Written before Baby S was born

I am sitting here at my desk working today. Listening to a little shuffle play on my iPod. Shania Twain came on. From This Moment. Made me think of that first dance of ours at our wedding almost eight years ago. My sweet love where have the years gone? I know you so much better today. You know me so much better. My good points, and so many more rough edges. Jesus is alive in us though, darling, setting fire to our sin and selfishness, refining us in that blaze and white hot heat. Some days it seems like I can look at you today and see the change from yesterday.

And as you labor around the house carrying the son who dwells within you, little girls clinging to your every step, full of life and love for you, you continue to impress my heart. Your momma gift is so strong in you. When they were born, I used to feel the need to take charge in the way I do so often. The leader and micromanager in me. But now I just marvel at your confidence, wisdom and poise. If there are questions about how to take care of them, what noodle to feed them, what clothes to put on them, it’s from me to you, not the other way around. I lead our family and set strategy and drive direction and guide theology, but you are our tactical and operational expert on our daughters and our home. You are what I call our practical theologian. You live it out in front of them and guide them ever so gently. Thank you for owning that role darling.

And as I think of you in my minds eye, at home blessing them and me today, I sit here at work laboring for you and for our family. My mission in life – with respect to my work – is clear to me, to be a leader and cultural influencer in the secular world. But I work in large part to bless you, to support you, to provide a home for our family. Even more important than my work is the legacy we are building. To raise children in Jesus, to track so deep and fast and heavy that the wake of our legacy will ripple out behind us for generations and generations. And that ultimately that wake would be not for our glory, but God’s.

Sweetness, thank you for our life and the vast and meaningful ways that you contribute to it and grow it with me. I love you.

Cowan Family Upate

It’s been a long time since I’ve had much time for blogging. My list of priorities goes something like this 1) Jesus, 2) Kelly, 3) K, G and S, 4) Starbucks, 5) Mars Hill/ministry, 6) friends/community, 7) blogging. Blogging probably isn’t even number 7, but point is it’s sort of somewhere towards the bottom of the list. Although, truth be told, I also use my blogging as a form of ministry, so I guess it really is more of a number 5. But even number 5 has taken a hit lately as we have been overwhelmed by the depth of life change that came with increasing our children count by 50%.

Things are great at home although very very busy. It is not easy job to manage two very active two year olds and a nearly 3 month old who is quite a handful. He is a busy busy baby who likes to eat and who likes to be close. He is happiest when he’s being held, second happiest when you’re right in front of him talking and cooing with him, and pretty much unhappy when you’re not within six feet of him. He is a relational baby! Taking care of this brood is manageable when you have three adults, pretty hectic when it’s two of you, and all out mayhem when it’s just Kelly. Sometimes when I take care of them by myself for 30 minutes, I actually wonder with every part of my being how Kelly does it all day. She is such a hard worker. But if you’re a praying person please pray for strength, energy and encouragement for my sweet Kelly.

Their have been quite a few fun events lately, and I’ll include just a few snippets. One highlight has been all of the talking from the little ladies. K in particular is a real jabberbox. G understands everything, and is getting to be quite a parrot, but she’s quite a bit more reserved, so doesn’t offer much up unless you really ask for it. It is very common now to be driving home, Kelly and I in the front seats, S and G in the middle seats, and K in the way back. The van will get quiet and all of a sudden K will yell (literally): “Hey Daddy!” It is actually awesome.

A few snippets of life:

