i’m still thinkin

A lot of you have probably already knew or had read about how my wife was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure and told that she would never, ever, ever get pregnant.

She did get pregnant.  We have spent the last 8 weeks really excited about something that we thought we would never get to be excited about.  We praised God for a miracle.  We really couldn’t believe that we had created a baby.

Well, there have been some complications for the past two weeks or so, but we’ve been hopeful.  We had an ultrasound the other day, and the doctor said that there was no heartbeat.  But we were still hopeful.  Quite a few people told us that they had similar things happen and gone on to have a healthy baby, so we still had hope.

But we lost the baby this morning.

I know that most of you may not understand this, but we lost a child.  We lost a child that we loved as much as any parents would ever love a child.  We had already picked out names for him or her.  We had already started planning for cribs and strollers and all that stuff.  We lost our baby.

Its hard to breath right now.  We’re not going to be able to get through this without God.  We’re not going to be able to get through this without our friends and our family.  But we’re 2000 miles away from our families.  But we still need you.  Leah needs you.

We need you to pray.  We don’t need you to tell us you are praying for us if you’re not.  We really need you to pray.

We don’t need a nice hallmark message as you go on with your life, we need empathy.  But we don’t need you to just read this and not say anything.

We’ve got eachother, and we’ve got God, but we feel lonely.  We feel really lonely.

We’re trusting that God will be with us, but that doesn’t make it much easier.

In the midst of grief, in the midst of the toughest trials, God is still good.  God is still enough.  He is enough, but this is still hard.

Some people may think that we should not have shared about our pregnancy as early as we did in case something like this were to happen.  But we don’t regret it.  We wanted you guys to share in the miracle.  And now we want you guys to be there for us in the grieving.  In reality, I don’t know how we would make it if we hid this all away and didn’t tell anyone about it.  Or how we would explain that things are just different right now.

It may take us some time to get back to normal.  Or to find a new normal.  Things feel really dark right now.  So we need your love.  We need you to mourn with us and for us.  We need you to be there for us if we want to cry.  We need you to be there for us if we want to laugh.  We need you to be there for us if we don’t want to say anything at all.

Psalm 30 says, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!”

Right now we are in the night.  We are mourning.  I don’t know how long this night will last, but we both trust that God will bring the morning and turn our grief into dancing.

Keep praying for us.

We love all of you.

-Brandon

My wife posted this over at her blog… and I can’t say it any better, so I’ll just quote her:

<Please read all the way through and don’t skip ahead or skim>
When I was 17 my heart broke for the first time. I was a senior in high school I was a Jesus Freak, babysitter, guitar playing, songwriting girl. I loved church, youth group, music and was quite the music snob, coffee houses…especially with open mic nights, and I wanted to be just like my big brother Adam who was in college. The thing I remember most is that I loved life, people, having fun and laughing. But then there was a day when a few words changed my life. I was told that I have Premature Ovarian Failure. Basically it’s similar to early menopause. I went through some pretty strenuous tests and saw a reproductive sciences specialist for the last 6-7 years. Through all of this, the statistics never changed, I would never conceive and there was a less than 1 % chance that I would ever get pregnant even with medicine. My heart broke and even though I feel like God has used this to make me stronger in my faith and has really healed a lot of the pain, I was never the same. I have been living in the loss of this. Can you imagine going through that? I met a wonderful guy who dated me knowing this, who fell in love with me knowing this, and married me knowing this. But we still have to mourn. You go through such ups and downs with mourning and the hardest part with this is that I never had something tangible TO mourn. Some people might not ever feel that way about infertility, some people feel worse, if you haven’t ever been there you really can’t know, and I can’t explain it, but I can tell you that most of the time I felt empty, incomplete and worthless. Without the love of Christ and the promise of Him having a plan, I couldn’t have made it. Brandon and I have finally gotten to the place where even though it hurt, even though it is hard to breath sometimes, we are okay. We know that we will be great parents and that adoption is an amazing option. But honestly we have had no hope of ever having one of our own. It’s been three years in October that we have been married and “trying”.

