I am so in awe. I know no other way to describe the last 4 days. My son, Judah Finn Thacker, was born at 8:37PM on Tuesday September 2nd, 2008. Wendi gave birth completely naturally at the Lisa Ross Birth Center here in Knoxville. She was so amazing. People say birthing is hard, movies make fun of it, but nothing can prepare you for it. All I can say is that God was pretty darn upset about the whole apple thing.

Wendi was in labor for 13 hours total; 2.5 of that was just pushing and that is a LOT of pushing. I can’t tell you how scary it is to see someone you love going through that kind of pain and not be able to do anything beyond saying “breathe, breathe”. I’m so proud of her. After all was said and done and Judah was there in her arms all was right with the world, but without God and without all the help we had in the room I think both of us would have been like “we can’t do this”. But we did do it, well, she did it.

He is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can sit and stare at him for hours. He’s just laying there sleeping, that’s all he does so far, sleep and eat, but man - that is some gorgeous sleep. He’s so perfect and little. 5 lbs. 11 oz. Last night he kept getting cold in his bassinet so he slept on my chest. It was great. I slept so peacefully. I didn’t move or turn or wake. When I woke up in the morning I was like ‘man my chest is heavy… oh, hi son’. He’s sleeping and eating great. He wakes up and looks around occasionally, not that his eyes really work like normal yet. I think I’ve read that they can basically see colors and high contrast edges but he’s testing them out well. He has the sweetest little cry when he’s hungry.

Jesus is an amazing creator. The orchestration of the human body and human recreation is just unbelievable. Judah spent the first 9 months of his life not breathing. He got all his oxygen through the blood that came through the umbilical cord. Then, all of a sudden, without any training he comes out into the open air and his body starts breathing like its been doing it for years. The way the human brain learns and how quickly it does so is so neat too. On Judah’s first day in the world his rooting/sucking instincts were all there and worked perfectly but when he would wake up in the middle of the night with an empty tummy and Wendi would put him to her breast he couldn’t stop crying to suck. The pathway just didn’t exist in his brain that said ’sucking on that breast will fix this pain in my tummy’. By the end of the second night though, he knew what was going on. He’d cry because he was hungry, his lips would hit that nipple and bam - he was sucking. I was just like wow!

I’ll write more later. There’s so much to say. I just wanted to get some of it down here to share. Keep up with his pretty face here.

I’ve struggled with making frequent updates here over the last couple of months because I feel as though a post needs to be a completed work. I feel like if I haven’t followed a thought all the way to a nice tidy little heart-warming, spirit-lifting conclusion then I ought not be posting it on the Internet. Unfortunately that doesn’t jive well with the busy schedule we’ve been keeping lately nor my inability to focus on writing when I actually have time to sit down and do it. So I’ve decided to branch out a little bit in the types of posts I make.

I’m going to continue to post the completed thoughts when I have them but also short little snippets of ideas. After all, I want this blog to reflect the real me and not some guy on the inside-back cover of a paperback in the Christian Self-Help section at Borders. “Fragmented and Inconspicuously Related Thoughts” would be a better section for my books (not that I’ve written any). If you’ve ever read “The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius” you’ll have a good idea of the format I’m going for. So without further ado…

Hypothetical question - If you wanted to keep your house from burning completely to the ground, how would you best use your fire-fighting resources: by fighting the enormous fire that’s already engulfed one-half of the house or fighting the cigarette that’s burning slowly in the ashtray on the porch?

Now a rhetorical question - If politicians and law-makers were really as concerned as they say they are with the “sanctity of marriage” wouldn’t they outlaw divorce before they worried about same-sex marriage?

