangible items are empty and fleeting, no matter how tight a grip one has on them. Like biting into a decadent piece of chocolate and finding it hollow inside.

Of course, the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes made this observation a long time ago:

“I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards... I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces... I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me.

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor.

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”

After the extra long interview Lee had last Wednesday, Lee called them back to follow up. The HR representative said they wouldn’t have an answer for him until this week—week three. I have to say, I had a feeling inside that God wanted us to wait. I was somewhat concerned for Lee—he could get the job, he could not—but how would not getting the job affect him? In our prayers, we had to pray that God would give us peace whatever the result. And even further, that if Lee didn’t get the job, that we would genuinely have faith that this was part of His will. That the events that would unravel in the coming months could go any way—two weeks of unemployment, two months, six months—were we ready to demonstrate our assurance in God's faithfulness?

The past weekend, we celebrated Chinese New Year. We enjoyed time with family and relatives. Lee seemed less preoccupied than he had been the previous weeks.

Monday morning: Lee gets called in for a second interview for the same job, this time with the executives of the company. (The peculiar thing is that Lee was told that the company had been trying to reach him since the week before, even leaving him a message, but for some reason Lee never got it.) Tuesday: Lee’s interview is in the afternoon. Tonight: Lee calls home and says, “I got the job.” After another three-hour interview, Lee is made an offer. Relief comes over us.

I must say, it wasn’t until I took my Old Testament Theology course in seminary that it came to my attention that man had been put to work even before the fall. Genesis 2:15 writes, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” During Lee’s job search, from time to time, he would sit at the laptop and declare, “I need a job”—but not just because he ‘needed’ it, but he was saying that he needed to work. He couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. Ecclesiastes 2 writes, “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness…”

At the moment, I am waiting for Lee to come home. But even before receiving his news over the telephone, I had thought—if God decides that Lee is to get this job—He is truly gracious—because this period of testing could go longer—we might even need it to go longer (when I pray to God to humble us, don’t think I’m not scared about what I’m asking). As it is written in James 1:2: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Lee and I—we still need so much more maturing in our relationship with God—in what other circumstances was God going to shape us?

This three-week period of Lee’s layoff—rather than a prolonged impedance—has felt like someone had suddenly pressed the “pause” button on the remote—and today—suddenly pressed “play” again. As if, for several minutes, rather than listening to all the white noise coming from the television, we were able to drink in the stillness and the silence.

Lee starts his new job on Monday. I go on the company website and discover that the company that hired Lee is rated as one of the “50 Best Managed Companies” in all of Canada.

God, You are so good—yet none of it we deserve. May we offer all of ourselves to You—in good times and in bad. Thank you that you are the source of true peace, true assurance, true hope. Everything we have is meaningless if we do not acknowledge that it is You who has freely given it to us. Forgive us for our greediness, selfishness, self-centeredness. May we trust that You, our Heavenly Father, seeks to mold our character and conduct so that they reflect your holiness. Let no obstacle that comes our way do any harm to the state of our souls, but may we always seek the highest good, which is exemplified in your Son Jesus Christ.

Freedom from Fear

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. ~ 2 Timothy 1:7

So many thoughts have been going through my mind that I have yet to form an entry of it all, at least a coherent one anyway. I need time. Time to stand back and absorb it all. Time to delve into the Word. Time to figure out what kind of wife I need to be at this moment for my husband.

Driving home from fellowship on Saturday night, Lee began to explain what he was feeling to me. It was past midnight. It was cold. The roads were covered with snow. In the privacy and quietness of our car, I tried to understand what he was saying. And since Lee doesn’t very often pour out what is in his heart, I listened hard. In the end, I know I can’t empathize with what this means for him. When asked by people how he feels about what happened, he answers with the simple statement: “I feel like my best friend just turned his gun on me.”

He says this because ever since he took this new post as I.T. Manager, he’s been affirmed continually by his colleagues and boss. In fact, the affirmation came with a top notch performance review and a salary increase. This all took place two weeks before he got laid off. Of course, his being let go had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the recession we find ourselves in at the moment. Suddenly, the dismal headlines in the newspapers are hitting a little closer to home.

Now and then I ask Lee whether he’s okay. Quite often at first. To the point where I asked him, “Is my asking you whether you’re okay annoying you?” He answered, “Kinda.” “Do you want me to stop?” I then ask. He doesn’t answer. That in itself communicated a lot.

Repeatedly, he has said that it isn’t the financial aspect that vexes him as much as the psychological. If constant affirmation in the workplace isn’t a sign that you’re going to get to keep your job, what is?

This, of course, goes back to the age-old theme that nothing in this earthly life can be fully relied upon. We all know that. We live like we don’t, until one of us, inevitably, has the rug pulled from under us. We’re taught this time and time again in the Bible. Nothing is new under the sun.

While Lee is working on his résumé, talking on the phone with recruiters, networking with all his business contacts, I’m tending to Nathaniel or reading. I’ve picked up Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Spiritual Depression again—thinking that the book would speak to our current situation. Coincidentally, the chapter I left off at just a few months ago was entitled, “Fear of the Future.”

I noted the following passage in this chapter:

Our fears are due to our failure to stir up—failure to think, failure to take ourselves in hand. You find yourself looking to the future and then you begin to imagine things and you say: ‘I wonder what is going to happen?’ And then, your imagination runs away with you. You are gripped by the thing; you do not stop to remind yourself of who you are and what you are, this thing overwhelms you and down you go.

Now the first thing you have to do is to take a firm grip of yourself, to pull yourself up, to stir up yourself, to take yourself in hand and to speak to yourself. As the Apostle puts it, ‘we have to remind ourselves of certain things. And as I understand it, the big thing that Paul is saying in effect to Timothy is: “Timothy, you seem to be thinking about yourself and about life and all you have to do as if you were still an ordinary person. But, Timothy, you are not an ordinary person! You are a Christian, you are born again, the Spirit of God is in you. But you are facing all these things as if you are still what you once were, an ordinary person’.

And is not that the trouble with us all in this connection? Though we are truly Christian, though we believe the truth, though we have been born again, though we are certainly children of God, we lapse into this condition in which we again begin to think as if none of these things had happened to us at all. Like the man of the world, the man who has never been regenerated, we allow the future to come to us and to dominate us, and we compare our own weakness and lack of strength with the greatness of the falling and the tremendous task before us. And down we go as if we were but our natural selves. Now the thing to do, says Paul to Timothy, is to remind yourself that we have been given the gift of God’s Holy Spirit, and to realize that because of this our whole outlook upon life and the future must therefore be essentially different. We must think of suffering in a new way, we must face everything in a new way.

Jones continues in the chapter by making the next empowering statement:

Living the Christian life means we have the “power to endure, power to go on whatever the conditions, whatever the circumstances, power to hold on and to hold out. Let me go further, it means that the most timorous person can be given power in all things, even to die.”

But how are we to free ourselves from running away with our imagination, one replete with human worry? Jones says it is necessary to get rid of ourselves—that is, our persistent need to be engrossed in self-love, self-concern, and self-protection. We do this by becoming “absorbed in someone or something else that [we] have no time to think about [ourselves]. Thank God, the Spirit of God makes that possible.” We are to think of “the love of the Son in its breadth, its length, its depth, its height… Think of His love, and as you come to know something about it, you will forget yourself.”

My calmness right now, I must confess, is because this is the first day that Lee is out of work. God truly showed his grace to us during this time, for Lee, having only worked for this company for seven months, nonetheless received a two-month severance package, in addition—vacation pay and bonus.

We are praying. We are actively searching for job prospects. We are taking it one day at a time and trusting Him who is the provider. We are looking ahead. We are hoping. But I must say—eight weeks is not a long time, and as the days or weeks go by, and should we not hear anything, I pray hard that our faith does not grow any less weak because we have more reason to be fearful. I pray hard that, as Jones has described, we do not respond to our situation like ordinary persons—but as children of God, with the Spirit in us. Not only that, I pray hard that, whatever might come our way in this time of uncertainty, that we turn it all into glory to the One who graciously gave us life.

In Good Times and in Bad…

When you’ve been married long enough, your attention is easily seized by the subtlest changes in your husband’s behavior. A little before midnight last Thursday, the husband and I are in our bedroom. I’m lying in bed, reading, and Lee is checking his work email. Then, out of the blue, he gets up and says, “I have to make a phone call.” I say, “Why don’t you make it here?” To which he answers, “It’s private.”

I stay in bed, but I hear his muffled voice coming from the basement. The fact that he has to talk on the phone in the basement so that I’m not within earshot worries me. Some time passes by. My eyes grow heavy, and curiosity is not enough to keep me awake.

1:30 a.m. My husband taps my elbow. I open my eyes. Hovering over me, he says, “I have something to tell you.” He sits down on the bed next to me. That’s when my heart begins to beat faster.

“I think I’m gonna get let go tomorrow.”