• Kelly was nursing S in our play room with the girls one afternoon. While she was sitting there, the girls decided they wanted to leave the room, so they got up together, G opened the play room door (she is better at that than K), they both walked through and G closed it behind them. Not a word. Just left K in there by herself to go explore the house.
• Later, the girls came back in. They have these three Pottery Barn Kids chairs that Nonni and Poppi got them for their birthdays. Each has their name embroidered on them. Kelly was sitting in K’s chair and K walked up and said “my chair.” She was right, which was kind of funny, so Kelly just moved. What a precocious little girl.
• One day a month or so ago we heard G’s door open upstairs during what was supposed to be a nap. I went up and found G wandering around the upstairs. Apparently she can now climb out of her pack and play (especially when it is next to her big girl bed and she can use that as a landing zone). A few days later I put her in her crib and told her to show me how she gets out. She obliged immediately by pulling herself up on the front rails and throwing her right leg up on the side rails (our little gymnast, it was like she was on a pommel horse). Pop, she was over.
• A couple weeks ago I took K, G and S to Target by myself. It was nearly bedtime, so it was sort of a suicide mission, but we were there nonetheless. I was pulling K and G in a big red Target basket and was pushing S with my other hand in his stroller. I had taken a pair of their shoes back and was finding a replacement, and then went to another part of the store. When I got to the other section, I saw not only the shoes I had picked up for the girls, but also a pair of purple “jellies” in the basket. I assumed they had fallen in and headed back to the shoes section to take them back. As I put them back on the shelf, K went hysterical. Apparently she had seen them on the way through the section, grabbed them and put them in the cart (she’s a smart cookie: she knows the things that go in the cart go home with us). Funny thing is they were the right size. Well, sadly for her, we did not buy them, but thankfully Mimi sent them each a pair a week or so later, so all is well.
• Now that G is climbing out of her crib, and because we’d like to get K out of the nursery and into their new big-girl-room (with G), so that we can paint it blue and get S into the nursery, we are transitioning the girls to sleeping in their big-girl-beds, which are in the same room in what used to be our office. Man, trying to convince them to stay in beds that they can get out of at night is a real chore. It is a matter of training that takes incredible patience and persistence on the part of Mom and Dad. I usually just get a chair and sit right outside their room with a book and am usually there at least an hour:
• The first couple of nights we tried it, G got out of bed repeatedly. I mean like 10-12 times. One of the first nights, she managed to get herself tired enough to fall asleep in bed, but the second (and maybe third) night, she fell asleep on the floor of the room after I locked it from the outside because she had been venturing out of the room to explore the upstairs so frequently. One night she fell asleep on a pile of 30 wipes that she had pulled out of a wipes container. Sweet thing is such an endless explorer! I was hoping by locking the door that she would get back in bed and go to sleep, but that didn't work. She just found things in the room to explore in the pitch black (like the sound machine, who's volume button she turned up and down and up and down...)
• In the last few nights, I threw caution to the wind and decided this was hard enough as it is, might as well go whole hog. So we added K into the mix. Oh, painful. Now, like the toddlers who love each other that they are, they talk back and forth incessantly. Sometimes for an hour or longer. Often with hops out of bed to visit the other one in her bed. K will sometimes throw her lamby on the ground and cry for it - sweet G will hop out of bed to get it for her, then scramble to get back in bed before I catch her out of bed. The will often sit up in bed and look at each other and say back and forth “hi”, “hi”, “hi”, “hi” and giggle and laugh. I came in a couple of nights ago to tell them to be quiet and to go to bed, and as I was leaving the room K said “happy birday Daddy”. Don’t know where that came from because it wasn’t my birthday, but it was hilarious.

Anyway, those are the adventures at the Cowan house. I’m sure there will be many more to come and I will keep you all in the loop.

Grace

This is a cool picture of grace - and I'm glad to see that a Christian man would bring this to life.

Piper response to Obama on Abortion

Dear Freeman Family

It was with great sadness that I read this morning about your having lost sweet Kayleigh. Sadness for your lost time with her, for the lost future. And yet, I also rejoice in the hope for her future and for the great expanse of time that you will spend with her after this life. Our lives are just a blink in light of eternity (Psalm 39:5 - You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath). What a joy that as Christians we can rejoice in that future when we know Jesus!

Thank you Freemans for the ways that you have brought glory to Jesus through this difficult circumstance. Your faith has been an encouragement to us all. Thank you Kayleigh for being a means by which the Gospel could go out to the nations. Many people live much longer lives with much less impact.

Thank you Jesus for your victory over death. We long for heaven that we would know our new bodies, our new life with you Jesus, and for perfect relationship with each other and with you.

1 Corinthians 15: 20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.... 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death.... 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.... 42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"[e]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we[f] bear the likeness of the man from heaven. 50I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." 55"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Help the Kayleigh Freeman family

Friends, please read this post and see if God doesn't tug at your heart (He did mine). This family, part of the global body of Christ, is hurting and needs help. They are likely, unless God does a miracle, going to lose their Kayleigh baby. Let's help them out even if it means a small sacrifice on our part.