We English speakers get very haughty about learning “our language” when the immigration debate rages but shy away when any discussion of semantics (the meanings of words) arises. Sadly, these meanings can have a profound effect on how we communicate, how we learn, and even how we live our lives. Semantics are important because they help us have a common starting point or primer so that when a speaker speaks or a writer writes the listener or reader “gets” the meaning the author had in mind. Sure, any piece of writing or speech is open to interpretation, but what the author had in mind is not open to interpretation. The author had a definite thought or feeling, which they felt drawn to convey and that’s why they wrote it down. In today’s culture of deifying pop singers we often hear “I wanted to leave the lyrics open to interpretation; each person will have their own meaning attached to the song” but, take it from a musician, that’s just a cop-out to avoid confessing the simple, mediocre meaning behind our “poetry”. For the majority of writers and speakers the need to open one’s mouth is less about art and more about conviction: conviction that these thoughts they think, these conclusions they’ve come to, really need to be available to other thinkers. In my thoughts: If people could just think of it this way, man, wouldn’t the world be a happier place!

Language is not mathematics (duh) There are rules but no definite laws, guidelines but no wrong answers, and methods but no formulas. Translating between languages doubles the troubles. To start with, a thinker effectively conveying his thoughts in his own language to other thinkers in the same language is hard (the reading thinker’s own pre-concieved thoughts will undoubtedly interfere with his understanding of the writing thinker’s thoughts). When you add the effect of a translator ( i.e. a thinker conveying his thoughts about how the original thinker’s thoughts should best be conveyed to thinkers, with their own thoughts, in another language) everything just gets muddy. The semantics of words changes over time and even at the same time depending on geographical location. Consider this verse from the King James Bible ” And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing” (James 2:3). Think of what that verse would mean to the average 14 year old. Think of what it would mean to a 60 year old. Now consider the understood meaning of the word “gay” in the days of good ole’ King James.

gay - (greek: lampros) 1. shinning, brilliant 2. splendid, magnificent

Do the thinker’s thoughts of 1611 still convey the original thinker’s thoughts to the thinkers of today?

I have to share how wonderfully Jesus has been working in my life lately. As I posted before, I was fired from my job recently, and one would rarely think of that as a blessing but I decided from the moment it happened that I would think of it no other way. I also mentioned that Wendi is pregnant, well we conceived the same week I lost my job (not sure if it was before or after). Here again, one would rarely think of being out of work with a baby on the way as a blessing but God knew what was going on and I decided to trust Him.

He has amazed me so many times and this was no different. He knew that if I had found out Wendi was pregnant before I lost my job I never would have left that job. I would have made up my mind to stay and support my family no matter how bad it got. I hated that job. It was killing my mental, physical and emotional health, I spent 55+ hours a week there and the company still expected more. So the Lord moved on my behalf.

I was scared to death when I found out Wendi was pregnant. We had no health insurance and the two of us were barely able to survive and pay our bills on her salary alone. How would we support a baby? How would we pay for the doctors, ultrasounds and the delivery? When we started looking for personal health insurance we found out that almost every company considers pregnancy a pre-existing condition, meaning you have to have had their insurance for 10 months before you get pregnant or they don’t pay a dime. Not that we could afford it anyway.

I searched for work for 3 months. I sent out 20 or 30 resumes, had at least 5 interviews and was almost sure I had the job one time. Everyone we knew was praying for us and finally through a friend of a friend of my mother I got an interview and a darn good recommendation to boot. Both the interviews went great. The people I met and interviewed with were friendly and seemed to enjoy their work which was something I was thrown by. I’d worked in a low morale situation for so long I didn’t know it could be any different. To top it off I found out through the interview that the company was more or less a Christian company. All the top execs and most everyone there are good Christian folks. The company’s Corporate Purpose is To be a conduit through which God can make Himself known to those whom we touch. I was floored when I read that. And they hired me!

The job is awesome! For the first time I’m doing what I do best, for a normal amount of hours, on salary, with a great company. And the benefits are out of this world. This company provides for their employees like no company I’ve ever seen. I have two weeks of vacation, a company credit card, dental insurance, a AAA membership, life insurance, long and short term disability, 401K, they even have a 25 cent Coke machine! The most amazing part about it is that my health insurance doesn’t consider pregnancy a pre-existing condition so Wendi and our baby are covered!