I continue listening.

“It’s too complicated for me to explain to you, but I pieced it all together, and I’m pretty sure tomorrow is my last day.”

One thing about my husband. He has an exceptional ability to observe and evaluate his surroundings. He can read people, make conclusions based on their words, actions, gestures. He has this uncanny ability to filter out “unnecessary” emotion and opinion to see things as they are (can you imagine what our marriage must be like—this man with someone like me?). As a result, Lee can very often see the reality behind the pretense. He’s also a very pragmatic man. When he speaks, he only says what “needs” to be said, nothing more, nothing less. So when he tells me all this, I have no doubt that his hunch is correct.

A slew of words come out of me. Among them, “I love you,” “I trust you,” “Are you okay?” Then came the more realistic questions—how are we going to handle our finances? Considering Lee had just begun this new position last June, we were worried about what his severance package would be. Two weeks, perhaps? A month? We started to list all the “fat” in our monthly budget and began to decide which ones needed to be eliminated.

After an hour of discussion, I open the Bible to Philippians 4 and read it aloud. Then I pray for the both of us. In my prayer, I even prayed that God would grant Lee the sleep he needed, even in the midst of the circumstances. Afterward, Lee tells me he needs some time alone, so he goes downstairs. At 4:30 in the morning, when I still can’t sleep, I go downstairs to find him. He’s fallen asleep on the family room couch. I wake him—advise him to go to sleep in the bed. He does so, and falls sleep until 8:00 the next morning.

Lee puts on a dress shirt and pants the next morning to prepare for work. He wants to look his best for his last day. Later in the morning, I tell my sister to pray for me. Prior to leaving the house, Lee had told me not to share the situation with anyone until he knew what was really going to happen. Late in the morning, I tell my sister to pray for me. I tell her I can’t tell her why—though I knew in my heart I would feel better if I did. So I say to my sister, “Would I be a bad wife if I told you even though Lee told me I couldn’t?” She chuckles, “No… He didn’t say—me— in particular; he said, ‘anyone.’” I hesitate. “Okay, I’ll guess—so you really wouldn’t be telling me.” I, of course, agree to that. (My sister and I have an unspoken understanding that when we say to one another, "Don't tell anyone," our husbands are the exceptions; there really needs to be a clause in the confidentiality agreement with our husbands that the same holds true for sisters.) My sister guesses correctly. And that’s when I recount the events that had taken place since late Thursday night.

“Do you have time to pray?” My sister then says. I said, “Yes, I prayed last night and this morning.” “I meant, do you have time to pray right now?” So over the phone, my sister prays for Lee and me, and as I listened to her words, I began to cry, and then she began to cry.

Nathaniel and I spend the afternoon at my sister’s place. We played with the kids, snacked on chips and cookies, joked around, meanwhile, in the background, my thoughts went back to what Lee was going through. When I got home at around 2:45 p.m., Lee’s car was already in the garage.

I knew that what he said would happen, had happened.

Daddy-Son Connection

It’s nothing amazing when Nathaniel cries for Mommy. When I leave him in the bouncer or exersaucer so that I can do my chores around the house, Nathaniel simply has to see me walking away from him before he begins to cry—even if it’s just a few seconds.

Last night, however, was the first time I ever saw Nathaniel cry for Daddy. It was a very touching moment.

Lee had to work a little later than usual. Nathaniel’s bedtime was supposed to be 7:00 p.m., but I tried to keep him awake so that he’d, at the least, see Daddy before going to bed. Nathaniel and I sat together in his bedroom. I was relieved to hear the garage door opening and minutes later Lee coming up the stairs into Nathaniel’s bedroom. At the first sight of Daddy, Nathaniel squealed and kicked his legs. Lee held Nathaniel in his arms and hoisted him in the air as he always does (Lee likes to do things I can’t do with the baby). Ten minutes later, I say, “Time to sleep.”

I sit down to feed Nathaniel, but oddly, he rejects me, turning his head around and reaching out into the space ahead of him. I try a few times to get him to feed, but he rejects me again. Then he begins to cry. Perplexed by this uncharacteristic behavior, I call Lee to come back into Nathaniel’s bedroom.

“I think he wants you…” I say to the husband. “Let’s put this to the test. Sit down beside me.” Lee sits down (I normally tell Lee to leave the room when I feed Nathaniel before bedtime so that Nathaniel doesn’t confuse bedtime with playtime). At once, Nathaniel begins to feed, then turns around every ten seconds or so to check that Daddy is still there. When Nathaniel is done feeding, I put him in the crib, but his hands reach out toward the door, as if wanting Daddy to come back.

Since Nathaniel’s birth, he’s always had an intimate connection with Mommy, of course. Lee always tries to mimic my interactions with Nathaniel when attempting to pacify his crying, but in the end, it’s always Mommy he wants. I console Lee every time: “He needs me, and he wants you.”

It was nice that this was not the case last night. Nathaniel’s expressing what he wanted last night and the happiness this brought the husband was a moment definitely worth recording.

Letting Go?

“Train children in the right way, and when old they will not stray.” Proverbs 22:6

There’s a commercial that gives warning on the consequences of drinking and driving that always makes me sad. It’s the one where a baby is lying in a crib, crying frantically, and then a message appears on screen that says that the baby’s mother was killed by a drunk driver.

It makes me sad because I know that it is the reality for many families out there. Not just the babies who have lost their parents to drunk driving, but to anything. I read it in the news every day. And now that I have one of my own, the sadness I feel is even more acute because I don’t even want to imagine Nathaniel ever losing his mommy or his daddy. The fear sometimes surfaces when I go to Nathaniel first thing in the morning and he greets me with sheer excitement, or when I tuck him in at night and there is a peacefulness and contentment in his face that brings tears to my eyes almost every night.

These thoughts come to me as I contemplate whether to take a course next semester in seminary. The decision sounds so simple—but as I think about being away from Nathaniel for more than just a few hours, I am overcome by worry and guilt.
When the pediatrician tells you that Separation Anxiety starts to kick in at about six months, I didn’t realize that this included the mother. I’ve only left Nathaniel for more than an hour on two occasions (once, to get a haircut, and the other, to attend a bridal shower). The whole time, my mind was focused on whether he felt abandoned by me or not. Of course, on both of those occasions, I returned to find him perfectly fine.

It’s not just when I leave him that I worry and feel guilty. It’s also when I go through a day that isn’t “typical.” I can finally say that Nathaniel has been trained to sleep (an amazing feat, considering it takes almost five to six weeks of training and great patience and faith!). In fact, he has been trained so well, that now, he protests for his nap time as soon as he begins to feel drowsy. The car seat, stroller, other people’s houses—all are no longer good enough: Nathaniel wants to be in his own crib when he wants to sleep. When he’s in the crib, he naps anywhere from one to three hours (when he’s not, the longest stretch he can do is a half hour).

Now imagine—a mother having trained a baby to sleep regularly, and then suddenly, irregular schedules come up from time to time—that takes the baby away from the regular schedule that he has grown comfortable with. My worry and guilt come in, because when I am unable to give him the schedule he needs, I feel like I am responsible for his discomfort and distress. Sometimes, having gone out with a friend or visiting a family member, or going shopping for too long (which I rarely do anymore), I feel so accountable for his tiredness that I even vow that I would stay home the very next day to make up for it.

I voiced my guilt to my sister once, who’s a mother of three kids, and she said plainly, “Don’t worry. You have the rest of your life to feel guilty about everything you do with the children.”

Believe it or not, her statement actually put me at ease—because I realized the truth in it.

On any given week now, I go out once or twice for more than few hours, but I limit myself to that. My priority is Nathaniel’s wellbeing—and, at this point, I am still unwilling to compromise such for my own needs.

My sister chuckles when she hears me talk about how much easier life is with Nathaniel now that he’s been sleep-trained. “I told you,” she says (since I had been unwilling at first to go through all that intense training—just read my previous blog entries!). Outsiders have asked me and my sister, “Don’t you feel that you’ve lost your freedom?” They are referring to our having to be home all the time in order to accommodate the kids’ sleep schedules. My sister and I understand each other’s amusement in response to their incredulity. With the kids sleep trained, we have MORE freedom. That freedom comes as a result of the time we have from being without the kids—to do household chores, to rest, to read, to converse with friends, to spend with the husband, to watch movies, to spend quiet time with God, to anything, really.

I’m getting side-tracked. My point is that perhaps I am not ready to let go yet. When I am away from Nathaniel, I become anxious about his happiness. I wonder whether his needs are being met. If he wakes up from his nap expecting to see me, and he doesn’t—will he be okay? If he wants to be held by mommy and mommy is not there—will he be okay? If he wants milk and has to take it from a bottle instead of in the comfort of mommy’s arms—will he be okay? If he wakes up in the middle of the night and cries for mommy and mommy is not there—will he be okay? If another person takes care of him, one who doesn’t know what makes Nathaniel happy, sad, scared, or excited—will Nathaniel be okay?

