by Andy Wood on June 19, 2008
Not once did the thought occur to me. Not once.
We knew at 10 weeks we were having twins, courtesy of those dandy new ultrasound machines. And we were excited. Fresh out of school, still using wedding dishes, living in our own home, and picking out not one, but two sets of names.
Two boys? Joel Andrew and Jeremy Adam.
Boy and a girl? Joel Andrew and Jessica Leigh.
I was pretty quiet as we headed home from that latest ultrasound. The images were beginning to form in my mind for the first time.
Two girls?
Cosmic shifts started taking place in my little brain. And they all culminated in a wedding.
Since I was old enough to understand what fathers were, I wanted to be one. I was blessed to have a dad who loves being a dad, to this day. In whatever ways I have failed to live up to his example, I caught the whole load on that one. And in doing so, three deep convictions emerged:
- I would be the first representation of the nature and character of God to my children.
- We were called to raise adults, not children.
- Mommies build nests, but for daddies, children are arrows in their hands, and my job was to launch them.
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by Andy Wood on June 18, 2008
This Saturday will be the next step in a season of some pretty intense generational shifts for us. More on that tomorrow. I wrote the following article ten years ago, during another such season. It only seems like yesterday…
The voice on the phone was tired and quiet – not unusual for a hospital room at 9:20 pm. They’d just gotten Lou (my grandmother) settled down for the night when I’d made my untimely call. The occasion, other than to check on Lou, was to wish Mamma a happy 60th birthday. A little ironic that I had to track her down at Providence Hospital where she was watching her mother edge closer to death.
Life is filled with choices and changes, and my mom has seen her share of them. But perhaps never with the magnitude and frequency of change she faces now. Her mother has cancer, and is losing the battle. Her son lives many hours away. And up the highway a couple of hours, her daughter prepares for the Big One. She’s preparing to leave the country for the mission field.
On this night, I enjoy a feminine family reunion by telephone. I speak briefly to Lou, to tell her I am thinking of her, loving her, praying for her. I hear the pain, the despair, the fear in her voice. That growing sense of hopelessness that says, “I don’t feel good and I probably never will again.”
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