It is just so amazing to me how Jesus works in our lives to bring everything that happens to us, both the things that seem bad to us and the things that seem good to work out for us in ways we never imagined. He designed the last few months of my life to bring His name glory and at least in my eyes they’ve done just that! I praise Him for the incredible life He’s led me into and the incredible people He’s placed me with. Thank you all so much for praying and loving me and for being my brothers and sisters in Christ. I was just telling Wendi the other day how nothing on earth makes my heart swell and my eyes flood with tears more than finding out that someone I care about is part of the family of God. I’m so thankful for you!

Wow, I can’t believe how long its been since I have posted here. Things have been so busy lately!

Well the big news is that we’re gonna have a baby! Wendi is 3 months pregnant and the expected due date is Sept. 2. We went to the OB last Friday and I got to hear the baby’s heartbeat, it was so awesome!

I haven’t got the time right now for a real post (updating from my new job) but I wanted to share with everyone this really great thing that Wendi wrote recently.

Hey guys-
I wanted to share a quote from a Christian Blog that Matthew and I read on a regular basis. Right now, he is writing everyday on the death of the body and the life of the spirit and how Jesus’ death is/will be similar to ours. He is doing this for the Season of Lent as his Lenten sacrifice. I think this guy is pretty amazing. I wanted to share this cause it really stood out to me. You should go check him out sometime (http://beyondtherim.meisheid.com/)

“…As I look over my notes from church today, I remember the Gospel was on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. I made a point to remind myself that the devil did not arrive until the end of our Lord’s forty day fast. He was weak. His trial did not come in the midst of his strength, but at his moment of greatest weakness… As Paul reminds us in his second letter to the Corinthians, our
weakness is the perfect conduit for God’s strength to meet our need, if we will allow it. One avenue of God’s strength that is readily available to us is his Word. We should use it; often…” -Beyond the Rim (Christian Blog found here-
http://beyondtherim.meisheid.com/?p=911)

I have been thinking about this concept a lot lately. My body and mind have been under attack and I know that it is because of where I am spiritually. When I stray from church and stop reading God’s Word, when I focus on what I want and what I need and what God is not giving me, I begin to sink into this hole that I feel I cannot escape. I try and try of my own volition to right my course, but I am unable to do so. I am WEAK. It is in this weakness that Satan and his persuasive
demons attack me. They remind me of my sin until every thought is encompassed by my failure. I am bombarded with the guilt and shame that I have tried so hard to let go. The guilt and shame that sprouts from the sin that Jesus has already forgiven me of and forgotten as far as East is from West. I am completely and utterly beaten because all I can think about it how much I don’t deserve my life, my wonderful husband, my God’s Love, the amazing gifts that He bestows on
me and my family everyday. It as at this point, when I think all is lost, that I turn to my beautifully spiritual and wonderfully
supportive husband and confess my fears and anxieties. He prays for me. I pray for me. And then, as if that’s all Jesus was waiting for, He arrives and encircles me and heals me and wipes my fears away. Sounds simple, but that is how God shows me His strength. He hasn’t, as of yet, failed to come to my rescue when I plead with Him to
protect me.

Pretty cool that “our weakness is the perfect conduit for God’s strength to meet our need”. Now if only I could remember to go the Him in my need instead of waiting until I am broken. Why is it that we humans forget that we need help until we can no longer help ourselves? It is this flaw that makes me so grateful to have such a husband as Matthew. A husband who is never afraid to remind me why I am floundering and help me find my grip and keep going. Who is never afraid to accompany me on my journey-wherever and however long that journey may be. Who is somehow able to see through the fearful and angry words that fill my brain and escape my mouth when I am falling, and continuously reminds me that I don’t always feel this way and I won’t always feel this way. And then God blesses me/him/us and Matthew says to me, “Wendi, When is God good?” and I am able to say, “All the time”.

