Abigail's Birth

Our second child, Abigail, was born when we were in Harlingen, Texas. I was a Chaplain resident in Clinical Pastoral Education while concurrently serving as a chaplain at ValleyBaptistMedicalCenter. The pregnancy was normal and well going into the delivery. We planned the delivery date because Deanna had to have a C-section.

For years I had wanted to have a family with lots of children: somewhere between six and twelve - and then, I had a child. I never imagined how much work one little child could be. So, we decided that Abigail would be our last child. This being our second child, I was more interested in the operation than the miracle of birth. So, after Abigail was pulled out of the womb, I became fascinated with the procedure that would keep Deanna from getting pregnant again.

The doctor was pointing out things about my wife’s anatomy and explaining what he was doing when a nurse came and asked me if I could come out with her to the other room. I was thinking that this had something to do with my role as a chaplain in the hospital. When I walked into the room they started talking to me about Abigail. It was not really sinking in with me that there was a problem until the neonatal specialist walked in and was only there a couple of seconds when she said something and the next thing I know, they are running down the hall with my new baby girl and I am chasing them.

When they got into the neonatal unit, they asked me to go to the other room but I wouldn’t go.After all, I was a chaplain in the hospital and was used to being present for all sorts of emergencies. They threatened to have security remove me when my boss showed up and took me by the arm into the waiting room. He explained that my presence would make the doctors nervous and I would want them to be at their best while they were caring for my child. They were in the process of intubation. Intubation is “a process where they put a tube through the vocal cords and into the windpipe of a patient in order to provide a patient’s lungs with oxygen.”

So, I did what fathers and parents all over the world do: I waited in the waiting room praying and waiting. Although I was praying, it was much later that day before I called to ask others to pray. Things were happening too fast for me to process and I was still in too much shock to grasp the significance of all that was going on.

Abigail was born with Hyland Membrane disease. Disease is really a misnomer here. Condition would be a better why to explain what my little girl had. It is where a full term baby is born with immature lungs. The treatment for Hyland Membrane disease had only been out for a few years when Abigail was born. In fact, before this treatment almost all children born with this condition died. As if this wasn’t enough, she also had pneumonia and a hole in her heart. Of course, it took a while to discover all this stuff so the first three weeks of her life were spent in the neonatal unit.

Deanna was in recovery and would not discover what was going on for quite a while. I was so wrapped up with Abigail that I did not go to see Deanna and fill her in. When I did go by to see her they had her so drugged up that she really was not with it. It was a the next day before Deanna was able to even see the baby.

They wouldn’t let us touch Abigail because we were over stimulating her with our touch and she was fighting the medicine. Abigail was 9 lbs 4 oz. when born and was quite the fighter. They needed her to be still and sleeping to give her body time to recover, so they put her in a drug-induced coma. They could not tell us what the long term effects of this would be or what the affect of being intubated for so long would be. It was a hard time for us. They didn’t know what to do with us because we always wanted to be there with our baby. We also wanted them to explain everything that they were doing and at least one of the nurses did not want to explain stuff to us. We were not going to be dissuaded from knowing everything we could learn. I guess we were not the norm in this neonatal unit. Many of the patients in here had parents who were actually from Mexico, so they couldn’t stay in the States with their baby, or some of the babies were born addicted to drugs and had parents who didn’t want to be there for them. However, we are so thankful to God for the amazing doctors and nurses of the Valley Baptist Medical Center!If it had not been for their quick, proficient diagnosis and professional care of our daughter, she would not be with us today.

Thirteen years later you wouldn’t know that my daughter ever was on the brink of death moments after coming into this world. She is a beautiful, talented, strong, healthy, vibrant, young woman. I am so proud to call her my daughter.

Timing is an amazing thing. If Abigail had been born in a hospital that did not have a neonatal unit or one with a less efficient staff, she would at best have brain damage from lack of oxygen but probably would not have lived. But God in his infinite wisdom decided that this miracle child would live. This bright intelligent child - I cannot help but think that God has very big plans for her and her life.

“I know my plans for you, says the Lord . . .

Under the Piano

My mother is such a good pianist.  She can play anything and she can do it so amazingly well.  I’ve always been proud to be her son for so many reasons and one of these many reasons is her mastery of the piano.  If fact, some of my fondest memories are under the piano.  It was under the piano that I first heard Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, Chopin, and Bach.