Whenever such questions come to mind, I sometimes ask myself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Of course, the answer to that question could go very terribly depending on how far my imagination takes it. And when I finally calm down, whisper a prayer to God to ease my fears, I start to think—Nathaniel has to learn… Mommy has to learn.

Experiences like this allow me to empathize with my parents who were quite protective over us. I remember, in grade six and seven, being one of the few students who wasn’t allowed to go on overnight trips. I remember, all three of us, my sister, my brother, and I, not being allowed to choose a university that was out-of-town. My mom wanted us to be at home. I don’t regret decisions like these—because my going to a university in town gave me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had had I gone away. At the same time, I know that one day, God willing, when Nathaniel is that age, though I know I will be filled with worry when he’s not in my presence, I will have to let go. I will have to cast my cares upon the Lord and be sustained by Him.

I have a few weeks to pray about whether to enroll in that course in seminary. It’s amazing how a decision like this could catapult me into so much reflection. Dr. Dobson concludes his book Bringing Up Boys like this:

“… The door must be opened fully to the world outside. This can be the most frightening time of parenthood. The tendency is to retain control in order to keep your kids from making mistakes… The simple truth is that love demands freedom. They go hand in hand.

No matter how much you prepare, letting go is never easy… It’s an exhilarating and a terrifying moment, and one that was ordained from the day of your child’s birth. With this final release, your task as a parent is finished. The kite is free, and so, for the first time in twenty years, are you.

My prayers will be with you as you discharge your God-given responsibility. Cherish every moment of it. And hug your kids while you can.”

Nathaniel has awakened. Over the baby monitor, he’s babbling to himself again. Sniff sniff. Gonna go hold him tight now...

Mommy’s Daily Pleasures

“Children are a heritage from the Lord.” Psalm 127:3

1. After a good night’s sleep and some delicious milk—Nathaniel is utterly JOYFUL in the morning. Lying on my bed, his hands flap up and down in delight, his eyes meet mine—he smiles, squeals, babbles, sticks his tongue out—the works.

2. Grocery shopping with him in the stroller: With the bundler enveloping the car seat and Nathaniel wrapped in a fluffy coat and a hat on—the only part of his body that peeks out is his chubby face. It’s so cute that passersby can’t help laughing and staring at the little one.

3. Nathaniel squeals in excitement upon seeing Daddy return home from work.

4. Nathaniel waking from his afternoon naps or nighttime sleep: he babbles to himself (which I can hear over the baby monitor). Sometimes, it can last up to a half hour.

5. Nathaniel grunts to express his displeasure. When I am out, with him in the stroller, whenever I stop to look at something, he grunts, as if to say, “I didn’t say anything about your being allowed to STOP the stroller, Mommy. Keep moving.”

6. When I’m holding Nathaniel and he reaches out his hands to touch my face. When I’m hovering over him and he reaches out to play with my hair.

7. When I’m bathing Nathaniel and he turns his body over in an attempt to drink the bath water or chew on the towel. When I’m bathing him and he kicks his legs, splashing water all over Mommy.

8. When he seizes all movement and concentrates on doing “number two.” He stares at me, as if in a trance, and when he’s done, he shudders, as if thinking, “What was that?”

9. Though Nathaniel is full of smiles—whenever he’s confronted by new faces, he adopts a very serious demeanor, as if sizing up everyone in the room.

10. Baby feet. Baby bum. Baby hands. Baby hair. Baby belly. Baby ears. Baby smell. Baby… everything.


11. Feeding Nathaniel—with each approaching spoonful of pureed baby food, he smiles and jiggles in excitement. What can I say—the little one loves his food.

12. Nathaniel is brought to a standstill whenever Holly, the cat, ambles across the room—it’s like he’s still trying to figure out why one of the objects in the room is able to move from one place to another.

13. Nathaniel puts everything in his mouth—even during worship service on Sunday’s, when I’m holding the Bible in my hands, he’s ready to devour God’s Word.

14. When Nathaniel is in my arms while I’m lining up at the cashier’s, he looks at the person who’s behind me and tries to make a sound, as if trying to make conversation with a stranger.

15. Nathaniel tries to assert his independence: When I put a pacifier in his mouth for fun, he takes it out of his mouth and tries to put it back himself.

16. Nathaniel always has to suck on the same two fingers to soothe himself when he starts to feel tired.

17. Nathaniel enjoys being around other children and their laughter makes him laugh.

18. When Nathaniel is scared or sad, he suddenly shuts his eyes and begins to cry desperately—and the moment he’s in Mommy’s arms, the crying instantly ceases.


19. When Nathaniel glimpses his own reflection in the mirror, he smiles and tries to touch his own reflection.

20. When I’m holding Nathaniel as I’m working away in the kitchen, he’s got to reach out his little hands and try to touch everything I’m touching.

21. When Nathaniel wakes up for a night feeding, I have to try to resist playing with him so that he'll immediately go back to sleep in his crib--but his smiling and talking makes it virtually impossible to maintain a disinterested composure.

22. At night, after I tuck Nathaniel under his covers, his little fingers pull the covers even closer to his chest.

23. Watching past video clips of Nathaniel brings tears to my eyes as I witness how quickly he is growing. The video clip that stirs up the most nostalgia—when Nathaniel is one-week old and he's sleeping on my chest (if he did that now I would not be able to breathe properly).

24. The way Nathaniel can pass gas that leaves me asking the husband, "Was that you or Nathaniel?"

25. Nathaniel looks at me, his face expressionless; I smile at him, seconds later, he smiles back.

26. Nathaniel talks to toy animals. When they make sounds, he squeals back at them.

27. Nathaniel sticking his tongue out; Nathaniel sticking his tongue out, then playing with his saliva, and making a gurgling sound.

… I COULD GO ON AND ON AND ON…

Recollections

My Gong Gong passed away last week.

I remember when my grandmother passed away six years ago. I was at church practicing for worship. I got a phone call from my sister who said that Mah Mah had been admitted to the hospital and that she had been diagnosed with Cancer. I cried immediately upon hearing the news.

Mah Mah had immigrated to Canada when I was one-year-old. We had spent countless family occasions together, and during our childhood, she would often babysit us or we would sleepover at her house. That short month and a half that was spent visiting her at the hospital as she grew weaker and weaker, and then that final night when we had gone over to her house after she had just passed on, brought an immense sadness over our family. At the cemetery on the day of the funeral, it was also the first time I had witnessed tears coming down my father’s eyes.

It’s a different story with my Gong Gong. He lived in Hong Kong. He visited us a few times during the first two decades of my life. If it were not for old pictures in our family albums, I would not even have remembered most of those times. As a result, I have few and sparse memories of who he was or my relationship with him.

Last week, when I received the phone call that he had passed away, I felt a pang of sadness. No tears, just sadness. Two years ago, I had visited Hong Kong with my mom and my husband. We stayed at Po Po and Gong Gong’s place. It was the same place they had lived in for the past fifty years, only renovated. Upon our arrival, my mom had just begun to hire help for Gong Gong to relieve the burden off Po Po. Her name was Cindy, and she came from the Philippines. She cooked for us, cleaned, bathed Gong Gong, even helped him cut his nails, pick his nose, down to the nitty gritty.

Even sharing the same flat with them, I did not see Gong Gong much. He stayed in his room most of the day. Everyone encouraged him to take walks outside, but having experienced an injury during his last walk outside—after falling—he developed a fear of it, and stubbornly stayed indoors.

Because Gong Gong was on medication, his Alzheimer’s was not immediately apparent—although I knew it was pretty severe. I guess when you don’t know someone well to start with—it’s not obvious when he acts like he doesn’t know who you are.

Dinnertime was when his deteriorating physical condition was the most obvious to me. He wanted to feed himself. Po Po would scoop food into his bowl, give him the portions that were easy to chew. I watched as he slowly brought the spoon to his lips, his hands shaking, his lips quivering, some of the rice making it into his mouth, but most of it falling onto the table. It was like watching a toddler feed himself, but worse.

When I was in grade eight, my homeroom teacher gave us an assignment. We had to write a biography on a family member. It was probably one of the most valuable assignments I ever had to do in elementary school. I chose to do it on my mom. It wasn’t until I did that biography that I realized how little I knew about my mom’s history. My mom never really volunteered information about her past. We had to ask. We had to probe. And a lot of the time, it never occurred to me to ask such specific questions. It was when I was thirteen-years-old that I learned that my mom was not supposed to be the oldest of five children in the family. A boy had been born before her, a stillborn. My mom said that this was the reason why she was not treated inadequately, even though she was a girl. The fortuneteller had told her parents that having a boy would have brought bad luck. She also had another sister once, but she had died due to ill health. They were very, very poor, my mom told me—rice and soy sauce for dinner; clothing was used and reused for the seasons, sewn and resewn; accusations at school were always directed at her when theft took place.