I’m telling you all this to say that in spite of giving up, in spite of a 99.9% chance that it will never happen, the Lord has done a miracle in my body. We are having a baby. I don’t if you believe in God, if you are Christian or if you used to be or whatever please hear me out. I would like you to keep reading. There is no way medically or otherwise that I should be pregnant. The doctors CAN NOT explain it other than a miracle. You see God sent His Son Jesus to die for you and for me, and even though we don’t deserve it, Jesus took on our sin to give us LIFE. He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason, God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Whether or not you believe that statement you cannot argue that this is a miracle and it is only from God that miracles happen. Period. The Lord is faithful. The thing about a miracle is that we DON”T DESERVE IT!!! Just like we don’t deserve the grace and mercy that God has shown us by sending His Son to die to take our sin, and become an atoning sacrifice for us, and yet He has done it anyway. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past week or two, you’ve no doubt heard about Obama’s upcoming speech.  There is an endless amount of debate about it going around so I thought I should add my two cents.  Now I love healthy debate.  I think it can be a great thing, but I don’t think that most of whats happening here is healthy debate… its fearmongering… There are a couple of things I want to say.

First, I think we are expecting a little more out of the nation’s school children than we should.  The thought seems to be that children are actually going to remember this speech and cling on to Obama and his policies because of it.  The funny thing is that many of the people who are making such a huge deal about it were exposed to a president’s speech when they were in school in the eighties.  How many of them remember it?  Not many.  How many of them became indoctrinated with conservative propaganda?  Well, it seems that maybe a couple did.  But that’s because Reagan actually presented policy not related to education in his speech, which is more than Obama is going to do.  The point is that older students are old enough to make up their mind and younger students don’t really care either way.  A few 5th or 6th graders will come out of this thinking, “Obama is so cool!” But it won’t last.  Which brings me to my next point.

Second, I doubt this freaking out is going to last long.  I told Leah that I was going to write a post about it, and she said something to the effect of “thats a little late, I thought that was a big deal LAST week.”  Of course I corrected her and said that people are STILL freaking out about it.  But she has a point.   I expect this to be all the rage in the news for a couple more days, but then they’ll go back to talking about Michael Jackson or Jon and Kate, and people will stop freaking out and FORGET ABOUT IT.  Why? Because its really not a big deal.  Not a big deal at all.  People will forget about it and start fearmongering about something else.

I’ve got more to say, but I’m tired of typing.

When I was in high school, I got into theology.  Not necessarily into actually knowing God but into knowing about God.  Thankfully, in spite of my stubborness, God got to know me and I him.  But my point is that I would constantly talk with people about Christianity, religion, theology, doctrine, etc… even if those people had no interest in talking about it.

Oftentimes the discussion would go in the direction of the charismatic gifts.  One of the things that I constantly heard at that time, and on into college, and even now, was, “Pentecostals and other charismatics overemphasize the Holy Spirit, true.  But some denominations overemphasize God the Father, and Baptists, especially, overemphasize Jesus.”  Or some other form of that argument.  (That the typical SBC church emphasizes on any member of the trinity is debatable).

But, the more I am becoming familiar with God’s word and with who Jesus is–his depth as the very fulness of God–I’m not sure if it is even possible to “overemphasize” on Jesus at all.

The whole of Scripture was about him (Luke 24:27).  The fullness of God dwells within him (Colossians 1:19).  God placed

So this was supposed to be up on Friday.  But my mom is in town and Leah and I hung out with her.  All day I knew there was something that I was forgetting.  About an hour ago, I realized what it was.  So I finished writing my review.  Then I tried to publish it and wordpress deleted half of it.  So I’ve had a couple of setbacks but here goes

I’m participating in the blog tour for Jared Wilson’s new book Your Jesus is Too Safe.