Probably the most moving of these experiences was the hymns.  I don’t know if it was my connection or my mom’s connection with God.  Maybe it was both of these.  You see music truly is the language of the soul and when you put words with the music it adds a new dimension to what the music means to you.  How can you not be moved by words like, “just as I am without one plea but that Thy blood was shed for me . . . ?”  The God of the universe loved a sorry messed up person like me so much that He gave His only precious Son so that He could have me safe with Him and He takes me just as I am.  I don’t have to change before He will take me.  Once I surrender to Him, He will change me from the inside out - just like He fashioned me in my mother’s womb so He fashions me from inside my heart to make me more like Him.

“Amazing grace how sweat the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”  Oh how much I see since accepting God and His gift for me.  It was in my parents that I first saw the truth of God.  They are living testaments of what it means to be Christian.

One of the ways that this was manifested to me was through my mom’s dedication during the early years of her lupus.  It wasn’t just that she would continue to play in church when she did not feel like doing it but that she would do it with such emotion and love.  I knew that she was hurting but on her face shone the smile of Jesus and in her eyes was the love of God and through her hands was found the power of the Holy Spirit.

Some memories are stronger than others but few are as sweet as those I found under the piano.  So, when times get hard mom and her piano make for wonderful encouragement. 

“Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.”

-Philippians 2:1 & 2

Moving to Harlingen

Graduation from seminary in the spring of 1995 was a welcome relief from what Deanna and I called the valley of the shadow of death.  The seminary years were hard years.  The whole culture of Texas is so different from what we knew in New Mexico.  It was a hard adjustment.  Both of us liked Fort Worth and we even liked the seminary.  It was the Christian people that we had a hard time with.  So many hard things happened in that last year of school:  losing a church job (they asked me to leave – but that is another story for another time), financial problems (another long story – one I probably will not tell), rejection from another church opportunity in Oklahoma, and deep depression.

One of my professors suggested that I do a year of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education).  He thought it would help me get a grip on who I was and find my niche in ministry.  He had a friend in Harlingen, Texas who was a supervisor in CPE so he recommend me to his friend.

It is not the easiest program to get into, but they called me for an interview and I traveled down to Harlingen with Deanna.  Harlingen is way down at the bottom tip of Texas.  It is not the furthest south that you can travel and still be in Texas but it is close.  I was scared about what I would do if they didn’t hire me and I was scared about where we would live if they did hire me because it cost a fortune to live in Harlingen due to all the winter Texans.  Winter Texans are people who spend the winter months in south Texas and the summer months in northern states.

The interview went well and I was accepted into the program and hired as a full time chaplain at the hospital.  We looked around at places to live but the only places that we could afford were dumps.  We kept hanging on to the promise that He would provide.  So we prayed but we did not know what we would do.

Dad had asked me to check in with his old friend Dr. Rivera at the Valley Baptist Academy but I was anxious to get back up to Waco where we had left my one year old son, Kenneth, with my sister Audrey.  I didn’t like being away from my son.  So, we had decided that we would just take off and head back to Waco.  However, dad called before we left Harlingen and asked if we had gone by to see Dr. Rivera.  We said no and he told me that I really needed to go see him, that he might have a place that we could rent for not to much.

Dad seemed kinda forceful here, so off we went to see his friend.  It turned out that he had an unexpected opening in the girl’s dorm director position just the day before we got there and school was starting in two weeks.  Doctor Rivera was asking Deanna all these questions and both of us thought it was kinda strange until we figured out he was actually trying to see if she would be interested in the job.

So on the same day that I was hired as a chaplain for the Valley Baptist Medical Center, Deanna was hired as the girl’s dorm director for the Valley Baptist Academy.  This had some unexpected benefits for us.  For example,  we had to live in an apartment in the girl’s dorm so we did not have to pay utilities or rent.  We were required to eat with the girls in the school cafeteria so we didn’t have to buy groceries.  And Deanna received a $1000.00 a month.  What a deal!  Both of us grow close to the girls and we felt as if they were our own children. The girls loved our son Kenneth and everyone on campus watched out for him when he was out playing.   Even today we are in contact with many of them on Facebook and through the mail.

Our life was so blessed while living in Harlingen.  I learned so much about ministry and thoroughly enjoyed working with people in the hospital as a chaplain.  My CPE supervisor, John Teer, was one of the greatest influences of my life.  He taught me and blessed me more than I can express.  He helped me through one of the darkest times in my life and helped me to see the light again.

I overcame my depression and learned coping mechanisms for dealing with difficult situations.  And right before we moved away my daughter was born.  Her birth and the trauma that went with it are another story that I will share soon but for now I will say that in the dreaded state of Texas, God gave me two of the greatest gifts that I have ever been given:  my son Kenneth, and my daughter Abigail.

