I think I’m close enough to having our house ready for the baby to come that I’m able to think about other things in life again–like communication with the outside world, for example. We have just a few decor things to get on the walls, the crib to finish with touch-up paint and bedding, a couple more items to purchase, and then I think we’re officially ready. Amazing! It’s been quite the journey to get everything transitioned!

I’ve been telling people I’m ready to not be pregnant anymore, at this point, but not quite ready for the little guy to come out yet. But I’m getting closer. There just comes a point where you want to get on with the thing you’ve been talking about for so long, you know? No matter how scary it might seem . . . We were at our childbirth preparation class last night (session 2 of 4) and had to watch a few actual births. It’s quite shocking to see, no matter how much you’ve read or thought about it, and I found myself imagining there was a convenient “chicken exit” to run through like they have before big roller coaster rides. I’ve never used a chicken exit before, but now I understand what the people who do must be feeling. Yet even in the midst of the fear and panic of what’s to come, there was wonder and joy coming out of my eyes in the form of tears when I saw that little baby come out and get tossed up on momma’s tummy. It’s such a paradox of emotion for me right now, but I think the wonder and joy side is going to win out in the end. There’s going to be a mini version of Andy and Jodi coming out into the world very soon. It’s just amazing.

Practically speaking, however (hello, this is Jodi Schipper speaking), it will definitely be nice to have clothes that don’t squeeze the life out of me, I must admit. I’m about to resolve to only wear yoga pants for the rest of the pregnancy. The other side of this must be really worth it for women to decide to do this more than once. In the middle of constant discomfort that will only increase in the next 5 weeks, and the unknown of labor and childbirth ahead of me, this isn’t seeming all that glorious and wonderful and “worth it”, as people keep saying to me. But I’m healthy and baby is healthy, so I really can’t complain.

I’ll let you know in about 6 weeks what my conclusion is on the subject.

And more to come soon . . . hopefully.

I’m 34 1/2 weeks now and very large so I’ll try to get more pics up soon!

I thought I could at least post some pictures for those I don’t see all the time!

I have finally deciphered the code behind the “how far long are you?” mystery. Between my midwife, our pregnancy book, and my own mental calendar, everyone has a different opinion about how far along I am. I am proud to say that I can now declare with confidence that I am officially 16 weeks along (I think). I’m actually in my 17th week, but they only count how many weeks have fully passed since the first day of your last period. (Kind of like how I’m only counted as 29 years old even though I am 3 months into my 30th year. This is a very important distinction for me personally at this particular juncture of my life. I’m still officially in my 20s.)

Symptom-wise, I am feeling much better than I did in the first trimester. Within the last couple of weeks, I have really noticed a drop-off in the nausea and headaches, though I still battle the occasional headache. Craving-wise, Chipotle has seen a dramatic increase in my patronage. For some reason, I keep dreaming about that fresh tomato salsa and yummy mix of spicy barbacoa, rice, beans, sour cream and cheese. (I actually had it for lunch today.) I’m considering asking for Chipotle gift cards at my baby showers.

Well, that’s about all I have to share until next time. I have to run now to pick out my Easter dress and hat and new patent leather shoes before Sunday.

I feel as if a change unsurpassed in my life so far is taking place inside of me. I am aware of this transition by more than what nausea, extreme fatigue and strong opinions about food constantly remind me. Though there are developments happening in my physical body that seem to follow an order prescribed for them from an ancient source, the thoughts of my heart have taken a more erratic route, though they have been on paths no one has forced upon me. The occasion of this baby’s conception has opened wide the door for questions, lies and emotional roller coasters to run rampant in my consciousness. My subconscious has even joined in the fun by bringing forth fears and ideas that I have managed to keep at a comfortable arm’s length until this point.

But God is faithful to answer to see His daughter through in her moment of crisis.

Never have I felt more vulnerable and weak in my life. Never have I felt so in need of help. I am so convinced of this need that I am strangely confident of His provision for me. I don’t have any tricks up my sleeve for the motherhood endeavor. This isn’t like another job where I have some amount of skills and experience from which I can draw upon. This isn’t an essay in college that I can wing well enough to fool my professor. I feel so lacking and incomplete in my ability to be a good mother that I am looking to God like no other time before to help me in my weakness. I feel like I can begin to understand what Paul meant when he said he gladly boasted in his infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon him (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). For because I am so weak, God MUST be strong on my behalf. He is a very good parent.