Moi Jesus

I am a Daddy who really wants to be an effective communicator of the Gospel and a kind and gentle pastor to both my wife and my daughters. I do this (sometimes well, sometimes not so well) through a number of pretty organic means with K and G (and now S). I sit down and pull each of them onto my knees in the mornings, we touch forehead to forehead and I pray for each individually – out loud. At night, when it’s bedtime, after we’ve brushed teeth and changed diapers and the whole lot, I spend a little bit of time with each individually, then will turn the lights off and pray for her (out loud) and then will sing a few worship songs. And then, later on in the evening after they’ve been asleep a few hours and I’m on my way to bed, I always return – every night – to pray over them, to pray that God would soften their little hearts towards Him, that the Gospel and their need for it would begin to take root, that they would respect their Mommy and Daddy as their authority and learn to know Jesus as their authority. And I pray that the Holy Spirit would minister to their souls at night and begin to make Himself known to them – that His voice would be a regular and effective communicator and lover of their sweet but ultimately depraved and very God-needy souls. And I pray that they would come to hear and know and recognize that voice, and come to know Jesus at a young age, and finish strong at an old age. I also pray that their lives would be lived for His Glory.

Although they are young, it has been a really incredible joy in my life lately to begin to see some sweet – albeit humble – fruit from this ministry: lately, as I put little G to bed, I have been singing Amazing Grace and Hillsong’s Hosanna. Much to my joy and surprise, G has begun singing with me. She mostly sings “Hosassa”, but what’s amazing to me is that she always sings. She doesn’t say it, she raises her sweet little voice and sings. It is a heartbreaking gift for a Daddy. Every time she does it I am hoping Kelly will come to the door and hear it.

And we had a cool moment last night too. After diapers and before teeth, I got down our rhyme Bible that the Sinnetts gave us. As usual, I paraphrase even the paraphrased rhymes because even those are not short enough for the 2 year old toddler span of attention. But we flipped to the New Testament tonight and looked at the Gospels. I try to show them Jesus in the Old Testament too, but it was easy tonight as we read through the Gospels and looked at all of the drawings of Jesus and the disciples and the man being lowered through the roof and Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Anyway, it was time for bed, so I wrapped things up and put the Bible back up on its shelf. K immediately looked at me with a desperate face and said “Moi Jesus! Moi Jesus!” And tears streamed down her face. Now, what can any God-fearing Jesus-loving Daddy do besides get the Bible back down. So, we had some more Jesus. It was more sweet time with them. And when we wrapped it up again, of course there were more “Moi Jesus” yelps and possibly even a small tantrum (demonstrating her heart’s need for Moi Jesus!), but regardless it was nice to see my daughters so interested in the Savior Kelly and I love and whom we hope they will come to know and love.

The girls turn two tomorrow. I can’t believe it. We are very thankful to Jesus for their sweet lives. Thank you Jesus for your grace to us.

The Meaning of Marriage

I just saw that John Piper has a new book coming out. I am excited. I love John Piper. His book is about marriage, its great value, its temporary nature (in that we will not enjoy it in heaven), its role in our lives and in our ministry to non-Christians.

I know very very very very very very very few Christians who understand and hold a covenantal view of marriage, that marriage is primarily about demonstrating the Gospel, that Jesus marries us, His bride, and stays with us no matter how devastatingly bad, cruel and sinful we are to Him, and that as Christians we are called to live out marriage in the same way (just as God asked Hosea to stay married to his whoring wife, to demonstrate the Gospel). Secondarily, marriage is about our sanctification, that we would be more like Jesus. As our Pastor Mark says it, "the purpose of marriage is not to make you happy, but to make you holy."

John Piper says it even better than I can describe it all: "Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God. It displays the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his people to the world in a way that no other event or institution does. Marriage, therefore, is not mainly about being in love. It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives. And staying married is not about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant and putting the glory of Christ’s covenant-keeping love on display.

"If you are married, this is why,” says Piper. “If you hope to be, this should be your dream.”

Our Birth Story and Name Explanation

Kelly called me Friday morning at work and said, “what could be one of the worst things to happen to us right now?” A laundry list of troubles popped into my mind, and Kelly told me that Kanah had been throwing up all morning. We prayed, right then and there, that we wouldn’t all get it going into our last weekend before the new baby, when we had lined up so many important things: getting the house cleaned and ready for the new baby, Kelly’s Mom arriving late Friday for a brief trip to see the new baby, spending some good time with the girls to help them prepare for their new brother. And our timelines were tight. Kelly’s Mom was only here a short time. I had been working like a dog to get my schedule coordinated at work (with a new job) so that I could take a week off, and we needed the c-section to be as early in the week as possible in order for me to maximize that time at home. And then we had a photographer coming to take pictures of the big day.