I praise God for his provisions for us.  God knows the plans He has for us and they are plans for welfare and not calamity plans to give us a future and a hope.  –Jeremiah 29:11  I am so glad that He does and He did. J

 

Finding a Good Thing

Since third grade I have wanted three things in life: to get married, have children and be a minister.  The ministry part was easy.  I started preaching when I was fifteen and have been preaching ever since.  I was ordained in January of 1988 in Las Cruces, New Mexico when I was twenty-four years old.  The having children part needed to wait on getting married but the getting married part was hard.

If I had been less picky or the girls had been more willing then I might have been married much sooner.  The truth is that I was obsessed with getting married.  It was all I thought about.

It was my parents fault really.  They had such a perfect marriage that I wanted to have the same thing.  Of course I couldn’t marry my mom so it narrowed the field a lot.  There just weren’t a lot of girls like mom.  The problem with looking for someone like mom is that I was not really like dad so it follows that I needed someone uniquely qualified for me because, like everyone else in the world, I am unique.

So I dated different girls looking for the right one.  I thought I found her several times.  I even asked three of them to marry me and one of them even said yes but it was not to be.

After what seemed like an eternity of looking I got a new roommate: Gary Boney.  Gary was several years older than me and a bachelor.  He had never been married.  Not that he was against the idea.  He had just never found the right one.  He started taking me places and doing things with me - all of the sudden I was enjoying the single life and was no longer actively looking for that one special one that would be my wife.  For the first time in my life I was really happy in my present state.

It was during this happy time that Deanna came into my life.  I saw her every where all the time.  I had no idea at the time that she had planned all this.  We had been married for years before I realized that she plans everything and that our meeting was no surprise.

At this time I was the assistant director of the Baptist Student Union.  David Englehart, the director, had given me the assignment of visiting all these girl prospects on campus.  So, I needed a girl to go with me to do the visiting.  Guess who volunteered?  You got it, Deanna.  We spent hours together visiting girls in dorm rooms and other places on campus.  She also seemed to be with me whenever I went to eat in the cafeteria.  I was working with her cousin in evangelism training and we seemed to run into her all the time.  Years later I learned that she would ask my cousin when and where we would be going.  She was a true planner.

I picked her as the girl to go with me because I didn’t think I would be interested in her.  She was shy and quiet and all the girls that I had dated had been outgoing and leaders.  When we were together, she seldom said much but the thing that won my heart was what she said to the girls that we were visiting.  She said things that showed a depth of spiritual maturity and understanding that I had not found in other girls that I had dated.  As we spent more and more time together I began to grow a respect and love for her.

We never dated.  I was not allowed to date students so we went to group things and sometimes she would go with me to Hachita where I was the pastor of a small country church.  But in time I had to admit to David that I had grown to love her and that I was going to ask her to marry me.

After meeting her family over Thanksgiving I began to plan to ask her.  We had had some discussions about marriage and what it entailed but I hadn’t asked her yet.  During the Christmas break my brother was going to get married and Deanna was going with me so that she could meet my family.  On the way we stopped at a rest area that overlooks the valley below and has a good view of the Jornada de Muerto (Journey of the Dead).

The early Spaniards traveled this way to the north and many of them lost their lives in the hot desert land.  In fact so many of them died that they called it, “Jornada de Muerto.”

When we got back in my little Mazda pickup, it would not start so I told her maybe it was the engine fuse.  (The real problem was that I had not pushed in the clutch so it wouldn’t start)  So, I got out, opened the hood, and began to look.  I asked her to get a little plastic bag out of my tool box that had my car fuses in it.  When she got it out and was bringing it to me she was thinking this jerk keeps his fuses in a ring box that he has from some other girl.

When she gave me the ziplock bag I took it and then I looked down at the valley told her:  “You know if we ever got married, sometimes it would be like that valley down there – lush and green – happy times - other times it would be like this desert - dry and difficult – hard times.  It would be a journey and it is a journey that I would like to share with you.  Will you marry me?”  Later that day I asked her dad if I could marry her.

Six month later we were married on May 19, 1990.  We have had the happy times and hard times but through it all my love and respect for Deanna has grown and I’m still amazed at her depth.

A man's greatest treasure is his wife-- she is a gift from the LORD.   (Proverbs 18:22)

 

 

Generosity

Yesterday, my son bought an X-box game for sixty-two dollars - only he doesn’t have an X-box.  When I asked him why he did this, he said that a young boy who sells papers had lost his X-box game while selling papers downtown, so he and some of the other teenagers went looking for this X-box game but could not find it.  So, he bought a new one for him.  Again, I asked him why and he said, “you should have seen this kid’s face when we couldn’t find his game.”

