My Daughter is Born!

I received the best Christmas gift ever when my daughter, Elora, was born on the morning of the 25th. I know I’m biased, but she is the most beautiful baby in the world.

My wife started having strong contractions at 2 in the morning, and after waiting at home for a while, we went to the hospital around 5. By 9:30, we had our daughter. For a first-time mom, this was an extremely short span of time for labor.

This change in my life is showing me aspects of God that I didn’t realize before, especially His relationship between Him and us. My daughter is teaching me quite a bit about selflessness and love, and I wonder at God’s patience with us.

Not long after my daughter was born, we discovered that she had jaundice, so the hospital staff would take her into the nursery for several hours at a time to place her under the bili-lights that would break down the extra hemoglobin in her body so that she could pass it back out of her system. Each time they would return with her, my wife and I would get so excited. I think this is a glimpse of how God feels about people who accept Christ, when they declare that they want to be with Him. There’s such excitement that the heavens erupt in celebration.

This really is an amazing time for my wife and me, and I’ll do my best to cherish these moments while they last. Everyone says that children grow up so fast, and I will not be so foolish as to think otherwise.

What happened to November?

I haven’t had a post for well over a month, but things have been busier than usual for me. In addition to preparations for a baby, I’ve been working more hours, and I often work straight through my lunch. Blog posts happen during lunch, so no breaks mean no posts. Finding time for God, a marriage, children, friends, work and writing seems to be a tricky thing to pull off, especially when any of those categories require more time for a season.

My struggle is always in figuring out how much downtime to allow myself. Even with everything going full throttle right now, I do have periods of rest aside from sleeping. They aren’t often, but they do come. Writing is last on my priority list, and it isn’t an activity I consider when I want to veg. When I write, I’m striving for the best work possible, and I’m probing my imagination for characters, settings and plots. It’s enjoyable and relaxing, but it isn’t the same as completely letting go and playing video games (my personal form of brain dumping).

This period of time is stretching me. I’m learning how many hours I can actually push myself to focus, so I’m hoping that when my current project finishes up in a few months, I will channel that same time towards the other big categories of my life and not siphon any off to the downtime area.