Gong Gong was absent, my mom told me. He smoked. He drank. He gambled. He had extra-marital affairs. Po Po took care of them. Even when she was going into labour, Po Po had to walk to the doctor’s by herself.

As a child, I was taught to pray for Po Po and Gong Gong’s souls. Po Po accepted Christ over a decade ago (God worked sovereignly in her life and her story is an amazing one too, but this entry is about Gong Gong). After Mah Mah died, my mom realized how little time she had left with her parents, so she began flying back to Hong Kong once a year. Starting then, she shared the gospel with Gong Gong again and again, but to no avail. Even in his physical and mental condition, he was still able to give a resolute “No” when she asked him whether he knew he was a sinner and needed to be forgiven.

Gong Gong accepted Christ in 2007. My mom gave a testimony of her experience during one of our church services. After the service, many people her age came up to me and told me that her testimony had made them cry—made them realize that they needed to work on trying to bring their parents to Christ.

Though I did not know Gong Gong well, I knew of his dark past, and I feel at peace knowing that just last year God forgave him for that dark past because Gong Gong finally saw that he was a sinner before God. That last week, he had breathed his last, but because somehow, beyond our understanding, God had managed to reach out and touch an old man's soul (even in his mental illness he was able to say, "I believe"), his death does not cast a somber shadow over our family but a hopeful one. This is the beauty of the Christian gospel: it is never, never too late.

A couple of days ago, I was reading John Piper’s Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. I came across a passage that talked about what I had been thinking about the past week since I learned of Gong Gong’s death.

"We all die, if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, 'It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.' How can you lay it to heart if you won't think about it? Psalm 90:12 says, 'Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.' Numbering your days means thinking about how few there are and that they will end. How will you get a heart of wisdom if you refuse to think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death."

I had said earlier that I had felt a pang of sadness upon hearing the news about Gong Gong. Let me emphasize pang. This pang of sadness actually made me feel a bit melancholic. It would have been really "nice", I thought, if I had felt an overwhelming wave of sadness, like the way I felt about Mah Mah when she passed away. But I didn’t know Gong Gong well enough. We barely had a relationship.

As a result, I decided to actively recall my moments with him. At first, I pictured him lying in his bed in the hospital—the tube attached to his body which provided him nutrition. I called to mind the sound of his voice. And always, for some reason, I couldn’t stop evoking the image of his trembling hand bringing the spoon of rice to his mouth.

Then I began to conjure up flashbacks, which I recorded in my journal on November 18, 2008:

“I remember their living with us during their visits from Hong Kong. They stayed in a room in the basement at Hampstead. Gong Gong used to smoke (until his health just couldn’t take it anymore) and mom would give him a dish to be used as an ash tray).

I remember the mornings. Each time he visited, he would boil milk, add an egg and sprinkle in some sugar. That was his breakfast. (There was a time in my early twenties when I made this breakfast too because I thought it tasted pretty good.)

I remember seeing him hold us as toddlers when he was here—in the old photo albums.

I remember his voice. Low, hoarse.

I remember his fragile, helpless state when Lee and I stayed with Gong Gong and Po Po just a few years ago. His bedwetting. His disorientation. His taciturnity (inability to talk).

I remember when Mom told me the story of how she brought Gong Gong to Christ—during a puzzle activity—at this point, Gong Gong having the mental capacity of a six-year-old.

And then I remember how we, as children, would pray and pray for his salvation and the Lord answering our prayers.

(Grace reminded me today of how Gong Gong used to write verses of poetry at Kensington and stuck the verses on random walls around the house—out of sheer boredom he wrote them.)

I wonder if Gong Gong is scared where he is, or whether, in his mental state, he’s thinking about where he is going.”

On the night of Gong Gong’s passing, I waited for Lee to come home from work so that we could pray. That morning, I had not known that Gong Gong was going to die that day, and had intended the prayer time to be for his health. It turned out to be a different prayer time.

Lee and I talked. He asked me, “What are you thinking? Feeling?” We talked about death. Then about how he and I would have to go through the same experience with our parents one day. We talked about how hard that would be. How sad we would be. And then we prayed. Much of the prayer was thankfulness and praise that God had blessed this family—his and mine—so much.

My sister and I are taking the children to see my Yeh Yeh today, my grandpa in Toronto. I am looking forward to the visit. My grandpa is an amazing man, and his contented state is a mystery and great testimony to those around him. The number of people who have approached me in church to praise Yeh Yeh’s character—is unbelievable—yet when they do, I nod in agreement, knowing exactly what they are referring to. Yeh Yeh is the epitome of JOY. No exaggeration. If you met him, you would be thinking the same thing. I have much to learn from him.

Life seems to be like that. At one moment you celebrate life, and then another moment, you are forced to contemplate death. For the believer or non-believer, we all have to come to grips with this inevitable outcome. As John Piper's statement reminds me—are we willing to look death in the face and determine what it means for us? A time of mourning. A time to savour every moment we have with our family and friends. A time to search for concrete and genuine meaning. A time to consider whether eternity really exists—and if it does, how can we go on living as if it didn't?

The Reason for God

I am sitting at my writing desk again. The shutters in front of me are open; the master bedroom is dimly lit by the white radiance coming from outside. The snow is falling fast, like rain. A quiet house, a forest of naked trees gradually being draped by snow, the calmness of a lonely birdhouse in the distance—such beauty never fails to rouse the reader and writer in me. And knowing that time is hard to come by, I rise (a bit reluctantly) from under the soft covers of my cozy bed and begin to write.

It has been snowing since Nathaniel’s crying woke me up at 7:30 a.m. He is sleeping again. When he went down for his first nap, I decided to finish the book I had started a few days ago, Timothy Keller’s A Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.

I had expected that a book dealing with apologetics would be a harder read. I had expected that, like other similar books I’ve read, I would be rereading paragraphs or slowing down because of information overload. I had expected that I would have trouble finishing the book (since I picked up this book not for school but for leisure reading—I was under no obligation to finish it). But this book by Timothy Keller was a joy to read.

The book’s chapter titles immediately grab my attention—which is why I bought the book in the first place (actually, I’m buying it for my brother for his Christmas present—so let’s hope he isn’t reading this entry): “There Can’t Be Just One True Religion,” “How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?”, “Christianity Is a Straitjacket,” “The Church Is Responsible for So Much Injustice,” “How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?”, “Science Has Disproved Christianity,” “You Can’t Take the Bible Literally.” But the book doesn’t end there. Keller knows it’s not enough to dispel skeptics of their doubts purely with explanations, no matter how complete or convincing they are. The second part of the book addresses reasons for the faith, with such titles as, “The Clues of God,” “The Knowledge of God,” “The Problem of Sin,” “Religion and the Gospel,” “The (True) Story of the Cross,” “The Reality of the Resurrection,” “The Dance of God,” and perhaps most importantly, “The Epilogue: Where Do We Go from Here?”.

First, the book is written in a voice and style that is very easy to read. While Keller uses a wide range of evidence to support his points, he presents them at a pace that allows the reader to easily digest the information. The ease of reading is reinforced by frequent subheadings (each section is no more than a few pages long, which gives the reader time to think and “breathe”) and striking analogies.

The beginning of the book addresses the Christian as well and his or her need to tackle such difficult questions, as he states, “Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous and offensive. And, just as important for our current situation, such a process will lead you, even after you come to a position of strong faith, to respect and understand those who doubt.”

Moreover, Keller’s explanations also deal with problematic texts that have only recently surfaced, including Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and such Gnostic gospels as The Gospel of Thomas. The premises for such texts crumble in the face of Keller’s arguments.

As mentioned earlier, Keller incorporates effective illustrations in his arguments, which is what makes this book ideal for the lay reader. In the chapter “The Clues of God,” Keller discusses the incredible and miraculous way in which the universe is held together—“the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces…” The author then offers a pertinent analogy for one who might believe that the universe had somehow come to be by chance: “The philosopher John Leslie poses a similar illustration. He imagines a man who is sentenced to be executed by a firing squad consisting of fifty expert marksmen. They all fire from six feet away and not one bullet hits him. Since it is possible that even expert marksmen could miss from close range it is technically possible that all fifty just happened to miss at the same moment. Though you could not prove they had conspired to miss, it would be unreasonable to draw the conclusion that they hadn’t… Although organic life could have just happened without a Creator, does it make sense to live as if that infinitely remote chance is true?”

Of course, being the aspiring artist, though Keller’s earlier arguments quench the thirst of my mind, it is when he discusses the clues of God—when it comes to LOVE and BEAUTY—that revives my gratitude for being a Christian.

“If there is no God, and everything in this world is the product of (as Bertrand Russell famously put it) 'an accidental collocation of atoms,' then there is no actual purpose for which we were made—we are accidents. If we are the product of accidental natural forces, then what we call ‘beauty’ is nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data… though music feels significant, that significance is an illusion. Love too must be seen in this light. If we are the result of blind natural forces, then what we call ‘love’ is simply a biochemical response, inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive.”

