An Offspring Epiphany

The dramatically unexpected reorientation of my life and priorities around Sigrid has led me to reflect on the commitment of God towards his children. Its amazing how our experiences give us new insight into the nature of the God of the bible. 

Our experience of Sigrid has added depth and breadth to the reality that God loves the people of our world simply because they are his offspring.  Not because they love him back. Not because they haven’t filled his world with poop, spit-up, and far more destructive things. God loves his children because they are his children. It doesn’t mean he isn’t at times frustrated with their decisions or choices. It does mean that in a genuine passionate sense, God loves our world. 

It is that love that also makes sense of why he hates the brokenness of sin and its tragic consequences- from deception and selfishness, to autism and abuse, to strokes and Alzheimer's. His love is behind his frustration with our broken choices and broken world. The two are inseparably linked. I’m glad to be part of a kingdom in which something is being done to address brokenness and set it right. I have hope. The world is broken, but God, because of his love, is not ok with it. He's committed to setting it right. He loves our world. 

Back in Business!

Its been almost two and a half years since our last blogpost, but Sonja and I want to get back into blogging for a couple reasons. It gives us an opportunity not only to write, which we both enjoy doing, but also because it’s a special time for us to praise God for good things which he has done as well as lament the brokenness we see in our world. 

Among the many great things God has done in our lives over the past couple years, the greatest has been the gift of our daughter, Sigrid Storm Reader. She’s just over two months old- and has been a source of great joy and laughter even though she can’t walk, talk, play, or interact very much. Right now, she’s mostly limited to sleeping, pooping, eating and crying. However, in recent weeks, she’s begun interacting with us in some awesome ways. She’s started to recognize faces and can follow us around the room with her head and eyes. More importantly and more exciting to us, she recently started smiling in response to our faces and our talking. Its great. I had no idea a small, completely helpless (but adorably cute) person could make such an impact and draw so much affection from two people who are admittedly not really kid people. Changing an explosively charged diaper, getting peed on while trying to put on a new diaper, or getting chunked with spit-up all sounded like wretched and horrible possibilities three months ago. Now, its part of daily life and we don’t mind it at all.

All that said, it’s a new stage in the adventures of Paul and Sonja. Hope you’ll join us as we continue our journey!

The Most Beautiful Man

Saturday was the first warm day we've had in a long time. The biggest snow fall in South Carolina since 1988 had snowed us in for almost a week and all of us were getting restless. Although we were very grateful to have Netflix and lots of food to snack on, we were ready for the normal southern weather to grace us once again.

Saturday was that day. It was sunny AND in the 50s which seemed so warm compared to our 20 degree days we've been having. Paul, Ernie, Paul's sister Camille and myself piled in the car and drove to downtown Greenville for a walk. Paul and Ernie were walking pretty fast and Camille and I were a couple paces behind.

A car slowed, a window rolled down and a women called out from an old station wagon to Paul. "Excuse me sir, excuse me". We naturally all looked her way. She was wearing some sort of fur coat, which seemed somewhat odd because of the vehicle she was in. Then she said something very unexpected. "I just have to say you are the most beautiful man I have ever seen!"

Paul, not even missing a beat, smiled and said, "thank you". He then continued walking like this was some normal occurrence. Camille and I looked at each other and busted out laughing.

The next morning we were walking to church. There was still lots of snow and ice on the walkways and Paul asked if he could hold my hand. "Of course" I said. "I would be honored to hold the most beautiful man in the world's hand."

Sonja's Easter Basket Surprise

Easter

Paul and I had a great Easter. We made each other Easter baskets and were excited to present them to each other before breakfast. We didn't really have baskets or grass, so we improvised. I found a shoe box and filled it with green tissue paper and Paul found a basket and used a green towel for the "grass". In my basket, among my favorite candies, was a little box holding an amazing diamond studded ring.

Earlier in the week Paul and I were shoe shopping. The only register open was at the jewelry counter. So, while Paul was buying his new shoes, I was checking out the goods under the glass. I tried one ring on that had caught my eye because I always wanted a ring like it. Paul liked it too. But then we left the store and never really talked about it again. I secretly hoped that he would get it and maybe surprise me with it someday. But I didn't think it would happen so I tried to not let my mind wander too much in that direction. So when I saw the box in my Easter basket I was so excited! I kept staring at it all day.

We had Easter lunch at our house. Paul made the ham and I decorated the tables outside. Everyone loved my chocolate covered pretzel sticks with sprinkles. We had a great time with Paul's parents and his two sisters and James, Lauren's husband.

After lunch Paul took a quick nap and then headed to church to prepare for his sermon. He preached really well tonight. He has grown to be an amazing preacher. A man with passion and clarity. After the service we had 12 college students over for a leftover dinner and fellowship. It was a great Easter.

An Easter Surprise

I woke up this morning to an out of the ordinary voice mail message. It was a lady with a sweet southern accent who said she was from A Florists. She said that she had a delivery for me and that I needed to call her back.

