The Land of Ozz

I saw a news headline titled Arkansas couple welcomes 17th child and knew before I read it that it was referring to the Duggar family.  I have seen their story on TV and have read about them on the Internet.  “They asked God to bless them with as many children as He saw fit in His timing.“  That is exactly what God is doing.

This is a tough subject for some folks, and some folks are pretty mean in their responses to the Duggar’s family planning practices.  Adam’s Blog has a post up highlighting some of the negative responses.  I will not grace those blogs with another link, but will instead ask you to check out Adam’s Blog if you are interested in how cruel people can be on this subject.

I think the Duggars have an awesome attitude towards family planning. 

Congratulations Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar on the birth of your baby girl!

My wife and I both felt led to attend church on Sunday even though we both were pretty exhausted from the events surrounding our son Caden’s hospitalization this past week. Caden had been out of the hospital less than 24 hours. We took turns attending church since we did think it would be wise to take Caden. I took Riley and attended the 9:30 service at Seacoast Summerville. I cut out before the last song and rushed home so that Sherry could make it to the 11:15 service. Our attendance was well rewarded with a message from Pastor Greg that was by a video he found on YouTube about a Lion, a crocodile, and a herd of water buffalo. You need to go over to Pastor Greg’s blog to get a look at the video and then listen to the awesome message that he delivered by downloading a free audio or video copy of week five from the antidote series at Seacoastresources.org. The message is packed with Biblical truths as well as some pretty detailed facts about how Seacoast Church operates being a non-denominational church.

After watching the video and/or listen to the message, you might find a close comparison between our little family and the baby water buffalo. We have found ourselves getting attacked from many sides during this past week. If you were to look at our family over the past several weeks prior to Caden’s surgery then I suspect you would have a noticeable look of surprise on your face. The things I wrote about concerning Caden’s health this past week were obviously the most important, but by far not the only things we have been facing.

For instance, in the past month or so we have had many other attacks including a few financial ones. When have been clipping along on a tight single income budget for some time now and a few financial attacks are almost expected from time to time.  We try to stay prepared with an emergency fund, but that was pretty much wiped out recently.  Our clothes dryer went out, our microwave bit the dust, and our refrigerator stopped cooling twice within a two week period. The refrigerator incidents spoiled a considerable amount of food on both occasions. It was only about a month before all of this that our central air conditioning system stopped working. Don’t forget to factor in how Sherry must have felt being 7 months pregnant with no A/C when we are used to running the house at about 72 degrees in the summer. These repairs and replacements have reached into the thousands of dollars. Never mind the fact that we have been trying to scrape together some extra cash to prepare for the newest addition to our family who will be born in August. These things plus many others that I am not at liberty to disclose along with the build up of emotions related to Caden’s surgery and hospitalization resulted in a fresh batch of stress for everyone in our household.

I feel like we have played the part of the baby water buffalo in the YouTube video. The praying readers of this blog as well as all of the names listed in my Thanks to all post on Caden’s Page, and countless others around the world who have been praying have been playing the role of the water buffalo herd. These folks have fought for us as the agents of the enemy (financial issues, bleeding, fever, and fear) have crept in like the lions and crocodiles trying and devour our little family. Our strong support system within the body of Christ continues to help protect us against attacks like the herd of water buffaloes came to the rescue of the baby water buffalo.

It has been a rough few days for our family.  My son Caden remains hospitalized after a surgery that he had on Wednesday.  We expected to be discharged in less than 24 hours.  We are in the middle of night three at MUSC.

It has been reassuring to read 2nd Timothy this week during daily reading. I found myself reading one of my favorite verses in such a timely fashion. I have spoke this verse out loud during several prayers since Wednesday.

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

Remembering this truth and reading about Paul’s sufferings and his encouragement for Timothy has helped to keep things in perspective this week.

…the first time I ever prayed with them.  I know that sounds weird, but stick with me on this one.  I was listening to a pastor on the radio while on my way to a meeting at the church last night.  He talked about how dads really should be setting the example for their kids.  Many parents tell their kids, “Give me a kiss and then go on up to bed…oh, and don’t forget to say your prayers.”  If the statistics being thrown around are close to being correct, then this sort of dialog is much more likely to be the norm in most Christian homes.

Some of you parents may have heard something like this before, but I am going to say it again.  Way more is caught than taught.  You can not sit in your recliner and give the old “do as I say and not as I do” speech and expect it to work.  That dog won’t hunt, especially with the older kids.  Get up and join your children in their bedtime prayers.  Teach them how to talk to God by your example.  Do you remember the last time you prayed with your children other than when giving thanks for food?

I hope that my kids are not able to remember the first time I prayed with them.  I want prayer to be so much of a routine part of our lives that they can not remember when it started because it was farther back than their memory can stretch.  I challenge all dads to get a similar mindset towards prayer and daily devotional with their kids.

