Brandon Gilbert

This is the third excerpt I have posted from my upcoming book, “Changing the Diaper of Our Soul.” The first excerpt is When Your Kids Hurt, You Hurt More. The second excerpt is Changing the Diaper of Our Soul.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”
- Matthew 6:25-27 (English Standard Version)

There were times when my son was younger that he needed his pacifier in order to relax and fall asleep. To be more accurate, his mommy and I needed for him to have his pacifier in order to relax and fall asleep. Those first few months as a parent, every second of sleep is worth much more than Gold. He wasn’t actually a fan of the pacifier. From the time he was just a few days old, he would take his hands and fling it out of his mouth whenever we tried to give it to him. It was quite a paradox: No matter how much he was comforted by it, he still wanted it to go away.

On the other hand, for our sanity, we had to get some sleep. This meant we had to find a way to get him to keep the pacifier in. We learned that while we couldn’t make him keep it in, we could keep putting it back in until he fell asleep. This created another problem, because once he saw us coming to put it back in, he got excited and made it that much harder for us to get him to sleep. Our final solution was to face him away from the door to his bedroom and then when he spit out the pacifier, we could sneak in and put it back into his mouth without him seeing us. You could even see a perplexed look on his face as he realized the pacifier was back, brought to him by an unseen hand.

We know the things he needs even though he is unaware. We know when it’s too hot or too cold for him. We know when he should be hungry or when he needs to be changed. We meet his needs, and he doesn’t even know that he has had a need for the most part. If he’s hungry or has a dirty diaper, he knows something is off  and he’s uncomfortable, but he doesn’t know the solution or how to get there.

The same can be said for our relationship with God. God has plans for us. God knows where we need to be and how we need to get there. His plan is perfect. The hardest part about God’s perfect plan is that,  from my own personal experience, His time line rarely meets with our own expectations. I suppose it’s hard to be in a rush when you’ve existed forever, and will continue to do so. God knows all variables for our lives, and why certain things have to happen and when they have to happen.

This is a truth that I must face and have faith in everyday. I am currently unemployed, having been laid off from a job I loved. I was in a situation I was sure God wanted me to be in. God has now closed that door.  I am searching for the next one that’s going to open. I am blessed that God continues to provide our needs, which is what he promises to do, but I struggle with the “wants” as well. My current situation is definitely not the situation I want to be in. I would love to be going to work every day and be able to let my wife stay home with our son, because that is what she wants to do.

The hardest lesson to remember is that we’re not promised our wants. This is actually fantastic news for all of us. Think back to when you were entering your “formative years.” I think back to all the prayers I tossed at God when I was younger. If God had answered every prayer that I had while growing up, I would be an Architect-Archaeologist living in Australia. My wife would be a girl that I haven’t even seen since I was in elementary school. We would have 2 kids, a girl and a boy, who were born as twins. I would  play Pro Football in my spare time as I spent my main energies perfecting my abilities of invisibility and the power to stop time.

While I’m sure to some people that doesn’t sound like a terrible life to have, it’s not the life I was meant to live. God knows what we need and when we need it. God knows when he has to say no. The things we want are usually things that we will use to fill the hole in our lives that He is actually supposed to fill. The things we want are usually things that will only serve to pacify.

I’ve written quite a bit a bit about the dreams of my son and what infants could possibly have to dream about. I’ve written about the Sweet Dreams, and the Nightmares. But what about the parent dreams? Parents have recurring dreams about their children. They sometimes dream that:

They lose their child.
They forget they have a child.
Their child is on a cliff, and they can’t get to them.

OR…If they’re like my wife, they dream that their child (who is completely physically incapable) has climbed out of the crib and walked into the bedroom and is now slowly stalking us in our sleep, not unlike a certain demonic doll from cheesy 80’s movies.