I know this might sound weird and awful but my first thought was that someone was playing a mean trick on me. Why else would they want me to call them. If they really had flowers for me they would just deliver them. I thought that maybe it was just a ploy to have me call back someone, since I do have a bad habit of not calling people back. I was tempted to just not call at all so that I would have the last laugh, but I was hopeful. I mean, how cool would that be to get flowers on Easter weekend to be able to display as the family comes over for a big Sunday lunch. Paul suggested I call them back. And to my surprise and delight when they answered the phone it was a legitimate florist! They were in the area and wanted to make sure I was home and if not where they could leave them. When I told them I was home they came over immediately. I think they were at the house 5 minutes after I spoke with them, if not less.

The lady got out of the car with a large, beautiful bouquet of flowers and gave them to me. I was still so amazed that anyone would send me flowers. Who could they be from?

I read the card and began to cry. My brother Tim. The person I would least expect to send me flowers had sent me flowers. And yet, if you know Tim at all, it was so fitting. He told me that he loved me and missed me and wanted to send me a little taste of spring. Paul and I hugged as I cried. Then I quickly placed them outside on our back table and we enjoyed breakfast with the sun shining, the birds singing, and flowers on my table. It was a wonderful way to start the Easter weekend.

A Wonderful Long Weekend At The Beach

Our friends Ben and Denise from church invited us to stay with them at their parents beach house in Beaufort this past weekend. There was a 8K run and 5K walk that weekend at Habersham which we did while we were there.

Paul and I left Thursday morning following Ben and Denise. We stopped for lunch at a BBQ and arrived early evening. The house was near the beach and we enjoyed riding bikes, riding the family golf cart, walking and exploring an old fort used in some war. We had all emptied our fridges and brought everything with us, so we ate well. We also did a lot of relaxing and hanging out around the house. One night as Ben and Denise prepared dinner, Paul played his guitar and I sang praise songs as their little boy Elliott danced around the room. Friday night Tamara and Taylor and their little girl came over. Taylor had been Ben's roommate in college and had remained good friends. Paul and I had never met them before, but had a great time hanging out with them too. Paul and I thought Taylor looked a lot like my brother Tim, it was really weird.

Saturday was the day of the race. Ben and I were antsy all day with anticipation. I just wanted to run it. But it was a twilight run, so it didn't start until 6pm. We got there early and got our numbers on and put our race tags on our shoes, which I had never seen before. The Bow Tree Run doesn't need that I guess because there aren't as many participants. It attaches to your shoe and tracks the time the gun fires, when you actually cross the starting block (with 400 people, you can start pretty far back) and when you finish. It was pretty cool.

It was a perfect day for a run, warm and sunny. Habersham was like a dream. I felt like I was running through Heaven on earth. Picture perfect houses with beautiful porches overlooking lush green yards and the ocean. There were parks and big oak trees with spanish moss hanging from the branches. I have never seen a community so beautiful! It was all flat too, which was amazing, since all my previous races had big hills.

I think the beauty of my surroundings distracted me from the fact that I was in a race because I felt good the entire time. As usual, Paul left me in the dust at the starting block and so I ran alone. Just me and my Ipod. I was loving the run and the seanery. I had never ran more than 3 miles before so my goal was to finish. I took a nice easy pace, just a bit slower than my normal one. When I saw the 4 mile marker I picked up the pace, feeling good and knowing it was almost over. About the 5th mile, to my surprise, I caught up to Paul who was walking! I asked him if he was ok and he said he was but that I should just keep going. Later I found out that he had pushed himself, beating his personl record for the 5k and then had no energy left for the remaining 2 miles. I pushed it to the finish line, sprinting past 5 people on the last leg. I finished in 48:08! I was so proud of myself. My goal was to finish in 50 minutes and I had beaten that goal along with beating my husband!

After the race we stretched and quickly got in the car to go home. Paul and I had to be back at church the next morning and we had a 4 hour car drive ahead of us. We changed into dry clothes in the car and headed on our way. We listened to a book on tape and although we were extremely tired, God kept us safe all the way home.

We had arrived home and were excited to jump into bed about 12:30am. Paul began to pull into the garage when we heard a terrible sound. The sound of metal bending and crashing. It was so loud that the neighbor dogs began to bark. Paul stopped the car. We hadn't even made it into the garage and we looked at each other like "what was that!". Then Paul's eyes got big and said, "oh no...the bikes!".

We have a nice Thulle bike rack that goes on top of the car. We had taken both of our bikes with us, but since Ben and Denise had bikes there, we used theirs and left ours on top of our car. We had completely forgotten about our bikes until now.

We got out of the car to see Paul's bike handle wedged under the siding above our garage. The bike was hanging from the house and still attached to it was our bike rack. Hanging from the bike rack was the metal frame that used to surround both sides of Paul's car. Maybe if I wasn't so tired and it wasn't so close to 1am, I might have found this funny, or I might have even taken a picture, but it was more of an annoyance. I was tired and now I would be going to bed even later. Paul backed the car out of the way and began to pull (I was too short to reach). The bike was really jammed in there but he eventually got it down.

We parked the car in the driveway, put the bike, car parts and bike rack in the garage and decided we would assess the damage the next morning. We were tired and ready to go to take showers and go to bed.