The princess

I have some news! Last Tuesday our baby girl was born, at 9:10 in the morning. (Did you think this would be about the new prince or princess of Britain based on the title? Ha ha, fooled you.) She weighed 9 lbs, 1 oz, which was surprising because Cathy wasn't any bigger than most pregnant women, probably even a bit smaller than most. (A few weeks before birth, I heard a few other women say how jealous they were of her.)

Everybody's healthy, just sore and tired. Cathy's mom is staying with us for a while, and she's a big help. And so the adventure of parenting begins...

Big change on the way

I'd like to share some news with both of my faithful blog followers. We're expecting a baby! This will be our first. We're both excited and nervous. Admittedly, we're not as excited as a lot of parents get, at least not as excited as the stereotypical ones. But we are looking forward to it.

Grandmothers

I was thinking back to the trip that my wife Cathy and I took to China last year, and there's one particular experience that I want to share.

In the second city we visited, we spent time with a few of Cathy's relatives that she hadn't met before. They were very overbearing. Some people say that in Chinese culture, it's important to be hospitable, so people will push more food on you than you want, etc. But in every culture there are variations, and this family took it to the extreme. It felt like a struggle to stop getting food even when I felt very full. They say body language says more than spoken language. I couldn't understand the language, but there were times when their body language seemed to say, "We're going to be generous to you whether you like it or not." While I appreciate their generosity, it made me weary. Cathy felt similar.

And then we went to Cathy's home city and stayed at her grandma's place. Finally, I felt like I could breathe. She was generous, and she did encourage us to eat more than we really wanted, but she didn't push us to the point of being uncomfortably full.

With the other relatives, their generosity made it feel like they had something to prove. With Cathy's grandma, her generosity felt grandmotherly. It had been a year-and-a-half or so since I lost both of my grandmas, and they hadn't been doing well enough to be all that hospitable for a while before that. So it felt good to experience that grandmotherly hospitality once again.

Once again, body language said more than spoken language.

Now if only we could have a conversation...

Changes in faith

Do you ever feel happy to hear that someone changed their opinion in one direction, and then happy to hear that someone else changed their opinion in the opposite direction? What about when that involves religious conversion?

I've heard stories of many people giving up on Christianity, from my brother who is quite unclear where he stands on matters of faith, but doesn't seem to consider himself a Christian anymore, to stories online on sites like exchristian.net. When I hear these stories I feel a twinge of disappointment that they've given up on the faith that I hold dear, but I also find myself thinking, "Good for them." And it doesn't even feel like a condescending "Good for you that you're thinking for yourself, but you're wrong" sort of way. So why would I be happy about this?

I can think of a couple of reasons. First, there are times when I feel like I don't actually hold my faith all that dearly. I doubt, I get frustrated, and I feel like giving it up. Maybe these people have the courage to make a change, and I lack that courage.

Or I still believe in Jesus and still hold God and my faith in him dear, but I wonder if these people have actually moved closer to the real God by giving up their faith. There are many aspects of my own faith that I've given up over the years--the infallibility of scripture, opposition to evolution, much of the opposition to homosexuality and approaches to dealing with it (and I am quite uncertain about any opposition that I still have), and intellectual certainty about the truth of Christian claims. And many other Christians have been fed beliefs that I would consider much worse than what I've been raised with and rejected. When a person gives up beliefs that they're raised with, it shows that they're thinking for themselves, especially if they take their time and don't just change their beliefs to match someone else's exactly. These people have not found the whole truth, but maybe their view of God was so distorted, the god they rejected wasn't real.

(Am I closer to the whole truth than they are? If I didn't think so, I'd give up on Christianity, but only time will tell for sure. I could be wrong. And by the way, this is not meant as an attack on my parents or on the church I was raised in. I have drawn so many positive things from my parents and that church too that I still embrace, especially from my parents.)

And then there are stories of people becoming Christians. A few years ago a good friend of mine started to get a strong sense that God is real, right around the time that he lost a parent. This led him to Christianity. I'm happy to hear how he finds it so much better to have God in his life, but I also hope he will show discernment and reject harmful or false Christian teachings. I've met several others over the years who've given up various self-destructive lifestyles, including heavy drug use, as they became Christians. In those cases, the benefits are clear.