Last night I had a dream. It wasn’t about my son, it was about football. More specifically, it was about my high school football team and my role on that team. Nevermind that my high school no longer exists. Nevermind that I had not been back there since 2000. Nevermind that the last year I played was 1997. No, the only thing that matters is that on the night of March 28, 2010, I was back on the team at T.W. Martin High School. It was the first game of the season and we were playing our arch rival, who, in my dream was some team in University of Wyoming yellow and brown. It was a very important game and our whole season was apparently riding on that night. In practice, our coach kept telling us how important it was for us to do our job so that we could win the game. That was basically all the instruction he gave…”Do your job.”

I was so pumped up to be playing again (in my dream, I realized that I was 13 years removed from playing football), and I was excited that I was going to “do my job” and we were going to win the game and be champs (even though it was the first game of the season). I decided to rest before the big game so that I would have all my strength to be able to “do my job.” So, I went into the field house and took a nap.

The next thing I know is that I’m being awakened by the sound of cleats on the concrete floor of the field house. I jump up, realizing everyone is ready…but then it hits me, they’re coming back into the field house. The game was over. I kept asking, “why didn’t you wake me up? I didn’t hear anyone wake me up so I could “do my job.” I was told that they didn’t need me to “do my job” after all, and that they won the game anyway. I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved. Then I woke up (for real).

Immediately upon waking, I realized the meaning of the dream, and it was almost a literal allegory for last night. Before bed, Jamie informed me that she wanted to try to keep Ryne from waking up for night feedings because he should be growing out of that by now. Her plan was to have me go in and calm him back down and get him back to sleep if he woke up. I needed to do it, because if she went in there, he would automatically assume food was on the way and he would pitch a fit until he got some milk.

So I went to bed thinking to myself that I needed to make sure to get up if I heard him crying and settle him back down. I had to psych myself up for this because I didn’t want to sleep through it, or have Jamie forget that she wanted me to go calm him down and just do it herself. So I reminded myself as I was falling sleep to “do my job.”

Then morning came. At 6:30, I woke up in a panic. I knew I had not gotten out of bed, and I had not heard him crying. So I asked Jamie what time he had woken up. And…he hadn’t. He slept right through the night. I had not needed to “do my job,” and we had a victory. It is super scary that my subconscious was playing all this out so vividly in my dream. I have other dreams that are very weird…but they almost make no sense at all in relation to anything else. I will share those at another time. Do you have any recurring dreams or just weird dreams in general? Please share by leaving a comment at the top of this post!

I’ve had a pretty good grasp on the English language for many years now. I’ve been through17 years of school and at least a thousand church services. I’ve attended dozens of seminars and spoken on the phone with people all over the U.S. and Canada. I’ve watched way more TV than I should and listened to waaaaay too much talk radio. With all that I’ve heard in my lifetime, the sweetest and best words have only come within the last several weeks. That’s when my little fella decided he wanted to say “Dada.”

I was thrilled when he started making the noise, but I knew it was just that: a noise. Then one day it just clicked for him and he looked up at me and pointed and said it. My heart flooded with joy because I knew that he knew who I was. At the same time, he learned “Mama” as well. He also learned “Nana,” which is what both his grandmothers go by.

He also learned really quickly that we really responded when he called us by our name. Now when he’s hungry or has a dirty diaper he doesn’t just start crying, he puts a parent’s name with it. He cries out DaaaaaaaDaaaaa….which is slowly becoming Daaaadddyyyyy. Or he cries out, Mommmmmmaaaaaaa. It’s fun to listen to him when we lay him down for a nap or to go to bed at night if he’s not particularly sleepy. He cries out, “Daaaaadddyyy.” No response from us, so then he yells “Mommmmaaaaa.” When he still gets no response, he even gives “Nannnnnnnaaaaa” a shot. I find this to be quite humorous since neither Nana lives close. It’s like somewhere deep down he just knows that one of his Nanas would pick him up and give him all the attention he wants at that moment. Is that in our DNA? It sure seems that way, because that seems early in life to learn that lesson.

