a prayer

Father, save me from my selfish mind. i confess that i think too much and too highly of myself. forgive me for adopting the lie that i matter more than those around me. thank you for Your continuing forgivness of my repeated sins. i realize that false humility is a trap i allow myself to take comfort in. help me to see Your example to me clearly, and to follow You every hour of the day. i know this is not something i can do on my own. You see me through to my core. correction is painful; it rips me apart and shatters everything i claim as my own and as my right. i want to give you the things i clutch at; that is so hard to do. i long to do things for Your edification, not my own. i confess that many of the things i do are for the purpose of elevating myself and for immediate gain. show me how to give out of my love for You. i am terrified that i have not heard what You are saying to me. i am afraid that what i have will be taken from me to teach me to give. Lord, i give it to you and thank You for such amazing gifts. these things are Yours to do with what You will. if that means that my worst fears are realized, give me the strength to lean only on Your love. i pray that Your Love and Teachings are what my children learn; not what i can teach. Father, give them your ears and eyes; guide them on the Path to You. protect my wife, give her Your Strength and Peace. thank You for the heritage passed down to me; for the examples of Your servants before me. i see the strories of David, Joseph, my grandparents and parents. may the work i leave behind point straight to You.

Amen. May it be so; come, Lord Jesus.

My Daughter

Our third pregnancy was with our daughter, Micah. By the time Mel was pregnant, we were both ready to have another baby. The pregnancy was pretty normal. The most notable exception was at our ultrasound. The ultrasound technician had a very hard time getting a good picture of Micah's heart. The tech said it was just how the baby was lying that made it difficult to get a good picture. We thought nothing of it after that. After Micah was born, we took her home and arranged for the public heath nurse to come do a follow up at our house. During that appointment, the nurse said we should take Micah into the hospital right away. She had noticed a few things that did not seem right to her. We left the house immediately. By the time we got to the hospital (1 hr drive), Micah was in obvious distress. Long story short, there is a valve in her heart that had not closed properly; on top of that, Micah had a hole in her heart. If the valve were to close as it should have, the side of her heart with a hole may not be able to handle that much pressure, and could burst. We spent a long time in the hospital. Micah was admitted to the NICU. If we had gotten to the hospital a few hours later, things could have been much worse.

It was a lot of praying going on in the Schellenberg home during that time. Shortly after Micah turned two, her pediatric heart specialist gave us the o.k. to allow her to live a normal, active life. No surgery was required; the hole in her heart is closing on its own, and the valve doesn't appear to be an issue. I can't say for sure if it is closed now, or what. I just care that she is o.k. She still gets tired sometimes when she is playing hard. When this happens, she just sits down for a while and allows her heart to rest. Her heart doesn't appear to give her any pain.

The Controvercial One

Now I will talk to you about the second pregnancy my wife and I had. I am calling it the controvercial one. After we had Emmauel (our son) and especially because of the 22 hours of labour Mel had, she wasn't ready to have another kid right away. Well, as it would end up, she got pregnant after just a few months. I don't remember exactly, but I think the kids would have ended up not even a year and a half apart. Mel was not wanting a baby at that time, and it was pretty tough for her. Then, one day she had a lot of cramping and bleeding. (This is getting much more graphic than I intended.) Omitting some of the smaller deatils, she ended up coming to me with the fetus in her hand. It was not very big, but it was difinitely a little baby. There were little arm and leg "buds". I can't explain what it felt like to hold that little baby in my hand and think about what its life could have been. I still think about that sometimes... holding it in the kitchen of our house and feeling like someone just knocked the wind out of me. Mel and I told our parents and we had a prayer in the kitchen with my parents a few days later.

The reason I am calling this pregnancy the controvercial one, is because shortly after Micah (our daughter) was born, Mel refused to acknowledge that pregnancy. Even at the time, she did not want to talk about it with me. It was hard because I felt like I couldn't process it on my own, but I had no one to talk to about it. Mel has a tattoo on her arm that she designed; it has one cherry blossom for every member of our family and one closed blossom to represent our second pregnancy. Just a little while after she got that tattoo is when she stopped acknowledging that this pregnancy ever happened. Everyone deals with things in their own way. I realize that a lot of people don't even consider a fetus a baby. I don't fault Mel for the way she feels about this pregnancy; I wish I could have talked to someone about it. Anyway... that is pretty much pregnancy number two. It was hard for me and continues to be hard. I think what gets me the most about it is that I actually held the baby in my hand. That image will stay with me forever! I don't know if I will ever understand whether it is just an image or whether the image haunts or fascinates me. I haven't quite decifered my emotions on that one yet. Perhaps through some of this writing, I will have some of that worked out.