Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Christmas 2011


It's been forever since I've posted, but I've determined that 2012 will be the year that I start blogging a bit more consistently. So here I go.

This Fall has been a whirlwind for our family. Back in July, the leadership at HLCC decided that they wanted me to base out of Fresno and take on a full-time role in Church Relations, with a major emphasis on Adult Ministries. This meant packing up the last 14 years of life at Hume and moving to Clovis. (Fortunately, two years earlier we bought a house and had been renting it to some great friends.) My boss let me know that he wanted us to move in mid-September. With the baby coming on September 14, I begged for a November 1 move. He was good with that and it was time to start packing. It's been a good transition and we're quickly adapting to life in the "outside" world.

Titus Levi Carey came into the world on September 14, and what a blessing he has been to our family. Our first three months with him haven't been without their challenges though. I think some people believed that bringing a new baby into the world would solve all of our pain from losing Elyse. The fact is that nothing or no one could ever replace our little girl. She will always be a part of this family.

We knew we'd have some sort of baggage with a new baby, but didn't know exactly what that would look like. For both of us, we realized early on we were holding back a lot of affection that Ty deserved. The problem was that we were afraid to completely bond with him for fear of losing him. Having experienced this kind of loss first-hand, it's just too easy to imagine the worse case scenario. Once we realized some of these issues we were able to really work on these things and have really been enjoying the last month with Titus.

Titus has such an engaging smile, and tries as hard as he can to talk to us. This boy communicates in ways that we never saw Peter or Elyse do at this age. His name means "giant" or "defender," and we pray often that he would take on those traits as he grows in a love and passion for serving the Lord.

There's much more to tell about our world, but I'll save it for later. We appreciate your prayers for our family as well as for our extended family right now. There are several challenges, but God is so good and faithful and we are grateful for His daily work in our lives. On a daily basis my prayer is to be obedient to His Word and sensitive to His Spirit.

I look forward to future posts and sharing some really cool stories of how God continues to show Himself faithful.