Speaking of parental manipulation, He’s got it all figured out. He knows that with me if he’s hungry or has a dirty diaper or gets sleepy and cries or calls my name…I will rectify the problem. He also knows that I won’t let him just cry because he wants to be held instead of laid down in the floor (he’s got to have some tummy time so he can crawl and learn to walk), so he doesn’t really try to pull stuff over on me. As for Momma…he’s figured out that if the tears collect in his eyes a little bit, well, Momma’s putty. He’s going to get his way….some of the time. There’s times when I almost have to physically restrain her, but she does somehow manage to summon the courage to let him do some things on his own. This isn’t easy to do, but it’s necessary for him to grow the way he needs to.

The best part of him being able to speak a little is that we can now have conversations in English. We’ve been having conversations in Baby language ever since he was born. My translation for you guys is what fuels a lot of the blog posts. He’s been able to say “Hey” and “Hi” ever since he was about 4 months. He knows what it means, too. If you come into a room, and he feels like talking to you, he’ll tell you “Hi.” Today we were having such a conversation. I would tell him “Hey Buddy,” and he would tell me “Hey Dada.”

Ryne will hardly do anything on demand but eat…and even that’s becoming a little more complicated, but I was lucky enough to grab just a little bit of our conversation on audio. You will need Quicktime to be able to play it. If you don’t have it, you can download Quicktime by clicking HERE. It’s free and don’t worry if you don’t use a MAC. It works for PC as well. To listen to a little bit of our conversation, click HERE.

These two awesome people are my Aunt Tiana and my cousin Abigail. Tiana was married to Mommy’s Uncle Todd. You may remember Dad telling you guys about him. Last week, they came up for a visit from Birmingham and we had a great time. I told Dad I wanted to tell you all about it because he sometimes doesn’t tell stories right.

They drove up last week and we went to a magical place downtown called Adventure Science Center. You should have seen all the stuff you could do there. You could walk on the moon or float in zero gravity. They had air cannons that shot tennis balls…but you couldn’t shoot them at other people. My cousin Abigail even lifted a car off the ground all by herself! In the middle of everything, they had a huge treehouse. It was 4 stories tall with rope bridges and slides and ladders where you could climb up to every level. Since I can’t walk yet,  I couldn’t really enjoy it…but Mommy did!! She went through it and played just like she was a little girl! Can you believe that? Abigail loved it too…I think she could’ve moved in and been just fine.

There were other things that were cool like a huge human brain you could walk through and a lazer tag game where you could kill viruses. Most of this stuff I couldn’t do because I’m too little….but give me a little bit of time and I can’t wait to go back!! I mostly just laid back while Dad pushed me around in my stroller. It’s probably the best view of everything. All these people had to walk and climb stairs…but I got to just lay there and chill. The end of our time there was with Mommy and Abigail riding in some kind of spaceship. It flipped them upside down and twirled them around so fast that it made my head spin. Mommy was excited though, because apparently she couldn’t do that kind of stuff when I was in her tummy. I didn’t know I held her back so much, but oh well…

That night we went to Australia for supper. The Onions were in bloom, so that’s what they ordered. Everyone got a steak except for Dad. Aunt Tiana got a steak that I think I still heard mooing. Dad ordered some kind of pasta. I don’t know what that’s all about. We were in Australia, not Italy. I of course had my normal diet that day of milk, apples, spinach, and some rice cereal that has my medicine in it. Mommy and Daddy think I don’t know it’s in there, but I really do. It tastes terrible, but I figure I’ll just make things easier on them and eat it. I figure they wouldn’t give it to me if I didn’t really need it. After that, all the grown-ups and Abigail watched a movie, but I went to bed. I was pooped.

The next morning we went to The Pancake Pantry. There was a long line out the door. I figured I would just kill some time, so I flirted with the ladies. I like to tell them Hi, just so they know I’m there. I’ve learned that all I really have to do is get their attention…and then it’s hard to lose it after that. I’m not stuck up, I’m just being honest…God doubled my cuteness gene. Once we got inside, I was amazed to see pancakes. I don’t think I had ever seen them. Apparently I’m allergic or something so I couldn’t have them…but they looked like little heavenly pillows, so that kinda wasn’t fair.