Being an individual who aspires to become a writer, I admit that I sure don’t exercise a whole lot of discipline. Deep down, I know that if I were really the passionate and genuine writer I claim to be, I would be writing and reading a whole lot more than I am doing right now. At the same time, I know that every time I feel an urge to write in my journal, spend days and months finishing a story, or savor how another writer is able to combine words together to form striking image after striking image—it is precisely this LOVE and BEAUTY that flows from my Christian faith that act as the catalyst. Without the truths that Christianity offers—about LOVE and BEAUTY, and then about SIN, DEATH, and REDEMPTION—what I see out there, is empty of all meaning. And without meaning, for what reason would I pick up my pen?

And last, before I run out of time (Nathaniel has begun to whimper), it is Keller’s description of the beauty of the Christian gospel itself that compelled me to write this entry in the first place. What is so wrong with the other beliefs of doing good works and relying solely on personal merit as our goal for living? I believe Keller nails it with his personal sharing below:

“When my own personal grasp of the gospel was very weak, my self-view swung wildly between two poles. When I was performing up to my standards—in academic work, professional achievement, or relationships—I felt confident but not humble. I was likely to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. When I was not living up to standards, I felt humble but not confident, a failure. I discovered, however, that the gospel contained the resources to build a unique identity. In Christ I could know I was accepted by grace not only despite my flaws, but because I was willing to admit them. The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued and that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less. I don’t need to notice myself—how I’m doing, how I’m being regarded—so often…

This means that I cannot despise those who do not believe as I do. Since I am not saved by my correct doctrine or practice, then this person before me, even with his or her wrong beliefs, might be morally superior to me in many ways. It also means I do not have to be intimidated by anyone. I am not so insecure that I fear the power or success or talent of people who are different from me. The gospel makes it possible for a person to escape oversensitivity, defensiveness, and the need to criticize others. The Christian’s identity is not based on the need to be perceived as a good person, but on God’s valuing of you in Christ.”

To go back full circle, in his final chapter, Keller offers relief for the individual struggling with the question of whether he or she should become a Christian or not. What shall become of his or her doubts? Should he or she wait until they have all been appeased before taking the plunge? Oh, I must remember the analogy he gives here:

“Imagine you are on a high cliff and you lose your footing and begin to fall. Just beside you as you fall is a branch sticking out of the very edge of the cliff. It is your only hope and it is more than strong enough to support your weight. How can it save you? If your mind is filled with intellectual certainty that the branch can support you, but you don’t actually reach out and grab it, you are lost. If your mind is instead filled with doubts and uncertainty that the branch can hold you, but you reach out and grab it anyway, you will be saved. Why? It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch. This means you don’t have to wait for all doubts and fears to go away to take hold of Christ.”

I was, as a result, pleasantly surprised to arrive to this final chapter of Keller’s book. It is this final chapter that demonstrates that his intent in writing this book was not simply to fiercely tackle all the arguments out there against Christianity. It wasn’t simply a scholarly display of intellect or understanding. Bringing together the academic, the creative, and the personal, Keller offers more than just a religion. He urges the individual to decide on what is Truth, as he emphatically lays bare at the end of the book, where he includes excerpts from an interview with Bono and a short story by Flannery O’ Connor to drive home his point (another distinctive feature of this book is the incorporation of diverse secondary resources).

I must go now. Nathaniel is awake. I can hear his voice over the baby monitor—little high-pitched squeals. Somewhere deep down, I knew God would give me enough time to finish this entry.

True Quality Time

Gloomy day today. I’m sitting at my writing desk, which is in front of our master bedroom window. It looks out into a forest. I haven’t stepped outside, but I can tell it’s windy. The leaves are filling the air like a mass of birds in the sky.

Just put Nathaniel in the crib. He cried for about three seconds before beginning his self-soothing (fingers in mouth, head turned to the side). At night now, he falls asleep fuss-free about 80% of the time. Every night, I am hoping that he won’t cry because it is so painful to listen to. Sometimes, I start crying myself. But I heed the advice in the book I’m reading and the amazing results I’m already seeing, and I let Nathaniel cry on.

One case study in Dr. Weissbluth’s book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, has a mother saying this about letting a baby cry himself to sleep:

“You, as parents, have to understand and believe intellectually that it is the right thing to do. Otherwise feelings of guilt will overpower you, and you will give in. You must have the support of your spouse, as it will be too much of a strain to bear it alone.

You are doing what is best for your baby. It seems cruel and unacceptable as a loving new mother to let your baby cry. But it is a fact of parenting—many, many things will bring tears and protests in the years to come.” (p. 303)

Dr. Weissbluth also provides this helpful suggestion:

"When your child is crying and she is not hungry, say to yourself: 'My baby is crying because she loves me so much she wants my company, but she needs to sleep. I know the value of good sleep, and I love my baby so much that I am going to let her sleep." (p. 262)

Last night, Nathaniel was so tired he was sleeping even as I was burping him. I put him down at 7:30 p.m. (the sleep-training is working so effectively that his bedtime is naturally becoming earlier and earlier—I don’t even have to impose it, he just shows signs that he wants to be put in bed at an early hour). The baby monitor goes off at 8:00: Nathaniel is crying intensely. I go to him after 15 minutes or so because I can’t bear it. He burps shortly after I pick him up (he didn’t burp earlier because he had fallen asleep). Unfortunately, though he fell asleep successfully on his own the first time around, he is frustrated the second time around, because he is overtired now and self-soothing isn’t going to do it. He cries for 45 minutes before falling asleep again, but he doesn’t wake up until almost six hours later.

This morning, I tiptoe into his room, thinking he is asleep because the house is quiet. From six feet away, I peer into his crib. His eyes are open. He’s just staring into space. At this point, I can hear my mom’s voice saying to me, “If he’s not complaining, just leave him.” I know I should, but he looks so “delicious” at that moment, playing by himself in his crib, I can’t help but approach him and give him my morning smile. He smiles back, then opens his arms wide, ready to be picked up. Oh—the joys of motherhood!

Thanksgiving weekend. More time with Daddy. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning, when Nathaniel awakens, I bring him to the family bed. Here I am, lying beside the two most cherished boys in my life: Lee on my right and Nathaniel on my left. Nathaniel turns his head back and forth, touching Mommy’s face, then Daddy’s. With me, he smiles. With Daddy, he’s got almost a pensive look, as if studying him, as if knowing, “You’re not normally beside me in the morning.” I guess that’s why he tries to reach for him.

In Dr. Dobson’s Bringing up Boys, there’s an observation that is sadly true about today’s families:

“Most of the time [children] spend with their family is what you call ‘family and time’: family and TV, family and dinner, family and homework, etc. The lives of each family member are usually so jam-packed that the opportunity to spend time together doing unique activities—talking about life, visiting special places, playing games, and sharing spiritual explorations—has to be scheduled in advance. Few do so.”

In one way or another, I’m hoping that Lee and I don’t fall into this trap. That the time we spend with Nathaniel is true quality time. That he doesn’t become secondary to the activity we are engaging in.

As Dr. Dobson concludes in the same chapter:

“Your task as a mother, in conjunction with your husband, is to build a man out of the raw materials available in this delightful little boy, stone upon stone upon stone. Never assume for a moment that you can ‘do your own thing’ without serious consequences for him. I believe this task must be your highest priority for a period of time. It will not always be required of you. Before you know it, that child at your feet will become a young man who will pack his bags and take his first halting steps into the adult world. Then it will be your turn. By all expectations, you should have decades of health and vigor left to invest in whatever God calls you to do. But for now, there is a higher calling. I feel obligated to tell you this, whether my words are popular or not. Raising children who have been loaned to us for a brief moment outranks every other responsibility. Besides, living by that priority when kids are small will produce the greatest rewards at maturity.” (p. 108)

This is a good reminder to me. I’ve always been a multi-tasker, very often engaging in multiple responsibilities at once—usually, doing two academic programs simultaneously, meanwhile teaching and serving in church. The sleep-training is going so well, that not only am I happy for Nathaniel’s growth, but my thoughts are wandering to the things I can accomplish now—my thesis, my remaining courses for my seminary degree, my short stories, my journaling, my leisure reading. All these things are also great loves of mine—but I must remember Dr. Dobson’s words and always put Nathaniel first.

Well, it has been forty minutes. Lately, Nathaniel’s naps have ranged anywhere between 1 hour and 3 hours. I want to move onto one more task before he wakes up.

Bit the Bullet, Took the Plunge

Well, I moved Nathaniel to the crib three nights ago. The first night was a fluke. He appeared fussy at 7:00 p.m., so I put him down for a “nap” (he usually goes to bed at 9:00 p.m.). He wound up waking at 1:30 a.m. This made me realize that he was, indeed, ready to be placed in the crib.