I am also discovering a new grace to enter into the rest of the Lord. I am looking ahead at the next months and years of my life and coming to terms with the limits that will be placed on my every day (and have already begun). Past will be the days of 10–12 hour days in prayer, Bible study and service using the gifts the Lord has given me. It took me awhile, but I finally began to realize that D-Day is not the end of my life. It will be the end of my life as I currently know it, but I am seeing the opportunity for a new layer of Jodi to emerge. I picture my soul as a fishing tackle box containing levels of compartments, some of which can’t be accessed without first removing the shelf above it. Coming is a new compartment of supply and resource that I haven’t touched before nor did I know existed. Through a series of circumstances, the Lord showed me I have in me both the natural ability to mother and the resource of His provision for my every need. And I really believe Him. He has shown me that He is my teacher, and He has every lesson plan of my life already worked out. I need only follow the lesson plan of the day and not place upon myself the burden of what my homework will be like eight grades from now. I am a fourth-grader, not a twelfth-grader, and He doesn’t expect me to know calculus just yet. That time will come in the natural order of learning, and He is committed to the process of my education.

I am excited to say that I am excited about this baby growing inside of me. Not many years ago, I never would have thought that possible or even desirable. I am learning anew the kindness of the Lord and His faithfulness to answer our seemingly weak prayers. I am starting to believe that He has actually given me permission to be weak. As insignificant as I feel in this transition of doing less and resting more, I am finding a grace that I have not experienced before. I feel as if this pregnancy has created the perfect opportunity for me to embrace the reality of my weakness. And strangely enough, it’s rather peaceful here.

I am struck in particular with verses 30-31. In this passage, we see wisdom personified as the person of Jesus before the creation of the world. It’s like a narrative from His journal in which He describes His inception at the beginning of all things. He describes how He helped His Father create and establish the world, beside Him as a “master craftsman” (v. 30). When I read it, I feel like I’m getting an inside look, a sneak peek, at the creation from the Director Himself. It’s so intimate and profound and awe-inspiring. What especially moves my heart is the revealing of the relationship and interaction between the Father and the Son.

We’re granted permission to sit in the midst of their conversation as they draw the circle of the earth, as they assign the seas their boundaries, as they tell the clouds where to dwell. They have let us in their inner circle and invite us into the intimacy of their fellowship. And you know what the first thing is they say about what they’re like when they’re together? They tell about the delight of their hearts. They reveal the things that delight their heart the most.

Before I get to the subject of their delight, I have to stop and dwell upon the significance of their choice to reveal this emotion as the overriding description of the experience. As we look at the way they experienced the event, we see who they are at the innermost place. In the depth and riches and infinite abundance of their being, they feel joy. Really? The stoic, serious, all-powerful, just judge of the universe felt joy when He created? That doesn’t exactly fit my mental image of God, or the images of artists and historians past, does it? However, that’s what He says He feels. The Father and the Son together felt delight when they created. And not only is it at the forefront of how they reveal themselves in this passage, but they actually invite us into the middle of it. We can take this passage and pray over it and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it to our hearts in a deeper way and actually experience that fellowship of delight, unto actually believing it. That is amazing to me. They have openly invited me into the intimacy of their fellowship, and what I find when I get there is unsurpassed joy and delight, originating in the very heart of God. Wow. What humility and vulnerability and generosity…towards me. That is incredible.

As I read on, I am taken back even more when I discover that the source of their delight is each other and, get this…me. Jesus was “daily His delight.” The Father delighted in Jesus, daily and regularly and continually. He took pleasure in His Son and thoroughly enjoyed His presence so much so that He let Him create the universe with Him. The desire originates in the Father, yet He willingly and joyfully invites His Son to do it with Him and for Him. Really, that’s what the Father is like? Wasn’t this project really important to Him? Yes, not only the product but the process.

And what was Jesus’ response? He was “rejoicing always before Him.” The Son rejoiced before His Father. I picture the innocence of a four-year-old playing with his dad in the backyard, the two running around and laughing and giggling at each other. There is such purity and innocence in their relationship that it almost makes me blush that they’re so unashamed of it. That’s how fallen and corrupt I am, that purity and innocence is embarrassing. Yet it’s so freeing at the same time at the thought of being a part of that. No hindrances or walls keeping me from being all that I am before them. What must that be like? Yet that’s exactly what they’ve invited me into.

