Living Life Together

A few months ago, I was talking to a pastor I know and he was sharing with me that he thought the entire concept of Life Groups was wrong. I found this to be a little weird because the church where he's a pastor has life groups. Naturally, I wanted to know why he felt this way.

"It's because the idea of living life together isn't real, it doesn't work."

His whole premise was that we are individuals (or individual families) and we live our lives apart. The idea that we can meet for an hour a week and somehow be living life together must be wrong. For him, it just wasn't true.

With all due respect to that pastor, I think he was wrong.

Sure, we don't completely live life together. I don't particularly need to know that you are out of coffee at your home. While the lack of coffee in my home is note-worthy (if not panic-worthy) to me, the lack of coffee in your home isn't nearly as concerning to me.

But when we talk about living life together, we're not talking about those little things are we? We're not talking about something as insignificant as coffee and the availability of hot beverages in each family's home.

Living life together is about the big things. Our Sunday School class has an almost identical life group attached to it. The life group is expanded a little bit in some ways and contracted in some others. A number of people teach Sunday School and miss our class, and so the life group is a great opportunity for them to stay connected.

Holly and I went to that group tonight (for the first time, actually) and to be honest, I'm completely sold on the concept of life groups. We are, in fact, living life together.

In our class/group there are four babies under a year old. We've celebrated with each of those families as they welcomed their children into the world (in fact I was in the hospital with two of them). There are even more children under 5 years old.

We are all living life together.

When I come into class, I find myself quite frequently overwhelmed with the latest aspect of fatherhood that I just stumbled into (on that note, it never feels like I gracefully I arrive into those moments. I feel like I'm just completely falling into them) and the men in my class are able to look me in the eyes and say, "I understand."

That's living life together.

When someone is sick, or a family member passes away, we mourn together. We pray together. We challenge each other and we call each other out.

We realize that we are parts of the same body and if one part is hurting or ill or messed up in some way, it affects all parts of the body.

Tonight, our group talked about worry. Jesus is pretty clear that there's no place for worry in the life of a Christian. I get the impression that a good Christian should never worry because God is still God, and God is always good.

I confess... I am full of worry.

I don't know what to do about it either. The last question of the group tonight was, "What one thing can you do to prevent worrying this week?"

I have no idea how to stop myself from worrying. The past few months of my life have been consumed with worry. I tell myself that it's not a lack of trust in God, I mean, I trust that in the end God will provide. I guess, I feel like I should be able to help God along?

Maybe I could put it better by saying that God gave me talents and abilities and if I use the gifts he gave to provide, then God is still providing. I don't want to be the sort of person who just sits around hoping that God will provide.

I know this, though. I'm absolutely tired of worrying. I'm tired of being so scared. It is taking its toll on me. I can't handle the pressure of feeling like I'm in this alone.

So, what tangible thing can I do to stop worrying? I honestly have no idea. But, I'm open to trying anything. So, I'm fasting, just for a day (until dinner tomorrow night). I don't say that to point at how great I am (as if not eating food somehow makes a person great), but to say that I'm at the end of my rope in the mental sense of all this, and so tomorrow I'll be relying on God for strength to just make it through the day.

I'll admit, that's mildly ridiculous. As if I couldn't make it through one day without food.

If you get a chance, say a prayer for me. This is an incredibly taxing period of my life. But God is good.

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This doesn't feel like much of a fatherhood blog. So, I'll give an update on Holly and Xavier. We are currently at 27 weeks. We're going to the doctor tomorrow morning and will hopefully hear that everything is going well. Xavier has been moving around a lot. When it gets loud, he moves. I'm not sure what to think about that, being such a loud person.

As far as I know, everyone's healthy.

I can't wait to meet my little man!

Just how pregnant are we?!

Happy Valentine's Day to the love of my life who is 26 weeks pregnant!

Overwhelmed by stuff!!

It's been a month since I last posted. I suppose I'm not the best blogger in the world. Actually, I'm quite certain this is the case. My other blog hasn't been updated since the beginning of baseball season last year with my picks for the season. For the record, I got 2 out of 8 teams correct for the Playoffs. At least I'm not only terribly in blogging, I'm also terrible at picking teams in the MLB Playoffs before the season starts.

I can live with those failures.

A lot has happened in the last month, though. I got to feel Xavier move! That was certainly an exciting moment for me. Holly had been able to feel him all the time, and I'd sit down to try and get discouraged. Now, all things considered, I'm still not positive it was him moving or her stomach just gurgling at me, but I'll take it either way, I guess. Heh.

The freshest memory and bloggable experience for me happened yesterday. Holly and I were in Columbus for my grandmother's 80th birthday celebration and we decided to detour over to Babies R Us to register for the upcoming Baby Showers. We had registered for our wedding about 18 months before and that was a piece of cake. I mean, seriously, it really can't be any easier to register for your wedding because it's all stuff you understand completely. "We will need sheets for our bed."

I thought registering for the baby was similar.

I was completely wrong.

I thought a stroller was a stroller. Wrong.

I thought a car seat was a car seat. Wrong.

I thought a bottle was a bottle. Wrong.

We were going through the store, scanning items to put on our registry and I was just completely overwhelmed.

I'm convinced that I have no idea what I'm getting into. I mean, I literally have no idea what it takes to be the father of an infant. I shared these thoughts with our Sunday School class this morning and the other dads just laughed at me. I said I was looking for some support. They reminded me that they laugh because they understand exactly where I am right now.

As we were finishing up at the store, one word kept coming to mind. Overwhelmed. We were both completely overwhelmed with everything.

I don't mean for this blog to be completely negative, I really don't. In fact so far this experience has been quite positive. I am enjoying this time of preparation, this time of anxious expectation. It's all really fun for me and it's becoming more and more real every day. He's going to be here so soon, and I absolutely cannot wait to hold my son in my arms.

If you don't mind me adding something to the end of this post, I'd really appreciate some comments/feedback on here. I'm not writing this post to win any medals or trophies, and I don't imagine that there will come a day when someone asks me to compress my thoughts on fatherhood into a book. The reason I write is to unwind and think about things in a different format, but it sure is easier to write when I know people are reading.

Thanks for reading. =)