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Philip and I have been together for five years.  This is going to sound absurd to some and like a lie to others, but in five years, we have never had a fight.  He’s never raised his voice to me.  He’s never said anything that was intentionally aimed at hurting me.   He’s rather proved to me that fairy tales are true, which I always secretly hoped and I think actually knew, because what can possibly be more fairy tale-like than the story of Christ?  Love, in any form, seems to be for the dreamers and the believers of the impossible.

But I digress.

In the five years that I’ve been with Philip, I’ve seen him in the role of son, brother, husband, pastor, friend, mentor, teacher, and lastly, father.  It is this role that I want to talk about, a little late for father’s day, but important still.  Watching Philip with his children is more special than can be described.  This is something that you don’t have to take my word on, ask anyone in church or in the family.  In the same way he is with me, he is never inpatient with them, never seems frustrated, and above all, loves them in a way that clearly shows he would give his life for them.  He loves his boy, and I can’t wait to watch their relationship grow and develop, but there is clearly a special bond between him and Callie Grace, and that bond goes both ways.  Neither do well being apart from each other for long.  She looks for him first thing in the morning, she talks about him all day, she brings things to me to give to him when he gets home, and she becomes a sprinter when she hears the garage door open.  At times, but only in the best of ways, I feel like an intruder on their moments together.  But I feel like this is how it should be.  I would welcome anyone to come visit us, if for no other reason than to witness what I believe and father’s relationship with his children should look like.

One other quick note: I’ve been bizarrely sick these past few days (for those that have known me for a long time, isn’t that just typical!).  I have to say, and I say this with tears in my eyes, I have never felt more supported or loved.  My church family here has gone so far above and beyond what I could ever expect that I can’t possibly explain it.  My church family and biological family that aren’t here have sent prayers and support.  And then of course, there’s Philip.

There will always and forever, throughout eternity, be Philip.

Philip and I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Orlando, so we made our plans, flew our moms out to Colorado to watch the babies and set off for, what surely must be, the hottest place in the world.  We were gone for five days.  Five days away from Callie and Justus.  We missed them immediately.  By day two, it was barely tolerable.  By day four it became almost miserable.  By day five, we knew that if we didn’t get home immediately, we would go crazy!  So needless to say, that is the last time we leave them for so long!  They had a great time at home, and were well-cared for (read: spoiled) the entire time we were gone.

Before I got married, I traveled quite a lot.  I was good at it, too, good at finding my way around airports, cities, even foreign countries.  I could read a map, rent a car, get from one place to another with relative ease.  And then after I got married, it’s like all those skills deserted me for someone more in need of them!  I feel like a five year old these days when traveling, totally confused trying to determine which way to go on the interstate (“the sun sets in the west, look for sun, idiot.  Ok, it’s noon.  The sun is directly overhead…etc. etc. etc.  This is my internal dialogue :)), which terminal in the airport I need, where the nearest Starbucks is, what I can and cannot take on the plane.  The Lord blessed me in infinite ways with Philip, and one of these ways is that he is never lost, never stressed, never in a hurry, and never late.  Seriously, it’s a gift!  So, until I travel alone in July to Mikael’s wedding, I can breathe a sigh of relief that I know Philip will get us safely where we need to go.

One more rambling about airports.  I don’t understand the people that show up on the plane looking relaxed, fabulous, cool and calm.  I find myself walking through the airport, dragging my ancient suitcase, sweat dripping my makeup down my face, my pants always either a little too snug and dreadfully uncomfortable or a little too big, and in need of a hand to haul them back up, but said hands are full of mostly needless bags of mostly needless stuff.  By the time I get into my seat on the plane I’m exhausted, cranky, certain that if I wasn’t with Philip I’d probably be on a plane headed to Singapore, and always, always hungry.  Is it just me?

More importantly, here are a few pictures of my precious babies.

Callie rocking her baby doll on the back porch:

Justus and me today at the outdoor worship service:

Tomorrow I will post about Father’s day!

Okay, I’m back.

So, Callie Grace is now 19 months old.  She is hilarious!  She loves to dress up and wear my jewelry, shoes, and hair accessories (although she still has basically no hair).  Here is a picture of her in my pearls and headband:

She also likes to carry my purse, and at times gets irate when I have to take it back!  She seems to increase her vocabulary by leaps and bounds daily.  She calls her brother “Justy”, and just today has started to go to him to kiss her “ouchies”, or “elbows”, which she likes to call all of her injuries.  It’s a long story.

