Problems are for Solving

Well, we had a lot of people over tonight. Two families. Dinner with the Ben-Ezras tonight was dinner with the Ben-Ezras and the Evans.

Grace Katherine brought home-made bread (mmmm was it good!) and the Nezzers brought salad to have with the soup that we made.

It was a nice meal, albeit loud, and we were joined by Kathey. That’s 9 Evans, 8 Ben-Ezras, Kathey, and my 9. 27 all told including little Margary who gets hers later.

Here’s the scratch sheet I used to figure out where everyone would sit:

A wonderful time was had by all.

Answer: Have an emergency appendectomy.

Authority: God.

I posted recently about God’s ever-wise providence often not being convenient, at least from our limited perspective. Well, God had more to teach us yet on that.

This past Friday Margary was 11 days old. We celebrated the Night of the Burning Plum. It was wonderful (See Gabrielle’s Post). TC, though, was very tired and seemed to be coming down with something and there was pain associated with it. Saturday it was worse. We called the doctor and he instructed her to take two extra strength tylenol and head for the ER if it didn’t get better. The pain subsided enough for her to get some sleep, but we decided she shouldn’t try to go to church on Sunday. Instead we ended up at the Emergency Room where they drew some blood and ordered a CT Scan.

Yup. You guessed it. The appendix. So there we were, with a 13 day old baby, TC getting prepped for an appendectomy.

The surgery went well. Thankfully they were able to do a laparoscopic surgery. That will speed up TC’s recovery quite a bit. She’s taking it easy this week (I’ve only worked one day and that’s it for the week) and we’re having Thanksgiving at friends so our only prep-work is cranberry sauce (mmmm. Cranberry sauce).

Anyway, sometimes God’s plans for us are much different than ours–but always better. We are thankful this week for His blessing to us in the timing of all this. The appendix going bad during the pregnancy would have prevented a home-birth, most likely. God is truly good to us… and continues to be every day.

This is Brandy, the midwife’s assistant. (Bernice rested quite a bit early on since we were the third delivery in three days) Brandy was a big help and we really hope that she goes on to do homebirths when she’s done with her CNM:

It’s hard to see, but I wanted to put this one out there anyway. Here’s Elsie cutting the cord:

The beaming aunts:

This is our friend, Karen Campbell, who was Moriah’s “birth buddy” at Margary’s AND Peter’s birth, holding our newborn Margary:

Here’s Bernice, our wonderful midwife, filling out the requisite paperwork:

And one last picture for good measure (my first time holding my new daughter, though a tad blurred):

Margary is already starting (after just two days!) to look less like a newborn.

She slept four hours in a row last night (yeah, 4-8AM but still, you know . . .) and Theresa continues to be exhausted. We’ve never had a newborn nurse this much in the first few days.

Here’s one taken just an hour ago of TC and Margary napping:

And a closer-up of Margary:

I have been very blessed.

TC plans to have the birth story written up from her perspective on her blog soon–once she gets caught up on sleep (as much as one can with a newborn), that is!

Here’s a picture of TC before the birth–Margary is shining from her, eh?

This is a picture of Elsie and Peter helping make our Natal Day Cake. It was chocolaty chocolate with chocolate cream cheese frosting. MMMMMM. We weren’t sure if we’d eat it if the baby was born late at night, but we did. It got decorated up as soon as we had a name:

And here she is, fresh from utero-world!

More to follow!

I’m still figuring out pictures here–I don’t post them enough to remember, but here’s a sneak peek of what’s to come. This is Margary Rose a couple of hours ago–the first picture we got with her eyes open. Click on the picture for a larger one.

Margary Rose Lansberry.

My youngest daughter was born at 12:56 AM Monday, weighing in at 9 lbs 8 oz and 21 inches long.

Mama and baby are well and we’re tired. I’ll post more information and pictures as soon as we get some rest.

Praise God for this wonderful blessing!

We found out a week ago that the realtor (I’ll sell your house in 90 days or buy it myself!?) is not going to buy our house. Apparently that’s a special deal that I was supposed to ask for. Now I’m kicking myself and feeling stupid of course, but the house has been on the market for 90 days (the house on McClure) without an offer and now it’s off the market. We’re looking for renters and hopefully we’ll find one before we run out of cash to make two house payments.

Have I mentioned that my wife is now four (that’s 4!) days overdue? Not rare for her, but it’s keeping us on our toes.

Speaking of toes, today I played ultimate Frisbee for the first time in ages. It was fun, BUT late in the game I went up for the Frisbee and came down on the wrong part of my foot.

My ankle isn’t broken but I won’t know until I see in the morning how much it hurts how bad it is. I can’t put any weight on it right now.

All of this is added to a minor crisis going on with a dear friend of the family and the Ben-Ezras trying to get their house ready to move into has made our life really crazy of late. Work is busy as all get out (meetings, meetings, and sometimes meetings interrupting my meetings) and I’m preaching a week from tomorrow at my church.

Is the timing of all these things at once convenient? Nope. But is it random coincidence, chance or an accident? No way.

God is good to us all the time. I don’t know exactly why all of this is coming together in this way all at once and all right now–but He does. And when I hurt my ankle tonight at an inconvenient time I never once thought that Jesus was anywhere but His throne or that He had in mind anything but my good in all of it.

So, thank You God for inconvenient trials–and may You use them in our lives to make us more like Jesus.