So, Kanah, was sick for about 24 hours. When her symptoms mostly subsided by Saturday morning, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. No one else had come down with anything yet. Alas, it was not the end. I was clicking off the lights late Saturday night and doing my nightly check on the girls before bed and heard Grace vomiting. I went into her room and found her in a pool of it. I got her up, changed all of her clothes and sleep-sack, changed her sheets and put down a towel in case it happened again. Lights off. More. New clothes, new sleep sack, more laundry, and finally bed for me. The sickness started only hours later for me. Unbelievable gut-wrenching stuff that left me absolutely floored for about 24 straight hours, and I’m still struggling with it now 48 hours after the first 24. Kelly started about 8 hours after I did, but had eaten lighter in anticipation of it, so wasn’t dealing with as much vomiting, mostly just exhaustion and a few other symptoms.

We called the doctor repeatedly to see if we needed to cancel. Would they be able to do the surgery? What if I couldn’t go because I couldn’t stand up? Would I be able to hold my son? Would Kelly’s Mom get this and not be able to hold the baby after flying out here to be here for only 5 days? We canceled with the photographer. None of us felt like being in photos and we didn’t want to risk her getting her three kids sick.

We went to bed very early Sunday night after being in bed all day Sunday, not sure what Monday morning and our scheduled 9am c-section would look like. After a fitful night, we were feeling a little better than on Sunday. I really believe it was just the grace of God because my symptoms still aren’t totally gone. He just gave us strength where there was none. An extra bit of grace. We arrived at the hospital at 7am. Surgery was pushed back from 9am to 10am, then to 11am, then to 12:30pm, then back to 11:30am. The extra time was good for me because every extra minute was healing. But it was bad for Kelly because she hadn’t eaten at all since Saturday night, then wasn’t allowed to have food or even water for 8 hours prior to her surgery, which then became 9 hours and then 12 hours…

We finally made it to the operating room at noon and our sweet son Salem Chandler Cowan was born at 12:20pm. He weighs 8 pounds 4 ounces and is 20 inches tall. He has a lot of black hair (like his Daddy) and he is handsome and sweet. We are very in love. We are so thankful for our expert surgeon and OB Heather Moore who did an amazing job. She was really happy with how Kelly looked inside and with how the surgery went. I got to watch every minute of the surgery and document with camera and video. I am most proud of Kelly who endured a lot of vomiting and sickness during the surgery and afterwards. I think it was really hard on her body to go through that after having the stomach flu. She was a warrior in that operating room just as she has been in carrying our son for 9 months. And just as
she was with our girls. Pregnancy and childbirth is a crazy crazy thing. My friend AJ used to say that it didn’t seem to matter, the curse always got the woman somehow. Either she’d have a brutal pregnancy and an easy delivery, or an easy pregnancy and brutal delivery. But either way the curse got her. And man it got Kelly.

Kelly and I are really excited about our son’s name. We have wanted to name a baby Salem for a long time, but we wanted to only use it for a boy. And the girls’ middle names are Kelly’s Mom’s maiden name (Brittain) and my Mom’s (Hutton), so it was a natural fit to use Kelly’s maiden name for him, as a way to honor her Dad’s family, and also because it’s a great boy’s name: Chandler. Salem is a Biblical name that appears three times in Scripture: Genesis 14, Psalm 76 and Hebrews 7. Salem is a derivative of the Hebrew word Shalem meaning to be complete, sound, or perfect, whole, full. Another derivative is Shalom, meaning peace. One last derivative, Shulam, means to be fully paid. Kelly and I really believe in naming our children in the Biblical manner, that our children would be defined by their names. And we hope Salem will be defined by the idea that his life is paid in full by the blood of Jesus, and that he can live in the fullness and peace of God by that sanctifying work of His Savior, who we hope and pray that Salem will come to know.

So, that’s our story. It’s been quite a five days. Kelly’s Mom has been super gracious to watch the girls faithfully during this time, when we actually didn’t have any energy or strength to do it. And God has been good to give us strength to get through this. Thank you Jesus for the birth of our son and for his sweet life. We give it over to you in trust and faith and love.

Twouble with Twitters