We then went to Opry Mills Mall because we were going to look for some cowgirl boots for Abigail. They’ve never been to Nashville before, so we actually ended up looking more places than we thought and ran out of time. After that, Aunt Tiana and Abigail had to go back home to Birmingham. Abigail was going to start Horseback riding lessons. I am so glad they came up, and I am excited that we’re going to see them at Easter!!!

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
-Ephesians 2:7-10 (The Message)

I remember the first dirty diaper Ryne had. I had never changed a dirty diaper in my entire life, yet as soon as I realized what the problem was, I was compelled to make him clean again. The diaper change itself was a harrowing experience, as I had both sets of his grandparents and his great-grandfather in the room. There were thousands of diaper changes’ worth of experience watching me as I decided I was going to change the diaper.

I felt like a soloist at Carnegie Hall as I opened his diaper to double-check. I kept thinking, “there’s so many people in here, and I’ve never done this. Do I ask for help, or fake it?” The room seemed to close in on me, but that could just be the effect of 8 people in a 10×10 room. As I got the diaper open, my worst fears were confirmed that this was indeed a “dirty bomb.”

When babies are born, they don’t have normal poop at first. They first have to get rid of all that goo that they were swimming in for 9 months. So what comes out is this black tar substance that closely resembles Nickelodeon GAK that has gone bad. Bravely, I took center stage in front of my audience and went to work. I took out all the tools I thought I would need: diaper and wipes. I removed his old diaper and began cleaning the affected area. It was what you might call a “political diaper” because there was a smear campaign going on. It was definitely more than a one-wipe job. I handled it quite well, however, if I do say so myself. I made pretty good time and Ryne was surprisingly cooperative for a newborn. Then it happened; every parent-with-a-son’s worst nightmare: He peed. This was before I learned the lesson to cover him up during changes. The only saving grace was that he seemed to favor laying on his side and had turned to the side when he did it. The only casualties were his blanket and his t-shirt.

It was at this moment my restoration project also became an underwater salvage mission. I got him dried off and cleaned up. A brand new diaper was placed correctly, and I changed his T-shirt. He cried a bit when I had to change the T-shirt, but once I got the new one on he stopped crying as if to signal “I’m clean now.” I picked him up, very proud of myself to have handled such a situation with no prior experience. The crowd roared with appreciation (in my head). The actual crowd that was there just continued to ooh and ahh over the baby. That’s OK, I know that diaper changes are a thankless job.

Now, after at least a thousand diaper changes under my own belt, I think about why I am able to do something I once would have considered quite disgusting. The main reason is that he is my child, and he is unable to clean himself. When he soils himself, he knows that he has done something that he regrets. It makes him uncomfortable and unhappy. He knows that when it happens, the only way to rectify it is to cry out.

It is the same way with us and our Father. When we soil ourselves with sin, God wants nothing more than to change us and make us clean. He knows that there is no way for us to do it ourselves. He waits for us to realize that we cant do it on our own and cry out to Him and ask Him to make us clean. He wants to change the diaper of our soul. He wants to take away the bad and exchange it with a newness that will make us whole.

I also know that Ryne is going to do it again. No matter how many times I change his diaper, I know that in a few hours (and sometimes not even that long) I will be changing it again. He can’t help it. It’s his nature, just like it is our nature to soil ourselves with sin. It’s not our human nature that makes us sin. Humans were created in the image of God. It is our fallen nature that causes us to sin. God knows that we are fallen, and He knows that He can clean us. The only difference is that God sent His Son, Jesus, to make a single sacrifice to cover all our sins. While we will soil ourselves forever, there was only one change that God had to make to cover them all.

There are many things that are unknown about RynoBoy. That usually comes in handy when you’re in his line of work. There are many rumors going around, and he asked if I could take some time and go through the rumors and separate the fact from fiction.