This is not the only example of our son’s generosity.  Once, when Kenneth was a young boy, Deanna and I were talking about our financial situation in the dining room and our son came in and said that he could help by giving us his allowance.  Another time a couple of years ago he and Abigail saved their paper route money to pay for a day at the water park in Denver.  They also paid for all of us and all of their cousin’s family to go.

Sometimes you can become rich by being generous or poor by being greedy. Generosity will be rewarded: Give a cup of water, and you will receive a cup of water in return.   (Proverbs 11:24-25)

I am amazed at the generosity of my son.  But I shouldn’t be – he is just like his Father.  No, not me - Kenneth is like his Heavenly Father – generous to a fault!

Father, help me to have a generous heart – help me to be more like my son and You.  Amen

The One Who Carried me

During my first year of college, in the spring of 1982, I went through a period of depression when I thought that it might be better to die than to go on living.  I remember walking up University Ave. to the bridge over I – 25.  For a long time I stood watching the traffic going under the bridge.

Most of my life I have struggled with looking inward and selfishly not looking outward.  This was no exception to that.  I could not understand what God wanted with me.  It was a long walk back to the Baptist Student Union.

When I got back to the BSU I sat alone in the large classroom there and began to write out my feelings on paper.  It took the shape of a kind of poem.

Sometimes in the deepest darkest valley
Where no light can be seen
And no hope can be found
When all seems lost
And nothing can be done
I find myself

At one time I saw from the Mountain top
This road that I now cannot see
I looked and I saw

But now who will show me the way
Who will take my hand and lead me

My friends don’t understand
And I to scared to try and let them know

They look at each other and say
Why doesn’t he smile

Oh if only I could tell them
If only I could bury my head in their shoulders
And cry my despair

But no – I’ll hold on,
Because I know they are tired of hearing
My complaints
And my whimpers.

And now . . . as my last smile fades slowly away . . . . . . . . . . .

What’s this?
A hand
A nail scared hand
A strong sturdy hand . . . . . .

And now
Now I can see the road again!

Yes, I guess I knew all along
That even when my closest friends
Couldn’t see my hurt and despair
That the One
The Precious
I Am
Would hold my hand


This was an amazing event in my life.  It was like a light came into that classroom and lightness filled my being.  When my focus moved from me to God I was strengthened and able to find peace of mind and soul.

When we look at the darkness around us we cannot find peace – everything is dark and empty - our way is lost and we do not see God.  But when we look at Jesus – when we look at the cross – when we see the empty tomb, then we are strengthened, encouraged, and we have direction and joy.  Jesus Christ can and does meet our needs but we have to look at Him and not ourselves to get it.

Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you
rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
-Matthew 11:28-30 HCSB

On the Other Side of the Road

Toward the end of my college days I was the pastor of Hachita Baptist Church, a small country church in the boothill of New Mexico. (1987 – 1990) The church was 120 miles from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces where I attended school. Often I would travel there on Fridays and spend Saturdays visiting people, than on Sundays I would travel back to school in the late afternoon or evenings.

One day about 4:30 pm when I was in a hurry to get back to Las Cruces to see a young lady, I noticed a car with people standing next to it on the other side of the interstate just as I was pulling onto the road. As soon as I saw these people I felt a tug in me to go help these people – I might have even heard a voice . . . But there was this young lady in Las Cruces and these people were going the other direction and surely someone going that way would stop and help them out. So began my arguments.

The further I traveled away from these people the more I felt that I should go back and help them. Yet the further away I got the more reason I had for not going back. After all, someone else would help them, so why should I? As I neared Deming, about forty miles from these people, my heart began to physically hurt me. I knew that I had to turn back. I believe that I could not have gone further away from these people even if I had tried to. I surrendered to the Holy Spirit’s leading.

When I arrived at the scene, they were still there. It was a mother and her son. It was a hot day – not unusual in the desert of Southwestern New Mexico. The mother looked dejected, parched, and devoid of emotion. I learned that the husband had started walking towards the next town in order to hire some help about an hour ago. I offered to carry them into Lordsburg and pick up her husband on the way.

As we traveled in my little Toyota pickup truck to Lordsburg, they began to tell me their story. The lady told me that they had been there all day and no one had stopped to help them even when they tried to wave someone down. The lady looked at her son and said, “see son - I told you if we just prayed that God would send someone to help us. We should have prayed this morning.”

The boy looked at his watch and than said to his mother, rather sarcastically, “mother we prayed at 4:30 - over an hour ago – when dad was still here. This has nothing to do with God. We just finally found a nice person”

I’m not sure the boy believed me when I shared my story with him but his mother was praising God, looking refreshed and excited - so was I. What a huge transformation in this mother. It reminded me of the familiar verse of scripture: “Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint.” -Isaiah 40:31 God is amazing!