Grace and peace and perseverance be with you today, tomorrow, and forever. (beyondtherim)

– ~WBT

One of the joys of being a Christian is knowing that I don’t have to face my struggles alone. While it’s certainly true that “God is always with us” in a spiritual sense I’m talking about the more corporeal sense, one that I can see and touch and feel. The apostle Paul refers to the Church as the “body of Christ”¹ here on earth. In some ways that is the most real sense in which God is with us on a day to day basis. We can be most aware of God working out His plans by taking note of the “hands and feet” of Christ - our brother and sister believers. I’ve recently had first hand experience with just that.

Near the end of November of ‘07 I lost my job, well, lets be perfectly honest here, I was fired. I believe that my termination was unjust but then who wouldn’t so I’ll spare you the sob story. Besides, being fired was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I have witnessed first hand the awesome power of the earthly body of Jesus. Since I’ve lost my job I have had countless people praying and networking and calling in favors to help me find a job. My wife, my parents, my in-laws, my friends, my family’s friends, my family’s friends’ friends, my friends’ family, previous co-workers, previous bosses, even my wife’s boss have all been chipping in to help in my job search!

I am so thankful to all of you who have been helping me through this time! Your prayers and connections have been invaluable and so uplifting. I am so glad to have a Lord and Saviour in Jesus who empowers His earthly body to move in such glorious ways for little ol’ me! I’m especially thankful that so many of my loved ones can be counted in that number when the saints go marching in!

Every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. - Philip Pullman

At one point in my life I have to admit, I felt the same way. It wasn’t however, because of any real time I had spent in a church but rather because of what I’d witnessed of “church-goers” outside the church walls. You can’t read a newspaper, listen to talk radio, watch the evening news or even an hour of primetime drama without a story about a church (with a little “c”) trying to get their beliefs made into law. Usually it’s the churches whose beliefs are all denials like no gay marriage, no abortions, no evolutionary theory, no sex-education except abstinence education, no alcohol, no violent movies, no video games, no gambling, etc. Jesus isn’t about denial (not to say that He necessarily condones any of the above activities). His big “C” Church isn’t about that denial either.

Humans are about that.

I think almost every one of us has said (or at least thought) “if everyone would just do it this way, the way I do it, they would see its so much easier”. Truth is, we think that way about almost everything in life. We think “I’m here, I’m doing alright, but these other people are just doing it all wrong.” Do you know what a church is? Not Jesus’ Church with a capitol “C”, but a little “c” church? A church is just a group of people who, for the most part, agree on how everyone else should do it. Unbelievers get a negative impression of churches because they are most often exposed to churches who don’t understand their own limited points of view. Let’s look at an example.

Christian Scientists believe almost exclusively in healing illness with prayer, in other words trusting God to do the work. On the other hand, most of the protestant denominations in the US believe in the healing abilities of modern medicine. There is truth in both these view points. Experiment after experiment has shown that modern medicines help a person heal from an illness faster and recover from more severe illness than he would have without. At the same time, every person who claims to be a follower of Christ must accept that there is real truth in the Christian Scientists’ view point; that “all things are possible with God”¹, that He can do more for our sickness than any medicine could hope to.

We as members of little “c” churches and the big “C” Church have to remember that we are called to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to unbelievers not legislate their morality. If we feel that avoiding alcohol and wearing floor-length skirts is appropriate and that helps us avoid sin then excellent! That doesn’t mean that alcohol or shorts causes sin! What is right from our point of view may not be right from every other point of view.² The unbeliever’s understanding or misunderstanding begins with the impression,the witness we give. We must be witnesses of the acceptance and love of Jesus!

The unbeliever is like a blindfolded man in a gourmet kitchen digging through the trash for something to eat. He has no idea what glorious foods he’s a few steps from because he can’t see! Occasionally he stumbles upon a bite of something pretty good that’s been thrown out. As Christians should we be smacking few good bites of trash from his hands and leaving him hungry or trying to untie his blindfold?

Sometimes all you can do is breathe in, breathe out… no matter what else happens, keep doing that just as long as you can.

It has come to my attention that this website does not display correctly for those of you reading from Internet Explorer. I use a mac so I never noticed. I’m working on it but bare with me.