Rumor: Superman wears RynoBoy pajamas.
Status: TRUE

Rumor: Before bed, the Boogeyman checks his closet for RynoBoy.
Status: FALSE (RynoBoy would never be that obvious)

Rumor:  RynoBoy can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves.
Status: TRUE

Rumor: The Manhattan Project was not intended to create nuclear weapons, it was meant to recreate the destructive power in a RynoBoy Diaper Bomb. They didn’t even come close.
Status: TRUE (Just ask his Mommy or Daddy)

Rumor: RynoBoy does not own a stove, oven, or microwave because revenge is a dish best served cold.
Status: TRUE (Who would give these things to a baby?)

Rumor: RynoBoy does not eat. Food simply recognizes that the safest place to be around him is in his own body.
Status: TRUE

Rumor: RynoBoy is the reason Waldo is hiding.
Status: FALSE (Waldo would know hiding from Rynoboy is pointless)

Rumor: RynoBoy will never have a heart attack.
Status: TRUE (His heart is way too smart to try and attack him)

Rumor: Google will not search for RynoBoy because it knows you do not find RynoBoy, he finds you.
Status: FALSE (Searching for RynoBoy will give you several results, but you do have to search at your own risk)

Rumor: Aliens DO exist, they just know better than to come to a planet that RynoBoy is on.
Status: TRUE (Area 51 regularly sends out warning beacons)

Rumor: When RynoBoy does pushups, he doesn’t push himself up, he simply pushes the Earth down.
Status: TRUE (With all the earthquakes lately, we’ve asked him to slow down the pace a little)

These are but a few of the rumors going around about RynoBoy. I hope this has been enlightening to you so that you can know more about this little man. Feel free to share any rumors you’ve heard, and we will try to confirm them for you, or finally put them to rest…like all the people who have tried to fight RynoBoy.

Sometimes people ask me what it’s like to be a superhero baby in a world full of “normal” people. I try to stay humble because despite my superpowers, I’m just a regular guy. I can hang
out with the little people. To prove this point, me and my friend Jimmy went to downtown Nashville this past weekend to see the circus. It was amazing. They had Elephants, Tigers, Wildcats, Bulldogs (2 different kinds!!), Gators, Razorbacks, Gamecocks, Volunteers, Commodores, and Rebels. The animals morphed into Giants and then they played Quidditch like in Harry Potter… except without brooms. They were like 70 feet tall and threw a ball around and made it go through a hoop.

It was so very exciting. I didn’t know there were so many other people in the world with such awesome abilities. Yet here I was with dozens of people who could morph from animals into giants and fly! The Quidditch matches were amazing. For some reason, Jimmy and I were partial to the Red Elephants. They just seemed like the good guys, and they were from around where Jimmy used to live. Everyone was real good, and we cheered for basically everyone…except the Volunteers. They cheated by wearing this vile color of orange that no one could look at directly. It’s ok, though, because in the end, they were soundly beaten by the Wildcats. The turning point I believe is because everyone in the Quidditch Arena wore Blue to counteract that hideous orange. The final match pitted the Bulldogs from the state of Mississippi against the Wildcats and it was amazing!!! I was sure the Bulldogs were going to win, because everyone knows dogs are better than cats…Just ask my SuperHero friend, Dexter. This was a little different though, because these Cats were wild.

It was such a fun time. I didn’t have to fight off any bad guys and I got to watch Jimmy eat popcorn and Hotdogs until he turned green. Have you ever seen a green Giraffe? It’s almost as funny as a purple Iguana named Xavier. I firmly believe Nashville is the new Quidditch capital of the world!!!

Epilogue from BrandNewDad:
What had happened was… It was actually the SEC men’s Basketball tournament we watched. And it was actually watched in our living room, which is about 10 miles away from Bridgestone Arena. There was no actual morphing of animals into humans, although some of the humans might actually be considered giants. He did watch the games with Jimmy and seemed quite amused at some of the reactions Jimmy had to some of the plays on TV, although one wonders what reactions a stuffed toy giraffe is capable of. And we did cheer for everyone… except for that team in that hideous orange color. As for me, I was just happy that his eczema flare up was dissipating, although I did spend a litte time lamenting the fact that Alabama is so horrible in Basketball

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” There are likely no words in history that have hurt a father more than those words. As translated by The Message, it means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” These were the last words of Jesus as he hung on the cross. It wasn’t just his God that Jesus was talking to, but also his Father. While the Bible does not share explicitly what God was doing while Jesus was dying, I imagine he most likely couldn’t watch the proceedings.  His Son, whom He loved, was bearing some of the cruelest torture that humans had ever inflicted.