I’m a blog nerd.  Like most of the people in this generation, I spend way too much time reading blogs, writing blogs, and thinking about blogs.  But if any of my time spent in the blogosphere is NOT wasted, its the time I spend reading Jared Wilson’s blog, Gospel Driven Church.  If any of you are not familiar with Jared Wilson, you really should get familiar.

Jared is a pastor of Element in Nashville, TN and a writer of articles, short stories, and, now, a book.  If there is anything that I can tell you about him, it is that he is passionate about individuals, churches, pastors, leaders, etc. being utterly Gospel-driven and Jesus-centered.  I don’t actually know Jared, although I am friends with him on Facebook, (in case you were wondering, being friends on Facebook means little to nothing, more often nothing than little), but I can see Jared’s heart through his writing on his blog, in various articles, and in Your Jesus is Too Safe.

Your Jesus is Too Safe is a book about Jesus.  You’re probably thinking, “Thanks Captain Obvious.”  But I’m serious.  Its a book about who Jesus is, what Jesus did, does and will do, and how the implications those things have for our lives as people who believe in and follow Jesus.

He takes twelve different aspects of who Jesus is and what Jesus does and, with each one, he reveals all the more a clear picture of who Jesus is.  His own analogy is that of an art restorer who is removing layers of dirt and grime one at a time, seeing the picture more clearly with each layer.  Now, I know that that can seem like he is a bit presumptious to consider himself the great art restorer who is cleaning the layers of the dirt and grime of culture and religion off of the real Jesus, but he lets Scripture do most of the work.  The picture of Jesus that he gets down to is one that is refreshing, beautiful, encouraging, convicting, demanding, glorious, offensive at times, and, in case you were wondering, unsafe.  But its the Jesus of Scripture.

Jared writes as someone who knows Jesus.  He knows the Bible and that all of it is about Jesus, not just the Gospels.  He knows the current historical and theological debates/discoveries/opinions about Jesus.  He clearly knows and has experienced the love of God through the work and person of Jesus.

He writes not simply for scholars and theology nerds, but for everyone, educated and uneducated, young and old.  This book should become a staple for youth pastors to give to their teenagers, because it presents a deep, deep picture of Jesus but in a way that anyone can comprehend.  Scholars and others of the nerdy variety, myself included, will appreciate the fact that Jared is well-read and is up-to-date on the current historical and theological scholarship on Jesus.  Teenagers will appreciate the fact that he references Homestarruner.

He does all of it without assuming that the reader knows anything at all.  Well, he doesn’t assume that you are stupid, simply that you are uninformed of some of even the very basic facts of Jesus’ life.  Whenever he mentions a debate or an issue that isn’t common knowledge, he offers a summary.  Unlike most authors, his explanations are not cumbersome, longwinded and boring, but rather, they are interesting, and oftentimes very funny.

If anything other than Jared’s knowledge of and about Jesus is great, it would have to be his sense of humor.  In all honesty, he’s hilarious.  His jokes and tone bring a light-heartedness to the book.  It doesn’t bring a light-heartedness to the content, however.  It simply reminds us that although Jared takes Jesus very seriously, he doesn’t take himself nearly as seriously as some authors do.  You’ll laugh out loud, and if you are in public, such as in the Winnipeg Airport, you’ll probably get some funny looks.  If you don’t think its funny, its probably because of the severe emotional problems you suffer from.

So what’s the bottom line?  This book is about Jesus.  If you already know about Jesus, you’ll appreciate this book.  If you need to know about Jesus, you need to read this book.  And, in case you were wondering, most of the American Church needs to know about Jesus.  Buy a few copies of it.  I have a serious feeling that you’ll want to give one to someone else.  A friend, a child, a Sunday School teacher, a non-Christian, a life-long Christian.  This is a great, enlightening, challenging book.

And if you’re not convinced yet, anyone who can reference N.T. Wright, John Piper, and Strongbad all in a positive light has to be a gifted writer.

