Laughed Until We Cried (HoL 13)

So a couple of days before Christmas, our pastor Michael asks if I could recap the year for our casual Christmas morning service. I presented the following as a “Meditation” called laughing all the way. This is a much shorter version than the original. I also presented it in my pajamas and
bathrobe, but that’s another story.

We had a great Christmas, and I hope you did as well.

Laughing all the Way.

Laughing All the Way

Our story begins and ends in the same place, in a swirl of frantic chaos. Like so many great stories throughout history, our story begins and ends at Wal-Mart. It was cold and late. Nancy and I had both been in bed in our pajamas ten minutes earlier, but now we were both running across a nearly empty parking lot towards the main entrance of Wal-Mart hoping to get in before the store closed.

Nancy hadn’t been feeling well earlier that day, and just as we were settling down to go to bed, I half jokingly suggested that she should take a pregnancy test. It’s amazing how much fuss can be stirred up over a little blue line.

It was obvious that neither of us was going to sleep that night anyway,and being rational creatures, we wanted to make sure that our experiment was reproducible (No pun intended), so we threw on some shoes and sped to Wal-mart and searched frantically for pregnancy tests. Pregnancy tests don’t come cheap, but it’s not the sort of thing you want to leave up to the “Sam’s choice” brand. With less than five minutes until the store closed, we bought three different brands of pregnancy tests…..all yielded the same results. We were going to have a baby.

Nancy and I relished our secret for weeks. We waited until we went down to Florida for Christmas to tell our folks. We revealed our good news to our family by giving framed ultrasound pictures as Christmas presents. Our nieces were sleeping in their rooms when Santa delivered their presents last year. I had never been a grown up at a house when Santa came, and although it was very cool to see Santa deliver the presents, it was the next morning when the girls woke up that I knew that this parenting thing definitely had some cool perks. 2 ½ year-old Cassidy was hard to wake up, but when she did, she knew something was different mabout that particular morning.

Our time in Florida last year was short and sweet. When we returned to North Carolina, we became a little overwhelmed, and decided that the time had come to get our friends involved. We leaked our news slowly at first to just a few close friends, but after a few days, it was no longer a secret.

Nancy and I planned and dreamed for months. We puzzled over names. We wanted a name that would be unique and would have some deep meaning. There were lots of great names we had thought of, but were already taken by close friends or family. For example, Zach, Duncan, Paul, Elijah, and Jacob were all in the running at one time or another. We puzzled over it for a long time, when it hit me. Isaac would be his name. I thought about how important having a sense of humor is to Nancy and I, and about how if you can still laugh, then all is not lost, and if you can make someone else laugh, you’ll have a friend. Isaac means laughter, or one who laughs. This of course comes from the old testament story about a Rabbi, a priest, and Strom Thurmond going into a bar and….no wait wrong story. Abraham and Sarah both laughed when told they would have a son, so they named him Isaac.

In the spring, Nancy was finishing up her school year, and we were both being bombarded with advice. Some of the advice was practical. “Start an account for college now.” Some of it was sweet “Enjoy every minute, because he will change so fast.” Some of it was kind of creepy, “Isaac….well that’s a real ‘Jew’ name isn’t it?”. And then there was thepervasive and ominous “This is going to change your lives so much.” We knew it would change our lives, but we weren’t sure how, or what we would miss, or how it would change our relationship with each other.

I finally decided that the two of us are a little more mellow than most people, we have a really strong marriage, and that parenthood was going to be what we made of it. Nancy studied parenting books then summed up the contents for me while I tried to play X-box. No amount of studying however prepared us for the baby showers.

People joke about new parents walking around in a daze. My daze began at our first baby shower. I was overwhelmed by how generous and loving everyone was. Presents and cards poured in, and Nancy, being the efficient manager, kept mental notes of what she had, and where everything would go. She even had the foresight to make sure she kept track of every Target gift card, and never let me leave her sight with one, for fear of me coming home with a Playstation 2….. you know…for the baby.

The night before Nancy was induced, Marnie, Daniel, Nancy, and I all went to dinner at Liberty Oak. We talked for a long time, and I realized that within 24 hours, I was going to be responsible for another helpless human being. I thought of the other fathers I knew. I didn’t have the book smarts like Michael, I wasn’t as easy going as Jeff, I wasn’t as introspective as Mark. I thought of my own father, and how he must have felt the night before I was born. He didn’t know what he was doing, but thanks to his guiding hand and lenient judges, I never went to jail.

The morning of Isaac’s birth, felt like we were going on a vacation somewhere. We had our bags packed, we had a long strange trip ahead of us, but once we arrived we were going to have a celebration and the adventure of our lives. Right after Marnie and Daniel delivered lunch, the pain began. Nancy had wanted to experience some of the pain of childbirth partly to test her mettle, and partly to connect to mothers throughout history. She was strong and brave for several hours, but eventually decided that it was time for drugs.

