Parenthood: Prepare for Chaos

The following post is excerpted from the chapter, "Prepare for Chaos," in my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

We all know them. The people who make statements that begin with, “When I have kids….” Like, “When I have kids, they’re going to be well-behaved.” Or, “When I have kids, I’m not going to allow them to make a mess of the house.” Or, “When I have kids, they’re never going to [insert behavior that the person has just observed and is particularly irritated by at the moment].”

Best not to get bent out of shape about statements like that. Best just to nod and smile and wait for the day when they find out….

Three Young Boys and a Library

I have a personal library that contains several shelves of books, developed while going to school to study English literature and theology. Yes, this all happened before you could get a whole library onto a tablet.

I used to like organizing my books. Fiction arranged alphabetically by author’s name and then by book title. Nonfiction arranged by category. It’s not that I’m an organizational nut. Far from it. Ask my parents about my room when I was a kid. But I liked being able to find specific books pretty easily, and I liked how it looked. Publishers often give books from a single author a similar cover and spine, so putting them together makes it look like they fit. It’s not so random.

So along came Daniel, my firstborn, and although having a baby changes your life immediately—because suddenly you’re responsible for this new life who can’t do anything for himself yet, and he’s crying and waking you up in the middle of the night—your life is changed, but your baby is still contained: contained to a crib, a car seat, a stroller. You, as parents, are still more or less in control. For the moment.

New distribution for Marriage, Family, and the Image of God

I'm happy to report that my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God, is now available for the Apple universe on iTunes, as well as in ePub format at Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and other online retailers.

It's also still available for Kindle on Amazon, and as a paperback at CreateSpace, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.

If you're interested in the big picture of what marriage and family are all about, and if you're interested in seeing how that connects with us being created in God's image, please check it out! And if you like it, please post an honest review on the site where you purchased it. That would really do a lot to help me spread the word. Thanks!

Marriage, Family, and the Image of God - In the Beginning

This is a first draft of the first chapter of my upcoming book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God. Enjoy!

Cecile and I first met during the summer after I had finished my first year in seminary. I was back home for the summer, and the job I thought I’d had lined up had fallen through. I got a temporary job doing data entry for a travel agency that was converting its files from one format into another. The job was from five at night to one in the morning, for about two and a half weeks.

I was one of three men among about a hundred women working on this project. Since I was shy, this was pretty intimidating, so when an attractive tall blonde in a red dress smiled at me, I stuck with her. Not for the reasons you might think. I went for short brunettes at the time, and I’d just had my heart broken, so I wasn’t looking for anything beyond a summer job. She smiled at me, so I thought she was safe.

She wasn’t safe.