Father Ernesto, over at Orthocuban, pointed out the new American Patriot’s Bible and offered some thoughts on it.

The blurb from the Thomas-Nelson site reads:

THE ONE BIBLE THAT SHOWS HOW ‘A LIGHT FROM ABOVE’ SHAPED OUR NATION. Never has a version of the Bible targeted the spiritual needs of those who love our country more than The American Patriot’s Bible. This extremely unique Bible shows how the history of the United States connects the people and events of the Bible to our lives in a modern world. The story of the United States is wonderfully woven into the teachings of the Bible and includes a beautiful full-color family record section, memorable images from our nation’s history and hundreds of enlightening articles which complement the New King James Version Bible text.

Its true that different parts of the bible speak to people in different ways.  We can relate to different parts in different ways, oftentimes depending on our situation, personality, or even our occupation.

HOWEVER, the overriding theme is always Jesus Christ and his gospel (Luke 24:27).

When the publishing companies publish specialty bibles geared towards women or men or teenagers or fishermen or black female jewish ninjas they’re doing so to make money.  Study bibles that offer helpful commentary and background on the text of God’s word is helpful.  But I find that specialty bibles do little more than encourage people to place their identity in the fact that they are women, men, teenagers, pirates, ninjas, whatever, RATHER THAN FINDING THEIR IDENTITY IN CHRIST, their creator and savior.

God’s word speaks to men, teenagers, woman, lumberjacks, farmers, professional wrestlers in their situations, and the Christian publishing industry doesn’t need to help it out as much as they think they do.

With all of that being said, a Bible that is marketed towards the American Patriot presupposes the idea that America and its loyal citizens have a special place in God’s word and plan more than other nations.  That idea kinda makes me want to throw up.

Okay, so I’ve not lived up to my plan to post three times a week… but I have an excuse…  July 13-18 I was at SERVE 2009 in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.  Serve is the yearly summer missions camp for the Canadian Baptists of Western Canada.  It is similar to World Changers that the NAMB does, but there is only one per summer, because we are a much smaller denomination.  Anyway, it was a good trip, other than the flat tire on the way back.

Wednesday of last week I got to see my beautiful wife Leah for the first time in 3 and half weeks.  We will have been married for 3 years on October 6, 2009.  Marriage has been fun, hard, blissful, frustrating, rewarding, fulfilling, wonderful, difficult, but always good.  I love Leah more than any person in this world, but sometimes I don’t show her that.  I’ve made the mistake of not showing her how much I care about her.

Genesis 3:6 says, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

So Eve had this big conversation with the serpent, in which the serpent was convincing her to do exactly what God said not to do.  Adam knew what was going on, he was watching it, but he didn’t say anything.  He just watched while his wife was being deceived, and then he sinned right along side of her.

I think this is the precursor to what husbands do all the time–we have a tendency to sit by silently with little concern about what is happening to our wives.  We’re more focused on football, video games, being a blog nerd, whatever.  Meanwhile, we ignore our wives’ spiritual, physical and emotional states.

That started creeping in.  Thankfully, my wife hasn’t been one to sit idly by while I sit idly by.  She encourages me and rebukes me and loves as much as I need it.

So, lyrically, this album is amazing.  Musically, this album is amazing.  In other words, I like it.  A lot.

If you’ve followed Derek Webb at all, you’ll know that there was quite a bit of controversy about this new album… supposedly INO records refused to release it as it was, and Derek Webb refused to change it.  From everything that I can tell, Derek Webb and his people were, amazingly enough, able to turn the delay into an incredibly interesting scavenger hunt type thing, and those who followed all of the clues to the full extent were surprised with the chance to listen to the album for the first time in Derek’s studio at his home in Nashville, after the unveiling of the album the other night.

For people like me, it just served to make me anxious to know what the controversy was about, not to mention to get to listen to the new music.

Anyway, its out now, and you can download it at derekwebb.com for 8 bucks.  You should do it.