Justus is now 5 months, and seems to get happier by the day!  Here’s a picture of his fantastic grin:

Spring has finally come to Evergreen (!!!), and both babies love to be outside, which brings to mind a Caedmon’s Call song (although doesn’t everything?), “The children are sleeping, but they’re running through my mind.  The sun makes them happy and the music makes them unwind.”  So true for my babies!

Up next: Homeschooling has begun, even for Justus!

I love books.  I’m always finding a new book that I must have immediately.  Philip knows this about me, and humors me in this.  As proof that he really does listen to me rattle on (and I do rattle on, no doubt about it), about every two weeks or so I get a package from Amazon with a book that I mentioned to Philip that I wanted.  We have books everywhere, stacked on our dresser, the nightstand, the computer desk, not to mention the wall-to-wall bookshelf in our downstairs den.  I have more books that I want to read than I could possibly read in a year.  Which brings me to my current dilemma.  I have a habit of starting a book, getting about half way through it… and then getting distracted by a new book that I must have and start immediately.

So I decided to commit to finishing a book before I pick up a new one.  (This of course excludes starting a work of fiction when I’m in the middle of a non-fiction book.  Right?)  After I made this commitment, the next book I got from Amazon was The Godly Home, by Richard Baxter.  Baxter was a prolific English minister with amazing insight into the Christian life.  The hang up is, the book was first published in 1673.  Here is a quote from the book:

That Christian families are sanctified to God I prove thus: first, a society of holy persons must needs be a holy society.  A family of Christians is a society of holy persons: therefore, etc.  Second, we find in scripture not only single persons but the societies of such sanctified to God. See Deuteronomy 14.  So the body of that commonwealth did all jointly enter into covenant with God, and God to them.

Um… what?

It’s possible that sleep deprivation has directly affected my ability to comprehend what I read, but seriously, what?  I’m on page 78, and there are 224 pages.  I am determined to finish it.  Just, nobody ask me what the book was about.

Easter was a busy, busy time in the Meade household! Callie Grace enjoyed the entire weekend, and loved carrying her Easter basket around wherever she went. She had a hard time understanding the concept of finding eggs and putting them in her basket, and then an even harder time understanding why I wouldn’t let her eat all the candy that was in the eggs. However, her confusion caused us much entertainment, and the video of her hunting eggs is priceless. It can be seen on Philip’s Facebook page.

I am so happy to report that everything is fine with my baby boy! Justus is healthy and happy, and the sweetest little boy that ever was. As I write this, he is laying beside me on the couch, talking up a storm and smiling at me every time I look at him. He and Callie Grace are both such amazing children, it constantly amazes me that I’m so blessed and get to spend every day with them. The Lord is good.

David Powlison wrote a book entitled Seeing With New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition Through the Lens of Scripture.  Of course, I find this topic fascinating, having been a counselor in the secular world for almost 10 years.  This book could be such a help to counselors and ministers alike.  He has a chapter in the book called X-ray Questions.  It is a list of 35 questions that include scripture references, to be used in some form by the counselor.  I have decided to write in my personal journal on one question each day, being as honest as I can.  This is no easy task, because we can lie to ourselves quite easily, I’ve found, and to truly answer these questions is humbling, and at times embarrassing.

So I’d like to write out the list of questions for anyone who is interested.  If there is any feedback or insight that you would like to share, you can comment, or email me at andimeade @ hotmail dot com.  Also, I’m not going to include the scripture references, so if anyone would like those please contact me as well.