Not only was His Son dying, but Jesus also felt abandoned by His Father. Here was His Son beaten and battered and about to die all while feeling He had to do it alone. The worst part of it for God had to be the fact that He was the primary cause for all the pain. He had sent His Son to this fate. That’s how much He loved us: He was willing to put his own child through the pain for us. A parent hurts so much more when their child hurts. To know that you caused the pain of your child cuts deeper than any knife.

I’ve never sent my Son to die for anyone else, and you would die of asphyxiation if you’re holding your breath for that to happen. I have however caused my son to hurt. The pain that spreads through the heart of a parent when they do something that hurts their child is almost unbearable. My son has Eczema. We don’t know exactly what triggers outbreaks, but we do know that he has a sensitivity to dairy that is an automatic outbreak if he gets any in his system.He is eating solid foods these days, but his Mommy still breast feeds him as well because there’s vital nutrients and immune boosters in there. So, whatever Mommy eats, he eats as well.

One evening  I was preparing dinner for my wife and I. Because of our son’s food sensitivities, we have taken to reading labels like they’re the Great American Novel. We did let one item slip through the cracks, however, when we bought some spaghetti sauce that we have always bought. We didn’t check the label like the other stuff we’ve been buying and we were hit with a surprise when, you guessed it, it contained cheese. Luckily, we caught this error before we fixed any spaghetti, and replaced the sauce with an organic sauce that contained no cheese or milk. On this particular night, we were going to have Chili. I had everything cooking when it came time to add some tomatoes to the chili. As you can imagine, adding tomatoes to a meal is hard when you’ve forgotten to buy the tomatoes. I had everything almost ready and really didn’t have a chance to get to the store. I looked through our cupboard to see if we had any tomato paste or sauce. That’s when I saw the milk-infested spaghetti sauce. I thought to myself, this recipe doesn’t call for much tomato, I can add a little of this sauce to get a bit of a tomato taste in there. The thought that didn’t enter my mind was, You’re an idiot. You and your wife just had a discussion about how this sauce is an enemy to your child’s well-being.

My wife came home, and we both ate and enjoyed our meal. It was quite tasty and, of course, poison to my son. The next day his face was swollen and red. His eyes were swollen and teary. His skin starts scaling and flaking off. To top all of that off, he was teething pretty fierce. We looked at our poor little guy and we kept going over in our heads everything we had done that could have contributed to this outbreak. It all came rushing back when Jamie mentioned how good the seasoning was in the Chili we ate. I was about to gloat about my secret ingredient being the spaghetti sauce when I suddenly remembered the conversation with Jamie about how she couldn’t eat it because of the milk. I was immediately sick to my stomach. There hasn’t been this much terror over a secret ingredient since Charlton Heston discovered that “Soylent Green is people!”

I immediately went into apology overdrive. I promised my son that I would never hurt him again, he could have a car, and there may have been a promise or two about buying him his own private island. I don’t really remember the specifics as I was too distraught to think clearly. I looked into his puffy, teary eyes to see the pain he was going through. To know I was the cause of that suffering was almost too much to bear. As hard as it was to see him going through it, though, I knew he would come out the other side OK. I don’t believe I could watch him die as Jesus did, and I’m not sure that God was able to, either.

Through this time, I have learned much more about what God has actually given us as our Father. When my son was born, he weighed six pounds and 9 ounces. He was so small that he had to grow into his newborn clothes. I remember the first time that the nurse placed him in my arms. At that moment I knew that I would give him the universe at that very moment if he asked. At the very least, I would die trying. I loved him so much, and all he had done was to just come into this world. I had known him for only seconds, yet he was more important to me than anyone else in this world.