Once you listen to the CD, its not hard to figure out what the controversy is about.  The following song, of which I posted the lyrics, is clearly the source of the controversy.  I’ll post the lyrics and post a youtube video in which you can listen to the song, and then I’ll say a couple of things about it.

You say you always treat people like you like to be
I guess you love being hated for your sexuality
You love when people put words in your mouth
‘Bout what you believe, make you sound like a freak

‘Cause if you really believe what you say you believe
You wouldn’t be so damn reckless with the words you speak
Wouldn’t silently conceal when the liars speak
Denyin’ all the dyin’ of the remedy

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

If I can tell what’s in your heart by what comes out of your mouth
Then it sure looks to me like being straight is all it’s about
It looks like being hated for all the wrong things
Like chasin’ the wind while the pendulum swings

‘Cause we can talk and debate until we’re blue in the face
About the language and tradition that he’s comin’ to save
Meanwhile we sit just like we don’t give a shit
About 50,000 people who are dyin’ today

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

Clearly, the song is about homosexuality.  Certainly many people will be upset that he isn’t more clear about his actual stance on whether homosexual actions are sins or not.  But thats not the point.  The point is that American Christians spend much of their time combatting homosexuality, yet there are a lot of people lost, there are a lot of people dying.  And we apparently don’t give a shit, as he puts it.  No more commentary for now.

So, I have let blogging sit on the back burner for the past few months.   I, however, am determined to change this.  I’ve been thinking of a lot of things to blog about here recently, so I’m planning to update at least three times a week, if not more, starting this week.  This week is a good week to start, because my wife done up and left me to go to North Carolina for a couple of weeks.

So needless to say, I’m planning to do a little bit of fishing, camping and canoeing… because there is nothing else to do in Northern Manitoba.

Anway, check back in the next day or two for more updates.

This is the text of the article I linked to in the previous post.  If you don’t want to read it in the context of the rest of the Nickel Belt News, then here you go:

In case you were unaware, we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world–the wildlife, the countless rivers and lakes, the beautiful sunsets that pour out every colour imaginable across the sky and seem to go on for hours, and, especially, the vastness of it all.  I grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in South Carolina until I went to live in my wife’s hometown in the heart of the mountains in North Carolina.  Not much can beat the bright greens that overwhelm the springtime and the deep orange, yellow, and red that fill the autumn with colour down there.  I always thought that there was no place nearly as beautiful as home.  Then I moved here.

Last week my wife and I went to Banff, Alberta.  We had never seen the Rocky Mountains before.  The majesty and sheer size of the mountains is quite a sight to behold.  When I came back home and saw the sunset over Thompson, I was reminded that God’s creation here is just as majestic and beautiful.  This is truly a beautiful place we live in.  But I’m sure many of you are thinking of places that you’ve been that are just as beautiful as here.  This is truly a beautiful world we live in.

When we look at this world and the complexity and beauty therein, from the smallest single-cell organism to the tallest mountain, how can we not understand that this world was created by a force vastly more powerful than anything we can see?  And if that force were able to create intelligent, emotional, creative beings, then wouldn’t he be intelligent, emotional and creative himself?  More than that, why would this creator leave his creatures alone in the dark, simply guessing why we are here?  Maybe this creator has revealed himself to us.

The Apostle Paul pointed out that he has, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”  So when we look at the world, we are to see God’s power.  But is that all we are to know about God, that he is powerful?  The author of Hebrews thinks not, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”  God has revealed his power and might through his creation, but he has revealed his love and mercy and grace by his Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus was more than simply a good teacher, he was the incarnation of the living God. In simpler terms, Jesus was God with skin on.  In Jesus we see the eternal, all-powerful God.  In Jesus we know God’s love for us.  In Jesus we have access to God’s grace.  Do you want to be spiritual?  Do you want to know God?  Know Jesus.

Brandon Milan is the Associate Pastor of Youth at Thompson First Baptist Church.