1.  What do you love? Hate?
2.  What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for?
3.  What do you seek, aim for, and pursue?  What are your goals and expectations?
4.  Where do you bank your hopes?
5.  What do you fear?  What do you not want?  What do you tend to worry about?
6.  What do you feel like doing?
7.  What do you thing you need?  What are your “felt needs”?
8.  What are your plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions designed to accomplish?
9.  What makes you tick?  What do you organize your life around?  What food sustains your life?
10.  Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, security?
11.  What or whom do you trust?
12.  Whose performance matters?  On whose shoulders does the well-being of your world rest?
13.  Whom must you please?  Whose opinion of you counts?  From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection?
14.  Who are your role models?  What kind of person do you think you ought to be or want to be?
15.  On your deathbed, what would sum up your life as worthwhile?  What gives your life meaning?
16.  How do you define and weigh success or failure, right or wrong, desirable, or undesirable?
17.  What would make you feel rich, secure, prosperous?
18.  What would bring you the greatest pleasure, happiness and delight?  The greatest pain and misery?
19.  Whose coming into political power would make everything better?
20.  Whose victory or success would make your life happy?  How do you define victory and success?
21.  What do you see as your rights?  What do you feel entitled to?
22.  In what situations do you feel pressured or tense? Confident and relaxed? What are your escapes?  What do you escape from?
23.  What do you want to get out of life?  What payoff do you seek out of the things you do?
24.  What do you pray for?
25.  What do you think about most often?
26.  What do you talk about? What attitudes do you communicate?
27.  How do you spend your time?  What are your priorities?
28.  What are your characteristic fantasies?  Daydreams?  What do your night dreams revolve around?
29.  What are the functional beliefs that control how you interpret your life and determine how you act?
30.  What are your idols or false gods?  Whom do you serve?
31.  How do you life for yourself?
32.  How do you life as a slave of the devil?
33. How do you implicitly say, “if only…” (to get what you want or avoid what you don’t want)?
34.  What instinctively seems and feels right to you.  What are your opinions, the things you feel are true?
35.  Where do you find your identity?  How do you define who you are?

This is quite a list!  I would definitely recommend only taking one question at a time.  The answers will most likely surprise you.  More on some of these specific questions to come.

As I write this, it’s 6am, and Justus is sitting beside me in his chair, smiling.  My little boy has the sweetest smile.  We have really been appreciating his smiles and sweet nature, especially as we have had concerns about his health.  The circumference of his head has increased at a rate that is more rapid that normal.  On Tuesday he had to have a CT Scan.  It is heartbreaking to see your little baby stuck in this big machine, and all you can think about is that you want to change places with them.  He was an angel, never making a peep, and it was over quickly.  As we waited in the waiting area for the results, Justus caught the attention of all who passed us.  We got the results quickly, and were so relieved to find out that what they were most worried about, a condition called hydrocephalus, he does not have.  However the scan did detect more fluid than normal possibly pushing on the frontal lobe of his brain, and so he does have to continue on with more tests and evaluations with a neurosurgeon at the Children’s Hospital here in Denver.  His appointment is on Good Friday.  As I was writing the date down, a song popped into my head: “All shall be well, yes all shall be well, the love of God will never fail, and all manner of things shall be made well.”  I looked over at my little boy, who at the time was being lovingly forced by his big sister to take his pacifier, and I thought, how true that song is.  All shall be well.  My little boy, my precious son, belongs first to God, and then to me.  And the Lord loves him in ways I cannot fathom.  And the love of God never fails.  Of course I cannot take this to mean that Justus will have no health concerns, although I can and do pray for that, but I do take it to mean that God’s perfect will shall be carried out and His perfect love will never fail me or my son.  And that is the secret to peace that passes understanding.

These are the views outside of my front and back window.  In one window, you can see the shadow of Callie Grace’s Easter stickers, which look quite funny against the snow.  However, the snow is breathtakingly beautiful!  It’s amazing how we can get so much snow, and life just goes on here in Colorado.  People go to work, to school, nobody changes their plans!  The snow covers everything, making the whole world look clean and covered in diamonds.  This is much the same way I imagine Jesus covers me, and it is a wonderful reminder of this.  However, I’m so thankful that the love of God is permanent, and the snow isn’t!

With two feet of snow expected here in the foothills of the Rockies, I have to admit it.

I’m homesick for the South.

Not that I don’t feel certain that we are where we need to be, and not that there aren’t many, many things to love about Colorado.  It’s just, this is my first spring in my entire life that I haven’t been in the South.  I miss the excitement of seeing the first daffodils and the first fire flies.  I miss the anticipation of the pool opening – I have yet to see a single outdoor swimming pool here!  I miss the green you start to see everywhere, with other splashes of color mixed in.  I miss the knowledge that the snow is behind you by mid-March.  I miss the sound of the crickets and the first feeling of warm breezes.  At times I feel that I am in another country, not just another state.  There is a wild, open beauty here that I’ve not experienced before in my life.  I’m in no way saying that Colorado is not a wonderful place to live, but when things are so different than what you’ve always known, it’s bound to have some effect on you.

There is a hymn on the Hymns for Kids CD that Callie Grace listens to countless times a day.  It’s called Count Your Blessings, and the chorus says “Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your blessings, see what God hath done!  Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings, see what God hath done.”  I love this song, I love the reminder that it brings, and how happy I am when I do count my many blessings!

But I think it’s still okay to admit to being homesick occasionally.