Sometimes, I take a look at my son in his crib and I think about him as God must have thought about Jesus. I imagine that in 30 years or so, he will be taken and beaten. He will be tortured within an inch of his life. Then he will be made to carry the device of his own death through town as people spit and hurl insults at him. He will be nailed to wood with spikes through his tender skin. He will have a spear thrust into his side. As the heat bears down on him, his body will finally be so broken that it gives out. Yet before his final breath, he will ask forgiveness for the people who do this to him. He will do all this because he loves those people so much, just as I love them. He will do this to pay for their transgressions. He is perfect, there is no blame with him.

It takes an iron will just to write those words. Just thinking about my son enduring that pain makes me want to hurt a lot of people and keep him safe forever. This makes the sacrifice that God and His Son made for us all the more amazing. God loved me so much, he was willing to let His Son go through all of that just so I would be able to have a relationship with Him. Even knowing that my Son would come be with me for three days and then return to Earth with a healed body would not allow me to put him through that. It is an infinite love God has to be able to do that for us. And I am positive that when we, His children, hurt…He hurts more.

As you may recall from my now famous (infamous?) 3 AM post, one of my life goals is to have my book published by the time I’m 30. Well, 30 is 12 months, 18 days away. I have decided to make my book more of a part of this blog so I can get a better feel for it and you guys can have a preview as well.

BUT I NEED YOUR HELP!

I have some very loyal readers and I am very thankful to you all. But I need you to help me more. One thing that will help me a lot as I shop my book around to publishers is to let them know how many readers I have of my blog, so that they know I already have a built in audience of people who would want to buy the book. I need your help to get more readers.

1. There are 82 members of my BrandNewDad Facebook group, but it would help to have more than that. Each one of you can invite people to join the group. If you would, please take a little time to send an invite to your friends that you think would want to read it. Include a little note that says something to the effect of “I like to read this blog, and I thought you might like it too.”

2. For those of you who follow me on twitter, please take a few moments to re-tweet when I post a link to a new blog.

3. See that little box at the bottom that says “Share and Enjoy?” You can use it to share a link to the blog directly to your facebook or twitter simply by clicking the icon for either of those. There’s also a place to submit to bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Technorati. These are very helpful for you to submit to as well. If you’re not aware of these sites or how they work, you should check them out.

4. Email links to the blog. If you email a lot, especially if you’re the type who likes to forward emails to your entire address book, please consider emailing links to my newest posts when I put them up.

5. If you have a blog, please link to mine, and I will link to yours as well.

6. MOST IMPORTANT!! Please start commenting on the blogs and give me feedback. Did the post stink? Did it make you shoot milk out of your nose because you laughed so hard? I need to know these things and it will help make me a better writer. And please leave the comments on the blog. I appreciate those of you who message me comments on Facebook, but it would be much better to offer them here. Even if you think it was horrible, I can take it! If you’re worried about putting in your email, I swear to you that you will not end up on any email list or anything like that. It’s just an added measure to keep people from posting Spam in comments.

All of these things will help me to grow my audience, and will help me look better to publishers as a potential author.

So what’s the book about?

My son of course. Actually, it’s about how being a father has given me a completely new perspective on my Heavenly Father. I have a very deep faith, and that directs pretty much everything I do. I am going to start sharing excerpts as blogs so you can get a feel for how the book is going. There will still be other things such as “Conversations with Dad,” “Ryno Boy,” etc… because they’re funny and I like them too.  So, I am not changing the blog, only adding in a little more.

The first book excerpt post is forthcoming…..

There are many firsts in a child’s life, and probably one of the hardest is the first funeral. I am glad that Ryne is too young to realize what’s going on, though. Last week, we went down to Alabama because Jamie’s Uncle Todd passed away. It’s never easy when someone you love dies, and it’s even worse when it’s completely unexpected and it’s something that you find yourself playing “what if?” to try to understand what happened.