While the epidural was being placed, the baby’s heart rate dropped significantly. Before either of us noticed it on the monitor, the room filled with nurses, and doctors pushing drugs, starting oxygen, and attaching new monitors to Nancy. The flurry of activity quickly subsided when Isaac’s heart rate returned to normal. Nancy and I knew that it wouldn’t be long and we would have our new son.

Several hours later, in the middle of one of Nancy’s pushes, I caught a glimpse of a tiny head covered in thick, wavy black hair, and my heart jumped out of my chest and filled the room. I was counting out loud to help Nancy know how long to push, and I could hear my own voice tremble on the edge of weeping for joy. Nancy pushed and strained four another 30 minutes, and Isaac finally made his appearance. Nancy, Isaac, and Iheld each other and cried for a few holy minutes. I played the song “What a Wonderful World” for him on a little C.D. player in the room.

The next few days were a blur of visitors, food, family, and a particularly memorable “First Head Butt” courtesy of Adam Sasser. I don’t think we went 24 hours without at least one meal showing up at our door courtesy of the good folks at College Park Baptist Church.

Nancy and I slowly figured out routines of feeding, sleeping, and bathing. We were feeling pretty confident about our primary parenting skills by the time I had to go to New York City for my best friend’s wedding. I met up with my friend in Brooklyn and hit it off famously with his fiancée and her family. We were laughing and telling stories on our way to dinner at a little Italian restaurant in Brooklyn when my cell phone rang. It was Michael. He told me he had some bad news. Andrew Russoli had been killed in Iraq. I calmly told my new friends to go on ahead to the restaurant, and that I’d catch up. As soon as they were out of sight. I sat down on the street corner and cried. I hadn’t felt so alone in a long time. I thought of my own son and wife and how desperately I wanted to see them and hold them while I sat sobbing in shock. I called Nancy and told her the news, and we cried together.

Isaac came with us to Andrew’s funeral, and he was a bittersweet bridge between Roland and Sally and Nancy and I . I now know what it is like to love my own child, and I’m frightened by the suffering and devastation that I would feel if I ever lost him.

Our pain and shock slowly dulled as the nights grew colder, and before long, the Christmas trees came out of the closet, and Advent promised us that light was coming to defeat our darkness.

We drove down to Florida to spend some time with family and get Isaac a couple of theme parks under his belt. We arrived in Gainesville the weekend of “Bethlehem Live”, an annual recreation of Bethlehem in the parking lot of one of the big Baptist churches just outside of town. We waited in line with our parents to take the tour. All of the costumed residents of “Bethlehem” were excited because they had heard a rumor that the Messiah had been born that night in their town. We sat on wooden benches and watched as three shepherds ran into the barn with Mary and Joseph and told them about the miracle they had seen while the “Hallelujah” Chorus blared from a C.D. player hidden just under the hay. They stood around and looked at each other for a while, and then herded us out, so the next group could come through.

Something about the whole “Bethlehem Live” concept just didn’t sit right with me. It wasn’t that most of the residents greeted us with a twangy “Shalom yall”. It was something bigger.

In my version of the Christmas story, no one in Bethlehem knows who Mary or Joseph is. My version of the story doesn’t have a smiling, well rested Mary. My version of the stable isn’t a clean barn smelling of fresh hay and smiling happy animals. After seeing childbirth with my own eyes, my version of the Christmas story is very different from the Nativity scenes you can buy in the department stores.

In my version, you have two very tired people who have traveled a long way and are in a strange place. I see a very scared young Mary trying to deliver a baby with just Joseph to help. I imagine the pain of the childbirth. I imagine the smell of the animals. I imagine the fear of having strange shepherds wander in after all is said and done claiming to be sent by God. In my version of the Christmas story there is chaos and bad smells and blood and tears, but in the middle of the storm is a
perfect baby.

The miracle is that God is down in the dirt with us, but to be in the presence of God is to be at peace with the storm.

Wednesday night, I watched the reflection of dancing candles in Isaac’s eyes as we sang Silent Night, and I thanked God for my gift. I see everything with new eyes now.

Last night, Isaac participated in one of our family traditions. On Christmas Eve, amidst the noise and chaos, Nancy and I go to Wal-Mart with twenty dollars each to buy gifts for each other. We do it to experience some of the frenzy without being overwhelmed by it. This year, Isaac and I went and watched the storm together. He was riding in, his baby carrier on my chest. As I watched him marvel at the sites, I thanked God for being in the middle of our storm….even at Wal-mart.

Strength and Honor.

Big Matt