Perception Change

Heidi and I are the happy and thankful parents of a beautiful little baby!

It used to be that when I heard of a little baby being born, I would very much be excited to ask what the gender, name, and weight of the little one was because I love little babies. I would always follow this up with a question on how the Mom was doing because that was the “proper” question to be asked. Of course, the answer to the latter was always that she was doing “fine”, as was the little child.

Saturday changed all that. I have been in many difficult and challenging situations over the course of the past 28 years. For those who know me well, they would tell you that the more challenging the situation, the more I thrived. If that happened to be diving to the maximum recreational depths, snowboarding down the hardest cliffs and mountains, climbing up the most challenging rock faces, whatever. Given all these times, there is no question in my mind that the most difficult time in my life was on Saturday … and I wasn’t even the one delivering the baby.

There is no question that beautiful little babies are wonderful, precious and the gifts of God from the hand of a loving Creator. I do not want to take away from that. His purposes are loving and eternal and He “lends” us these ones to bring up for Him – as Hannah did Samual. I’ve thought about that over and over in the past nine months. But it is also true that there are millions of untold stories of difficulty and courage that lie behind those same little babies – including you. There were times in that room on Saturday with Heidi that I was praying more hard than I think I’ve ever prayed for my wonderful and special wife, Heidi. I know that I will never forget the miracle and answer to prayer as long as I live. Heidi. I’m not going to give you the story (as it is not mine to tell), but those of you who have had children or gone through the birth of a little child, whether it took 3 hours, 12 hours or more than 24 hours will know a little bit of what I mean.

It was a perfect and wonderful little baby boy. Jake Bertram. He weighs in at 8 lb even and was about 22″ long. He had a little bit of stress during delivery, but is doing very well. I’m going to put some pictures up (although I don’t have a lot yet), and you can decide who he looks like.

And yes, Heidi and Jake are not just doing “fine”, but are doing well. The Lord has truly given us cause to smile.