Please add my son Caden to your prayer lists. He will be going in for surgery on Wednesday 6/27. You can read more details about what is going on with him on Caden’s Page.

Today for the first time ever, I get to celebrate Fathers Day and my wedding anniversary together on the same day. What an awesome combination.

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads!!!

The Wojcik family has departed the low country of SC on a one month RV tour of the USA. The father and RV pilot of the Wojcik family is a friend and co-worker Marty Wojcik. I think I might remember how to spell his last name by the time I get done following him across the country via this blog.

I can take at least part of the credit for Marty starting this blog. He was going to just update static HTML pages on the free space that Comcast gives with Internet service. I showed him how Blogger and WordPress.com work behind the scenes and he loved the idea of journaling his trip using a blog format. You will notice that Marty shamelessly stole my header graphic. I told him I didn’t mind of he used it.

Rodney Olsen has posted to his blog a copy of a live radio interview he recently did with my friends and fellow low country residents Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo.  Rodney is a radio announcer for Christian based 98.5 Sonshine FM in Perth, Western Australia.  This seventeen minute interview provides a great overview of the Growing Kids God’s Way curriculum.  You can listen to the MP3 copy of the radio interview by visiting Rodney Olsen’s blog The Journey.

The hype on this story has settled in the mainstream media, but it has not left my mind in the past week. I am as knowledgeable as a man can be on abortion without being a physician. I wrote about my history and my personal position on abortion a little over a year ago.

My wife is now approximately 23 weeks pregnant with our third child. She is at about the same place in this pregnancy as she was when we learned about or son Caden’s life threatening heart defects. The heart defects (four of them) were so prominent that an amniocentesis has highly encouraged. I wrote about this experience in the draft for a book that I have been working on.

An amniocentesis is a procedure where they use a very large needle to collect fluid from the area around the baby. This fluid can be used to determine if the baby has a chromosome abnormality. We had but one question, “what is the benefit of gathering this information?” The answer was long and consisted of a lot of beating around the bush. Finally, the answer we got was that the amniocentesis results would empower us with information to help us make a “choice” on what to do next. We determined that what they really meant was that they wanted to know if we were interested in terminating the pregnancy.

Obviously we chose to move forward with the pregnancy. It is my understanding that many parents choose to end the life of their child if defects like these are found and often the decision is made as a result of pressure put on them by the prenatal clinics to consider the termination.

I really did not understand what a partial birth abortion was until a little over a week ago. What makes me sick to my stomach is that my wife and I were highly encouraged to consider our “options” in regards to her pregnancy with Caden. A choice to terminate at that late point in the pregnancy would have resulted in what I now understand to be a partial birth abortion.

Before you follow the links I am about to give you I want to give a firm WARNING that the information you will see and read is very graphic and it is very disturbing. It is all truth and I believe every parent who is considering an abortion should be required to see or read something like this at a minimum. La Shawn Barber has brought together a couple of the best posts on this subject that I have seen. The first post is titled ‘Intact’ Infanticide [WARNING, this is a very graphic description of late term abortion as witnessed by a nurse]. The other post provides a graphical representation of the procedure and is titled Supreme Court Upholds Ban On Partial Birth Abortion[Visual WARNING]. La Shawn has been one of the most faithful bloggers in producing dozens of sobering reports on abortion in a category she has named “child killing”.

It grieves me to think that children’s lives could be taken in this way. What grieves almost as much is the number of U.S. citizens who are sitting on the edge of the seat to cast a vote for a presidential candidate who criticizes the most recent Supreme Court Decision to stop partial birth abortions.

The Senator Hillary Clinton’s Response:

“This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman’s right to choose and recognized the importance of women’s health…”Source

From the Senator Barack Obama Camp.

“I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women…” Source

Did they get together for lunch to come up with matching opening sentences that read like they are in stereo surround sound?

Well Senators Obama and Clinton, our experience and many others is that many of the folks recommending this procedure have little if any concern for the woman’s health. The folks giving us the option to bow out of a late term pregnacy simply wanted us to consider reversing a CHOICE we made at conception.

A few months ago I was contacted by the founder of a great outreach project for those parents who face a difficult prenatal diagnosis like we faced with Caden. I almost forgot about this until Mrs. Ozz reminded as we were discussing this subject this past week. Please visit this site and pass it along to any parents who may be getting pressure to terminate a pregnacy as a result of prenatal screenings or tests.

BeNotAfraid.net

“Benotafraid.net is an online outreach to parents who have received a poor or difficult prenatal diagnosis. The family stories, articles, and links within this site are presented as a resource for those who may have been asked to choose between terminating a pregnancy or continuing on despite the diagnosis. The benotafraid.net families faced the same decision and chose not to terminate. By sharing our experiences, we hope to offer encouragement to those who may be afraid to continue on. “

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