UPDATE: Haha, now Firefox isn’t displaying properly…

UPDATE 2: I think I’ve got it sorted out. Anyone notice anything out of place?

Let’s start with a simple truth: You were made for intimacy¹.

What does it mean to be intimate? A dictionary will give you several definitions: close personal relations, very private, warmly cozy, detailed, deep, inmost, characteristic of the inmost or essential nature, et cetera. In its most basic sense intimacy means to have union - oneness - with another being. Intimacy means to know and be known. Intimacy means to show and be shown. To touch and be touched. To love and be loved. To trust and be trusted.

Is intimacy sex? YES, but not only.

Is intimacy secrets? YES, but much more.

Is intimacy laughter? YES, but with joy and not phony.

Is intimacy love? YES, but it’s the action, not the feeling.

We have to look only as far as our senses to be sure of the purpose in our design. Of course, our senses serve such practical purposes for our survival that they could be said to have come about from a purely evolutionary process, that their selection was simply natural, but that doesn’t explain the emotion, the beauty, the power that’s in them. Touch is an excellent tool for awareness and manipulation of the world around us, but to touch another person - to be touched by a woman - there is real power in that kind of touch. Hearing is another amazingly practical sense to have in a biological/survival sense. Our ears give us an incredible 360° of cognizance. But when it comes to being human, it’s the beauty of sound that distinguishes us from other animals. The sound of voices, music, and laughter bring us together. A gentle whisper brings us close; makes us feel comfort, safety, and joy. Communication affirms my existence and confirms that I’m not alone.

Sight, well, sight deserves its own paragraph. The wondrous beauty of creation is sometimes more than my eyes can handle. I can surf NASA.com, clicking through pictures of the heavens for hours. Seeing conveys more information between people than all the other senses combined. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is very near an understatement. The feeling that accompanies the sight of beauty is almost indescribable. Awe; an unfathomable glow; a deep vibration of the heart strings; these are meager attempts to describe the emotions that accompany beauty. At times it feels like my heart is just going to swell right up and burst out of my chest!

The sight of a woman… if sight deserves its own paragraph, the sight of a woman deserves its own book! John Eldridge uses a little artistic license in quoting William Blake’s poem Proverbs of Hell and describes it thusly:

The naked woman’s body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.

And right he is. It is no wonder that pornography holds such power over men. The beauty of the woman was created for man’s eye. She was made last of all creation and made with one specific purpose: to be the companion of man. Pornography gives men easy access to the glorious beauty of the female form with none of the associated cost. But the cost is what brings the intimacy! The price is in the devotion, the trust, the security of a commitment that goes beyond sentimentality; these things create the connection. These things create the intimacy that we were made for. There is a certain piece of logic that we, as consumers, know all too well: You can’t trust something that comes cheap. Yet we fail to see its connection to the world of relationships. I’d be a fool to buy a car for $100 and expect it to crank on a cold winter’s morning. Just the same, I’d be a fool to trust a woman who gives her most intimate physical essence away without a commitment. Aren’t you much more apt to protect and care for those things that cost you dearly? You wouldn’t leave your 50″ plasma TV out in the rain and your less likely to take your wife for granted if you had to fight for her love!

It’s that fight that makes us men. Men struggle, men sacrifice, men commit and only then comes intimacy. Boys give up, boys take, boys use women like toys then toss them aside when a newer version comes along. Boys desperately want intimacy but are unwilling to give it, to sacrifice for it, to surrender to it. That’s what love is, that’s what trust is, that is what intimacy is; surrender. To become intimate, to become that which we were made for we have to surrender our most precious secrets, our weakness, our dreams, our lives. We have to say “Here I am. No pretense. No masks. No make-believe worth. This is not where I work, this is not where I live, this is not my car, or my wallet, or my friends, this is what I am and I surrender it to you. I trust you with it.”

That is intimacy.

That is written on hearts like stereo instructions.

That is what we are all striving to achieve, no matter how round-about our methods.

That is what we were made for.