And on the internet, and atheist blogger that I occasionally read (too over my head to read all the time) recently became Catholic. Even though I'm not Catholic and have some with Catholicism, I'm happy to hear this too, and maybe even less concerned that this blogger will adopt harmful teachings. She seems to be taking time to learn about things and isn't accepting every Catholic teaching unquestioningly. Besides, I have issues with evangelicalism too.

And so I think, "Good for them," too.

China and the Republic of China

We recently returned from a trip to Taiwan and China.  Or as the governments of those countries might prefer us to say: we recently returned from a trip to China.  (The Chinese government claims Taiwan is part of China.  Officially, the Taiwan government--also known as the Republic of China--seems to claim this too, but claims that the Taiwan government is the legitimate government of all of China.  But the Republic of China doesn't seem to pursue this claim anymore.)

We had a wide variety of experiences.  We helped out on an organic farm in southern Taiwan.  We visited the beaches of Hainan, an island in southern China.  We visited my wife's relatives in a few different cities.  We biked in Chinese traffic (a bit scary).  We saw the mini terra cotta army in Xuzhou (not to be confused with the full-size terra cotta army in Xi'an, which we didn't see).  And near the end, we saw a few of the Beijing area's big attractions like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.

I'll try to write more about a couple of specific parts of the trip another time, but this is all for now.

Goodbye to my other grandma

About a month ago, we lost my grandma on my mom's side, and this week, my grandma on my dad's side passed away. Again, I've been taking it ok, but please pray for me and my whole family, especially my dad and his siblings. This all seems pretty quick, but like my mom's mom, my dad's mom had deteriorating health, probably even worse, so I think it was her time to go. I'll miss her.

The funeral

My grandma's funeral was on Tuesday. She had picked these verses from the Bible to be read there:

"Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."--something Jesus said in Matthew 28:20

"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."--Revelation 2:10

And one of the songs she had picked was "Let Me See Jesus Only." I couldn't find the lyrics online, but here is the chorus:

Let me see Jesus only
Jesus only, Jesus only
Let me see Jesus only
Only he can satisfy.

If you get a chance to read the verses to this song, give them a read.

Goodbye Grandma

Some of you that know me may have heard that my grandma passed away on Thursday. I've been taking it okay, but I appreciate your thoughts and prayers for my whole family, especially my mom and my uncle who've just lost their mom.

Going the wrong way

On the way back home from a one-day spring skiing trip in Jasper, I saw a flock of birds flying south. I thought they're supposed to fly north in spring. My brother was there too and he is my witness.

Today on the way home from work, I saw a flock of birds flying north. Again, I would've expected them to fly the other way. I didn't have any witnesses with me, but shortly after that, I saw another flock of birds flying south, so if my sense of direction is messed up, there was still at least one flock of birds going the wrong way. A little while after that, I saw several flocks of birds quite close together, all flying north, and then another lone flock flying north.

I wonder what makes these birds go the wrong way. Maybe they got tired and thought, I saw a lake back there. I'll turn around and rest there. Or maybe they read a Yellowknife weather forecast in Fahrenheit and they thought it was in Celsius. Any other far-fetched explanations?

Christmas

The week of Christmas started off stressful. About a week and a half earlier, my car broke down. It would've cost $500 to maybe get it running somewhat reliably, but there still would've been a major coolant leak in the head. So I decided not to get it fixed. I borrowed my parents' car for a couple days, then I spent the weekend in Calgary (I took the bus), and then I rented a car for a week. The next weekend, I picked out a car and I picked up the car on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, I had some Christmas shopping to do.

The Cavalier and I had some good years together. She carried me 80,000 km, to various jobs, to Colorado and back, and to Fort McMurray and back quite a few times. Now I have a Neon (one of the newer ones, so it should be fairly reliable), and it has a manual transmission, so I'm getting lots of practice with that.

Once Christmas came, I was relieved. The urgent items were taken care of. I got to celebrate the birth of Jesus with a lot of my relatives, and my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend now) spent a few days in Edmonton starting on Boxing Day. We had some quality time together and she got to meet lots of my relatives. They seem to get along well.

Later in the week, I got to see my friends who moved to Toronto a couple years ago. I've seen them a couple times since they moved, but this was their first time back to Edmonton since they moved.

I'm sure some new stresses will come soon, and I know there are some things I need to get done in the near future. But it's been a good break, and I really feel blessed to have all these people in my life.