There was a lot of sorrow of course, but the little guy helped make some of the proceedings a little easier to handle. We brought him to the visitation on Wednesday night and he was so good. He smiled at everyone, and much to my delight showed off his new-found fondness for saying “DaDa.” He let many people hold him and he just smiled and “talked” to them like he had known them forever. I know his Nana T – Jamie’s Mom, Teresa, was glad he was there. She doesn’t get to see him nearly as much as she would like to. Todd was Teresa’s brother and I hope that having her grandson there made things just a little more bearable.

I try to make all of these blog posts be as funny as possible, because we all need a little laughter. This post is a little more serious, because death is more of a serious matter. I written “Todd’s Story” to share with you here. I was given most of this in a dream and I intended it for my church. We have planted a church in East Nashville called Restoration Church, and one of our core values is to be “Authentic in Community,” that is to say that we create an environment where others feel free to share their burdens with the rest of us without feeling judgment or that they have to face things alone. This is not the way Jesus intended His church to be. I sent this to Todd’s wife to get her approval to share with my church. She has asked me to please share it, so that’s what I am doing here. While the letter below references our church specifically, I believe it extends to The Church as a whole.

Todd’s Story:

Todd was a man who loved the Lord with all his heart. He took the love he had and felt from the Lord and used it to love his fellow man. Todd was a most generous man who it seemed never met a stranger and certainly never met anyone he wouldn’t help if he only knew how. He was a very active member at a well-known Baptist church in Birmingham, AL. I personally entered into Todd’s life 10 years ago when I started dating his niece. From the very beginning, though my wife and I had not yet decided to marry, Todd treated me as if I were already in the family. Holidays (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) were the only times we seemed to be able to get together, but we made the most of that time, tossing the football and learning how to kick field goals together while we discussed life. We all thought Todd was married to his job, as he was over 40 and had never met “the one.” Then, one Christmas about 3 years ago, we learned that Todd had met “the one.” She was a wonderful, godly woman with two beautiful children which gave Todd an “instant family.” Todd loved those kids as his own, and even adopted her son to make him his own. Todd loved his new family, his brother and sister, his parents, his nieces and nephews, and genuinely had the love that God calls us to give to our neighbors…loving them as we love ourselves.

But Todd had another side. Todd had a side that was lonely and depressed. He experienced excruciating anxiety that made him fear life itself. He prayed for healing from God. He lived with this illness for 25 years, but never lost faith that God would give him healing.  Todd had gotten to the point where he had to muster all of his strength to make it through the day. When the day was over, he shut himself off from everything hoping to shut out the fear he lived with constantly. He was blessed to have found his new wife, who was anointed by the Lord to be a confidant and the only person aside from Doctors that Todd was able to trust with that side of him. She walked with him through his darkest hours. In the end, all the medications and doctors could not help him overcome the darkness that had taken hold of him so tightly. This past Monday, Todd took his own life. In his letter he left behind, he detailed the fear he felt just trying to make it through his day. He said that even though he knew it was a sin to do what he was doing, he felt that the only healing he would ever experience would be to “go home.”

Anyone who knew Todd, including his closest friends, family and the pastor of his church thought they heard the news wrong. It couldn’t possibly be true. We knew the fun-loving, humorous, loving Todd. None of us knew the Todd that lived with such pain. This is where I pray that we can all learn a lesson from Todd, who would have it no other way.

Hebrews 10:23-25 (NKJV) says “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Our church has been planted as a Church who would love our neighbors as ourselves. One of the foundations of our church is that we would create a safe haven where transparency would make it possible for us all to share each others’ burdens in prayer and love. Todd never found an environment where he felt he could share his struggles and still be loved and appreciated in spite of those struggles. He lived silently in pain for more than 20 years until God sent him his wife who would be his only confidant in that struggle until the end. If we are truly to be the church God would have us to be, we have to learn that there are many, many Todds in this community and in our lives, and if we truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves, we will be obedient to the Lord. We will make ourselves a safe haven where people know that they are free to let us share in their burdens, knowing there will be no judging, only Love. I pray that we can help those around us who are struggling to have a different ending to their story.