The first official night was rather successful. He fell asleep both times with no fuss (that is, every 6 hours, after a feeding). The past two nights, there was some intense crying, though no more than 20-30 minutes.

Might I recommend the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, by Marc Weissbluth to new parents who want to sleep train their baby? The methods didn’t work so much for the first two months, but now that I’m rereading this book and applying it once again, his methods seem to be working. My sister recommended that I read Baby Wise when I was still pregnant; that book was helpful, but Weissbluth’s book is much more detailed and pragmatic—offering up strategies to correct the poor sleeping habits of a baby.

He’s very much an advocate of protecting a baby’s sleep schedule. As I confessed a month ago, I was taking “shortcuts” to put Nathaniel to sleep (i.e., taking trips to friends’ houses, to the mall, so he’d fall asleep in the car, in the stroller, in the swing, etc.). To add to that, it was rather “boring” to be at home all the time, and the weather was so nice, it was hard to lock myself indoors. My sister told me that this was what was required if I really wanted to sleep train the baby. Stay home for a week at least and focus only on sleep training. I have done so more or less the past two weeks, and seriously, there is a drastic difference in Nathaniel’s sleeping habits.

Now, my life is all about Nathaniel’s schedule, not mine (once or twice a week, I go out for a few hours). Scheduled feedings (3.5 to 4 hours). If he wants to be fed, I try to entertain him, play with him, take him out to distract him. These are periods of wakefulness, which Weissbluth says should be no more than 1 to 2 hours. Then, when the baby shows signs of tiredness (he has a list of these signs in his book), it’s time to begin the soothing period and put the baby in the crib (drowsy, but not asleep).

One obstacle has therefore been eliminated. I no longer feel the pressure to “nurse” him to sleep. That is, once he’s fallen asleep in my arms, I no longer have to worry about—If I get up, is he going to wake? Even if he opens his eyes upon my standing up and placing him in the crib, 75% of the time, he does not protest—he opens his eyes for a brief second, then drifts to sleep. (The only time he complains is when he is overtired or he isn’t as tired as I suspected that he was, in which case, I keep him awake a bit longer, then try the whole putting him to the crib thing again).

The main problem I have now, which I have to figure out how to eliminate, is that though Nathaniel sleeps through the night in his crib, he seems to wake at 4:00 a.m. every night and stays completely awake until 5:15 a.m. Playing, crying, fussing… on and off, on and off.

(I write this as Nathaniel is napping. I didn’t even mean to put him down for a nap; I put him down so I could wash the dishes this morning, and the next thing I knew, he fell asleep in the playpen and it’s been an hour!!!)

There have been some nice changes already in my life, though I miss having him sleep beside me. It’s the best feeling to wake up with him next to me in the morning; he looks over, wide-eyed, smiles, begins talking to me, and reaching out to touch my face. My eyes tear up knowing that those moments will be gone in a short while.

At the same time, I can sleep without being self-conscious about whether I will wake Nathaniel with every movement that I make. Plus, before sleeping, I have time to read now, since I can turn the light on, and ruffle around the pages in a book. At odd hours of the morning, when Nathaniel is crying and I can’t sleep (since I’m listening intently to the monitor to hear if he’s okay), I have time to write in my journal or read. My husband and I are able to spend time without Nathaniel during dinner (twice so far). All this knowing that Nathaniel is developing good, healthy sleeping habits and growing more independent. Biting the bullet, taking the plunge—the results were gradual, but oh so worth it! I can’t describe the joy I feel as a result of such a simple achievement.

Weissbluth’s schedule for the five to twelve month old is as follows:

Bedtime 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. (for Nathaniel, it’s been between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m., but I’m hoping this will change. Before, it was because I had him in the kitchen playpen with me while I cooked and so he could play with Daddy when he came home from work. Soon, however, I’m going to “protect the sleep schedule,” and put him down whether Daddy comes home on time or not.)

First awakening (for Nathaniel, he wakes up at around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. for the first feeding)

Second awakening (for Nathaniel, he wakes up at around 4:00, but I don’t go to him until 5:30 or 6:00; I check on him, and keep turning on the mobile – without his seeing me – but I don’t feed him. If he sees me, he’ll actually wind up crying louder and longer)

Start the day at 7:00 a.m. (for Nathaniel, it’s been between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m., since he’s up for almost two hours between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.)

First Nap (for Nathaniel, this is anywhere between 12:00 p.m. and 1:30; initially, it took me as long as two hours to put him down for his first nap; he kept refusing to sleep; I kept picking him up, holding him for 10-15 minutes, then putting him back down again; he resisted less and less as I continued to consistently put him down for a nap)

Two hours of wakefulness (for Nathaniel, it’s 2-3 hours of wakefulness, which includes play time, going out, grocery shopping, or my doing chores with him in the carrier when I can)

Second Nap

Two hours of wakefulness

Third nap (varies)

Two hours of wakefulness

It’ll be another several weeks before I’ll see how Nathaniel learns. But as EVERY experienced parent has told me, a baby/child learns best with consistency. Last night, Lee saw me so exhausted from the previous night, he suggested, “Why don’t you bring him to bed tonight, so you get some rest?” I shook my head, though it was tempting. “I have to be consistent. I just put him in the crib—there is no turning back now.” If the crying gets too bad at night (which I know it will at times), maybe Lee will have to get ear plugs, if he wants to get his much needed rest for the next work day.

If anyone is reading the past entries of this blog, my subject seems to be focused on Nathaniel’s sleep habits. That’s because this is my life now. I’m enjoying it—seeing him grow, even sleeping on his own, makes me tearful when he starts to do other things on his own. As my sister warned me yesterday, “Wait till he learns to crawl away from you…”

Lessons from the Young and the Old

I went to my sister’s house today. While all of us were sitting around the kitchen table eating lunch, Charis, my four-year-old niece, posed a question to her parents: “How old do I have to be before I know when I’m eating too much candy?”

Her dad then replied: “You’re old enough now, Charis.”

It was cute.

