he gave us dessert

it may come as a surprise to some of you who are just finding out, but we have known we are pregnant since mid-december. although we had been practicing baby making for a couple years, we had not actually been trying to produce a child for very long. be that as it may, we weren't sure it would ever happen.

as much as we hope and believe in the goodness of God, for us, as i suspect is the case for many, there is always a lurking fear that somehow he is not as kind, loving, or gracious as we make him out to be. a more sinister picture, one where he punishes us for unwise choices, and withholds his favor from those who make even the slightest mistakes is sometimes a hard one to wriggle away from.

this was brought into sharp contrast for me about a month before we found out annie was knocked up. i had been reading a book by a guy named brian mclaren called a generous orthodoxy, a great read if you are into that sort of thing (orthodoxy, not reading i mean), and he was talking about how he felt like he had a very clear picture of Jesus from his childhood, one that transcended the flannel graphs and pastel bible watercolor pictures of him as a gentle, bearded european. he then went on to explain that he had met seven different Jesus's since that point (the roman catholic Jesus, the evangelical Jesus, etc), and that although none of them individually produced the feeling of reverence in him he has experienced as a child, all of them taken together developed a fuller picture, one closer to the deeper reality of Christ he had experienced as a kid.

as i read this, i realized that i didn't have a clear picture of who i thought Jesus was as a child, and often still my picture of him is muddled and unclear. i have things i hope are true, and others i fear are more accurate, but i know very few things for sure. i asked annie about her picture of who God is, what he is like, and she responded by saying she thinks he is a gay man, or, more accurately, like a particular gay man.

you see, a week or so earlier, our small group had gone to serve together at the first presbyterian church of san diego's soup kitchen on a sunday afternoon. i had been there several times before with my junior high students, but this was annie's first time there. as was the case with every other time i had been there, LEO! (this is how he always writes his name on his nametag) was there. LEO! is a gay man that spends his time at the soup kitchen walking around to all the guests, lavishing love and handfuls of hersheys kisses on anyone willing to accept them. annie saw his role as a picture of God's overabundant grace, in the fact that, "he doesn't just meet our basic needs, but he comes with dessert." i found this to be a beautiful observation, yet not without its irony given how many people who claim to follow Christ, especially the obnoxiously vocal ones who carry signs on cnn, view the homosexual community.
despite this picture of a dessert giving God, after being unable to conceive for a little while, annie began to be concerned that we would not get what we really wanted, the opportunity to be parents. after all, we already had so much that we didn't deserve, great families, great friends, great jobs, and why should he give us anything more? surely there is a limit to the amount of grace given any one person.

if there is any such limit, which i have serious doubts about in the first place, we obviously haven't reached ours yet, b/c a few weeks later annie woke me up early one morning. while she is usually up before me, she typically lets me sleep, so the fact she was waking me up should have tipped me off to the fact that something was up, but i do not think quickly on my feet, especially at 6:30 am, and when she said she had made a card for me, i groggily said, "thanks" and rolled away from her. she put the card on my head, and using my brilliant powers of observation, i asked, "you want me to open it now?" she excitedly answered in the affirmative, and i soon knew what she had been holding in since waking up at 4 that morning, that we were going to be parents.

we relished the new reality together for a little while, and then i said something to the effect of, "well here is to things we don't deserve." she, in her typical unawareness of her ability to be profound said, "i know. the first thing i said when i found out was, 'oh my God, he did give us dessert.'"

since that point we have been trying to hold onto that awareness, despite morning sickness, financial reality, bronchitis and two car accidents. on our good days we feel overwhelmed with gratitude, on our not so good days we feel overwhelmed by fear. on everyday we are trying to live into the reality of a dessert-giving God.

peace,
stew

ps. no, isaac's middle name will not be zephyr. but if we have another boy, it will be in my top three possibilities.