It also made me consider whether we, as adults, have ever asked ourselves when we have indulged in too much ____________ [insert your vice here]. Have we exercised enough self-control when what we have been guilty of indulging in has robbed us from time with God, time with family, time with friends?

~~~

For the past week, Nathaniel has gradually learned to sleep on his own. God has been so good to this family. I didn’t have to suffer too much. Just a few nights of crying, but the crying, with time and patience, was consolable. I’ll study his behavior for another week or so to see if this amazing behavior keeps up. When he’s tired now, it’s almost like he wants me to put him in his crib. All I have to do his put him there, turn on the mobile, and leave the room. Within ten to twenty minutes, when I go back to check on him again, he’s usually asleep, with little or no fussing.

It’s remarkable how good it makes me feel to know that Nathaniel is learning this one act of independence. I can’t imagine what will be ahead—when he begins to learn other things. To be honest, I’m the one who has to let go. At night, I feel comforted when he’s lying next to me: then I can hear his breathing, put covers on him when he’s kicked it off, hold back his arms when he’s scratching his own face in his sleep, etc. When he’s in the next room, it’s almost like I have to “trust” that he’s okay, even though I’m not there watching him every minute.

About a month ago, I emailed one of my seminary professors for parenting advice. I inquired about when discipline of a child begins. I had doubts about whether it was too early at this stage—or was I simply too scared to make sacrifices for Nathaniel’s own good? I wanted counseling from a Christian/biblical perspective—as that is the only perspective I can really trust. His response was what affirmed my resolve to begin training Nathaniel right away. God showed his grace by allowing me to witness results almost immediately. This gave me the impetus to persevere in doing what I was doing. And as I described above—the discipline was and is still working. (Praise the Lord!)

For any new mothers reading this blog, I am going to paste his advice below in case it might help you as well (my goodness, it’s almost 6:00 p.m.—Nathaniel has been sleeping since 2:30 p.m. I hope that doesn’t disrupt his sleep tonight):

Each child is unique, so no ready made formula will fit Nathaniel. However, if you stick to the basics, I cannot foresee any problems with him growing up to be the man he should be.

1. Infants need lots of interaction: conversing, playing, embracing, kissing, etc. You cannot overdo this.

2. Some structure should be in place early in the life of the child. We fed, changed, and played with them regularly; however, we also gave them a routine. We made them sleep at set times in the day when they were tired, established a regular bedtime at night, and yes, after a while we encouraged them to sleep through by refraining to pick them up, even though they cried. Bear in mind, first, we made sure that they were not sick, hungry or wet. Once we eliminated all of these, we resisted the urge to pick them up or let them sleep in our bed, a bad habit that is hard to cure! This latter decision caused us great angst, since the natural inclination is to respond immediately to the cry of your offspring. But we realized that children want constant attention, day and night, and that crying is the primary means of getting what they desire. So we had to make the painful choice at times not to respond, just because they cried.

Parents must balance their responsibilities to their infants, with their responsibilities to their spouses, extended family, and society as a whole. This structure, worked excellent for them and for us. We maintained our sanity! And by 7:30 at night, we could entertain in our homes or spend time as a couple, because our children were in bed asleep. As soon as our children realized that they would not get what they want just by crying, they gave up, slept or played with the toys in their environment. They also learnt that life was not all about them.

Now although there seems to be some benefit to this approach, it is only one approach. Thus, if you are uncomfortable with the advice you received, regarding feeding and sleeping through, you should explore other approaches that may be more acceptable to you.

3. The key to parenting, however, is consistency. Once you have established a set of rules, you should endeavour to abide by them. This will be useful for Nathaniel throughout his childhood years.

4. At the end of the day, this is your baby, not mom's, dad's, aunt Jane or uncle Ben. He is God's gift to you both; therefore, consult His Word for principles and trust His wisdom in tricky spots to guide you.

5. Remember, all parents make "mistakes" in parenting. Generally, these are overcome over the long run, if we love our children, instruct them in the right way, and live consistent and exemplary lives before them.

Bottom line: don’t stress yourself about getting it right. Enjoy your baby, encourage and reinforce good habits, trust him to the Lord in prayer, and just use plain old fashion common sense.

I am well aware, that this is more advice, precisely the problem you are having. Therefore, please feel free to discard all the above, except the part about the Lord!

My professor’s advice made me realize that I had to keep a bigger perspective in mind—and that included my family (especially my husband) and my spiritual life. Last night, Nathaniel fell asleep at 7:15 and woke at 12:05 a.m. As a result, Lee came home, and for the FIRST time in four months, he and I were able to spend time together in the evening without Nathaniel. In addition, for the past few days, I’ve had so much more time to read the Bible and write—two things I’ve been itching to do but had difficulty doing because of the short, short windows of sleep Nathaniel was getting.

I shall wait for what is to come in the next few weeks, but I shall give everything over to my God. Every step I take in parenting Nathaniel, I will hand over to my Father in Heaven. I offer all my thanks to Him, for He has proven Himself faithful again and again in my life.

Comfort in the Steadfastness of His Word

Just finished reading the book of Isaiah this morning.

Last night, when Nathaniel woke up only two hours after his last feeding—3:30 a.m.—I was determined not to feed him. I put up with an hour and a half of his crying before feeding him. The pacifier failed me. So did singing him a lullaby (although it had worked the night before). He was resolute in wanting to suck to sleep. My sister was right: the older he is, the stronger his will is. At least at three months, I had a chance of distracting him with some other activity, offering him an alternative.

Lying in bed, tired and exasperated by Nathaniel’s persistent crying, I find it easy to become skeptical about whether this is the way to go. It would be much more simple if I just fed him when he wanted (not need, want—there is a reason why he’s over 15 lbs at four months). If my job was simply to gratify his immediate demands so as to keep him happy all the time (as in, not crying), I wouldn’t have to be tormented by his howling discomfort. But I am relying and trusting the advice of my mom, my sister, and my close friends who are also new mothers: Nathaniel needs to learn to fall asleep on his own.

So as I was lying in bed in the early hours of the morning, I thought about the connection between what I have been reading in Isaiah and what I am experiencing. How God is unchangeable, always faithful, true to his promises. That amidst the darkness and chaos of sin, we can anchor our hope in his divine promises.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out form my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, and it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11

And as such, we can walk in obedience to God’s Word, even when we are facing challenges, temptations, self-doubt, and wonderment about whether we are going in the right way. Even when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable for us to do so. God’s Word provides magnificent assurance of what direction we are to head toward, what steps we are to take.

If it were not for some of the baby care books that I am reading or the advice of family and friends, I would, without hesitation, give in to Nathaniel’s demands (I’m pretty sure I will on the days when I can’t bear to hear his crying). One of the baby care books actually places emphasis on the necessity of teaching/disciplining a baby to fall asleep on his own: “If [the baby] isn’t able to fall asleep by himself by six months of age, the window of opportunity for learning this skill may not be open again for several months. After six months, he is likely to begin a normal phase known as separation anxiety, in which a mighty howl may erupt when you are out of his sight, especially at bedtime. As a result, if after six months he’s still used to being nursed, held, and rocked through several rounds of ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ until he’s sound asleep, you can plan on repeating this ritual for months on end unless you are prepared to endure a vigorous and prolonged protest.” (Focus on the Family: The First Two Years, page 119-120)

Not that their words are anywhere close to the authority of God’s Word—but because of their expertise, their years of experience, their wisdom as mothers—their words do mean something, and as a result, their words give me the much needed strength and motivation to press on, though I lack the experience to discern and understand what lays ahead.

When I finish feeding Nathaniel on the rocking chair, and I look down to see a peaceful, sleeping baby resting on my lap, I can’t help but sigh and tell myself, Okay, get up. You have to put him in his crib, even if he wakes up and doesn’t go back to sleep, even if he has to cry himself to sleep. He can’t sleep on your lap forever. Oh—how much more simple it would be if I could just let him sleep on my lap, so he would get his much needed rest for the day.

I get the feeling that this is a snapshot of what disciplining a child will be like. It will require firmness, consistency, and love—coupled with a vision of Nathaniel’s future—that this is good for him, even if it is hard for me.

Lee and I pray every day for Nathaniel’s wellbeing. That God grant us wisdom and strength to raise him right. Oh how much we need his guidance.

Must stop blogging now. Nathaniel has been crying in his crib for the past forty minutes (as I am finishing this blog, he has just gone from crying to whimpering to silence... better go check on him...)

Night Wakings: No, Me

Fed Nathaniel at 11:30. He fell asleep on my lap for a while, and at around 12:35, I took the plunge and put him to sleep in the crib. He opened his eyes for several seconds and started to cry, but I stuck a pacifier in his mouth, shushed him, and helped him close his eyes. He fell back asleep. So far, it’s been a miraculous 15 minutes.

For some reason, the past few days, I’ve been hesitant about putting him in the crib. At four months, he seems to be going through “separation anxiety” of some sort. He’s crying much sooner when I put him down, and his lungs are much stronger now, because he’s crying much louder too. When I’m cooking or whatnot, I watch him—tears are streaming down his face and he’s got a serious, desperate look on his face. When I’m well-rested and healthy (as in, no blocked ducts), I feel like giving in and holding him.

His sleeping habits have been awful the past week. He’s waking up on average every two to three hours for a feeding. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is God’s way of telling me that I need to put him in the crib for the night. That Nathaniel is getting too used to having my being next to him that he thinks that “nighttime” means he gets an Open Bar for the next ten hours. I have to keep reminding myself of what my mom said about determination and persistence. I have to tell myself that I need to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gain. Sigh. Am I ready?

I have awful memories of swimming lessons during my younger days. Besides being made fun of by this one boy while I was doing the front crawl (I was always swimming too slowly and he always caught up to me from behind), I hated it when it came time to take turns to jump off the diving board. Because once you went up that ladder, there was no turning back, because all your peers wee waiting their turn. Then you walk up to the edge of the diving board, look down, down, down, at the waters below, and you pray hard that you don’t do a belly flop. This is the picture in my head when I think about putting Nathaniel in the crib permanently. “X” number of nights of crying, crying, crying. No sleep. No sleep. No sleep.

Since I’m continually being awakened by Nathaniel when I’m in deep sleep, I am remembering my dreams more. I can usually recall them during the day, and remember them vividly enough to share them with the husband. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of dreams where Lee is in “physical” trouble, and I do my best to try to save him, but I can’t. Last week, I told Lee that I had a dream that a big, muscular guy forced himself through the window on the driver’s side of our car and began strangling him. I was sitting on the passenger’s side, screaming, trying to pry the guy’s arms off Lee’s neck, but it was to no avail, Lee fell unconscious. Then Nathaniel woke me up. It was the scariest thing—because the dream had been so real. Then, the other night, I had a dream that I was in battle. All of us were clad in our armor. This fearsome soldier circulated the field, looking for Lee, ready to decapitate him, and here I was, running after the solider in an attempt to save Lee. I’m not sure, psychologically, what these dreams mean, but I’m supposing that it’s because, ever since Nathaniel has been born, I’ve grown much more dependent on Lee, and such dreams may be a manifestation of my fear of losing him.

Being awakened every few hours isn’t fun, especially when I can’t fall back sleep. On the bright side, as long as Nathaniel can fall back asleep, I can’t complain too much, I guess. Better him than me. During those insomniac moments, however, my mind wanders a lot, and I always hope that the next day, there might be a window for me to write it all down. Rarely does this happen, so since Nathaniel is sleeping, I’m trying to maximize my opportunity (though I really should be using this hard-won moment to shower…).

I just finished Dr. James Dobson’s Bringing up Boys today during my last feeding. I got so much insight from this book that it’s hard to know where to begin regarding expressing my response to it. I’ve been sharing a lot of it with Lee, and underlining the parts in the book that I hope Lee will pay attention to (he started reading it last night). It’ll also be interesting to hear his take on it when he’s done since he’s the BOY.

But since my time is always limited and I predict Nathaniel will wake up soon (whoa—he’s been sleeping for 40 minutes already!), I shall respond to the points Dr. Dobson makes in the order which he makes them in the book (so if I don’t tackle a point in this entry, it shall resurface in a future entry). I shall bring up the points that hit home regarding my own childhood upbringing.

My parents were “followers” of Dr. Dobson’s parenting principles as well. I remember in high school, I found Hide and Seek on their book shelf and went through it out of curiosity—in the book were my parents’ pencil marks on points they found important. So here I am, decades later, doing the exact same thing they did.

Chapter Five is entitled, “The Essential Father,” in which Dr. Dobson writes, “Let me emphasize again that boys suffer most from the absence or noninvolvement of fathers.” [Nathaniel awakens] He continues later by saying, a Father’s “legacy is like that of countless fathers who were too busy, too selfish, and too distracted to care for the little boys who reached for them… When a father is uninvolved—when he doesn’t love or care for his kids—it creates an ache, a longing, that will linger for decades.”

It’s this last part that hits a soft spot in my heart because I have come to experience that aching and longing. Thirty years old, and I still have trouble letting go of the fact that my dad didn’t spend enough time with us when we were kids. Enough so that the pains of my dad’s absence during my childhood years inspired many scenes in one of my short stories. I turned a painful truth in my past and gave it a fictionalized setting.

Granted, I have come to understand that perhaps my dad communicates his love to me differently. Perhaps providing for the family financially is his love language. Never did our family ever have to worry about shelter, food, education. My dad was (is) an ambitious, hard-working man. His being a visionary and successful businessman has led to his success in starting two big companies in the past two decades. He’s appeared in the Globe and Mail and the front cover of some magazine whose name I’ve already forgotten.

Perhaps one of the most heart-wrenching questions that haunted me during my childhood was this, “Did my dad love his work more, or me?” As a child, I never knew. He spent enough time at the office to make me think it was the former.

It is with this skeleton in the closet that makes all sorts of emotions surge inside me as I read Dr. Dobson’s words on the importance of a parent’s role in the home.

Of course, even before reading his book, I’ve always grown up wanting something different for my own future family (that’s what we all do, right?). When I was single, I was careful about which guys I was interested in. The one who appeared overly ambitious was the one that I tried to stay away from. I’m blessed to have Lee. He works hard—because he has to (as he says). But most of the time, when he comes home, I have no doubt that he’d rather be spending it there with me than anywhere else.

More on these thoughts later… Nathaniel’s crying is intensifying…

Baby and Marriage Snapshots & Lessons Learned

The other night, at 4:30 a.m., Nathaniel awakens. It’s pitch dark in the master bedroom, and I deliberately do not turn on the lights in hope that Nathaniel will fall back asleep. Instead, for a good 45 minutes, even though I’m crouched silently at the edge of the bed (so he doesn’t notice I’m there—because any sight of me will make him cry for milk), I listen to him suck his hands, excitedly kick his feet, and talk. Yes, talk (night time is usually completely quiet in the bedroom unless Nathaniel wants milk—never is it play time). And he talks loudly. And since he can’t see me in the darkness, or anything else for that matter, I have to wonder what he’s thinking all that time when he’s making all sorts of sounds. Normally, I would have been more stressed by his waking, but I found myself attentive and amused.

Even worse (grin), I decided to turn my “lemon” moment into “lemonade.” Nathaniel manages to turn his body all around, 90 degrees so that his feet are now kicking my back. I wind up edging myself closer to the bottom his feet, and I get a good twenty-minute massage out of it (he kicks pretty hard). After 45 minutes, when he finally starts to whine, I turn on the lights. I LOVE it. His big eyes gaze into mine. Blink. Blink. Smile. I melt. Okay—let’s not follow the rules of the baby care books tonight (no social interaction with the baby in the nighttime)—at 5:15 a.m., I’m talking back to the baby and tickling him, and having fun with him until six in the morning. Luckily, we sleep in that morning until eleven.

At the moment, I’m also breaking another rule. He’s sleeping on my lap right now (his fingers are twitching while he’s sleeping, it’s so cute). I know I should be hoisting him up and putting him in his crib and letting him cry until he takes his morning nap in his crib—but this morning, I don’t feel like doing that to him. I guess my mood changes from day to day. Sometimes I’m totally fine with disciplining him, and on some days, I can’t help but indulge him a little (often, this has a strong correlation to the amount of energy I have and how much I slept the night before).


Lee said something sweet to me the other night. During dinner, as I was serving him Beef, Potatoes and Carrots in Coconut Curry Sauce on Rice, he comments, “I have my chef back.” I smile. Month three was when I began to cook regularly again. I learned to split up my dinner preparation throughout the day to minimize Nathaniel’s crying (yes, he cries still every time I put him down to do household chores). First window: Wash and chop up vegetables. Second window: Marinade the meat. Third window: Cook rice, fill pots with water or what not. Fourth Window: Put dishes in dishwasher. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Now that I’m sleeping more, I’m back to taking joy in making Lee a nice, welcoming dinner. I know he works hard during the day, and I imagine it’s a great relief when he comes home and is greeted by the aroma of food cooking on the stove, slow cooker or oven. On my lazy days, of course, I’ve got frozen M & M’s in the freezer, frozen dumplings with instant noodles, or marinated meat for Lee to cook on the barbeque.

I heard a sermon in chapel last spring about the importance of looking for evidences of grace in our brothers and sisters. I have to remind myself quite often to do so with the husband. Sometimes, without knowing it, I wind up spending more time telling Lee what he should or shouldn’t do instead of raising him up. (The most popular phrase since Nathaniel came into the picture, “Shhhh… quiet, the baby’s sleeping!” It gets frustrating for the husband at times because he complains that it’s impossible to stay completely quiet all the time. Then I get frustrated at times because it takes so much effort to put a baby to sleep.) Of course, he says, now and then, he finds that I nag him, and I say, in my defense, that it’s “not” nagging, because if he remembered to do _______ (INSERT TASK) the first time around, there wouldn’t be any need to tell him again.

With a baby in the picture now, the frequency and need for both he and I to tell each other what to do (i.e., regarding household chores, errands to run, budget concerns, etc.) has increased—but we’ve learned better how to communicate to one another over the past several months—we express our wishes with much more courtesy, and have also learned to withhold our grievances when we realize it’s really not necessary to utter them.

During the first two months, for example, when Lee returned to work after two weeks of vacation, I became much more in tune with Nathaniel’s habits. Then, when Lee came home from work and I handed Nathaniel to him (while I began cooking dinner), I would hear Nathaniel crying and fussing. Lee would do his best to do this and that, but initially, at times, it was to no avail. During those months, here and there, I would give Lee specific instructions, thinking I was helping him (i.e., “No, hold him this way, not that way—he doesn’t like that,” or, “Don’t let him look at the television,” “Don’t diaper him too tightly,” etc.), until it came to the point when Lee snapped at me one night, “Stop criticizing me with everything I’m doing with the baby.” Then he had marched out of the room with Nathaniel in his arms.

I was upset at first, because I felt my intentions were good. But it was then that I had to learn to give my husband the freedom to learn for himself how to take care of Nathaniel. Now that Nathaniel is four months old, I realize even more the benefit of doing so. There is a special bond that Lee is capable of developing with Nathaniel that I cannot. First: a lot of the time, all I remind Nathaniel of is that I’m his source of food. Second: Lee can play with him in ways I cannot. I notice during his play with Nathaniel, that he’s a lot more “rough” with Nathaniel (at first, this scared me and I would keep telling Lee to be more gentle with him), but then I realized that it didn’t really bother Nathaniel (it bothered me more than it bothered him). Having learned this fact, I’m enjoying watching Father and Son play together a lot more. This was one of the crucial lessons that I learned these past months: keeping silent, learning to relax, letting the husband be his own when with his son. Since then, the doors have opened between he and Nathaniel—there are things that Lee does that makes Nathaniel laugh which I can’t do—and it’s that very fact that makes me enjoy watching them so much. (I'm in the middle of reading Dr. James Dobson's Bringing up Boys, which discusses the Father and Son relationship... more on this book when I'm done.)

Last night, as Nathaniel and I retired to bed at 9:30 p.m., I say good night to my husband. I say sweetly to him, “Can I get a hand massage before I go to sleep?” My husband, then says, “Say something nice about me first” (he likes to say that playfully to me whenever I ask him for services such as these), so I say, in an equally playful manner, “You’re really good-looking.” He shakes his head. “No, that’s not genuine. I want something genuine.” “Okay, okay,” I pause, and think about it. Then I say, “I’ve noticed in the past two weeks, you’ve grown a lot more patient.” When he begins massaging my hand, I know that he deems my statement genuine.