Not only do they take tremendous delight in each other, but it spills over onto me. With the joy they experience in each other, they incredibly declare it over me. Jesus was “rejoicing in His inhabited world, and [His] delight was with the sons of men.” I think that bears repeating. Jesus took great joy in the inhabited earth, and He delighted Himself as He watched me and interacted with me. That’s so bizarre to me to think about that I almost can’t believe it. But oh how I want to. He doesn’t just tolerate me or bear with me or begrudgingly respond to my nagging requests. He doesn’t look at me with apathy or boredom or disappointment at how I’ve turned out. The Father and Son who sit in heaven with all power and wealth and honor and glory at their fingertips are distracted from it all by me. Like a new father with his newborn daughter, he is consumed with her every blink and expression and movement and sound. He’s so easily pleased by the slightest settling of her gaze on his face or the smallest squeeze of her hand on his forefinger. It’s sheer delight, pleasure, appreciation, and enjoyment. That’s the heart of the Father—the heart of His Son—toward me. This is a miracle of miracles. I’m overcome, really. It’s just not who I understood my Father to be…

This is the picture of fatherhood that God models for His children. How did we fall so short? It breaks my heart at what fatherhood has come to in this day and time. What happened? How did we miss it by so great a length? I think about men willingly sending their girlfriends and fiancées and wives and daughters to clinics to have their own flesh and blood children taken out of the womb and thrown into the trashcan. I think about abused and battered and neglected children in the foster care system and on the streets. I think about tribes of people in Africa where the dads as practice have absolutely zero contact with their children as they grow up. I think about workaholic dads who don’t know anything about their children’s personal lives or only see them on the weekends. It’s no wonder we don’t trust God. It’s no wonder we’re afraid of Him. This is a travesty of immeasurable proportion that is having consequences on our generation of which we will never begin to understand. Rather, we only see its fruit and irreversible damage. Only God can set things in motion for change.

It sets in context Malachi 4:5-6 a little more clearly. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.” Oh, I see why this is so significant now. I see why this is so important, yea necessary. For the final generation to understand the heart of the Judge, we have to understand the heart of the lovesick Father. Our understanding of His nature is so twisted that He has declared beforehand the necessity of restoring the father-child relationship as a remedy. He initiates it, and He restores it. It must be that important to Him. I pray this prayer with fervor as I stand on the Life Lines in the prayer room. The Life Lines are the place where we stand to pray for a culture of life in our nation, beginning with the ending of the practice of and demand for abortion.

Father, reveal your heart of delight and joy over your children in this nation and on the whole earth. Show us your jealousy for us. Let us feel your affections toward us. Let us believe and trust the intentions of your heart. Let us give ourselves wholly into your hands in perfect trust and submission because we know who you are. Father, give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. Open up our understanding to receive the truth of who He is. Let it excite our hearts. Let it birth love in us for Him. Cause our hearts to grow in love for you. Give us understanding of the perfect love that exists in the Godhead, that joy and affection and generosity would be our inheritance because we find it in you. Turn the hearts of the fathers in this nation toward their children as an expression of the love in your heart toward your children. Let our hearts be turned to our fathers and to our Heavenly Father. Restore us, God. Restore our relationship with you to your original intent. Show your mercy, God, and give us yourself. Amen.

I’m starting to feel like all of life is one giant Choose-Your-Own Adventure story. We have moments of decision over our lifetime that, taken all together, inevitably determine the course of our lives. Few decisions are irreversible but those that are leave a well-defined mark on our minds and hearts. These are the majors, the moments we remember so clearly years later. The other choices are much more subtle but have a cumulative effect that influence our destinies more than we realize. No matter the seeming importance of the decision, all of our choices get written down in the book of our history and together form the outcome of our moment of reckoning before the Judge of the Earth. We always get to choose.

This is the great glory and dilemma of our lives.

I’m not speaking of getting to decide what happens to us in life. Most of us would not choose to grow up with a sick mom who lives in a wheelchair. Most of us would not choose to discover that our infertility would prevent us from ever having children of our own. Rather, it’s how we choose to respond to these moments in our life. Will I decide that God is really good or not? Will I close myself off from ever being hurt again or keep my heart open? Could it be that the most important decisions we make in life are the choices of how we steward our heart? We determine the tenderness or hardness of our heart over and over again with each choice we make as we respond to our circumstances.

Scripture makes it clear that God considers the heart the most important of commodities. One of Jesus’ primary accusations of the Pharisees was that they cared more about the outward appearance of holiness than its actual reality on the inside. “You are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Mt 23:27-28). Mark 3:5 says that Jesus was grieved over the hardness of the people’s hearts. God’s choice of David as king over Israel confirms this emphasis on the importance of the posture of the heart. “The Lord said to Samuel [of David’s older brother Eliab], ‘Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart’” (1 Sam 16:7). In the sovereignty of the Lord, He alone has the unique quality of omniscience. He alone sees the true state of the heart and has perfect perspective upon mankind. “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers…His understanding is unsearchable” (Isa 40:22,28). God truly is able to know the true motive and desire of our heart, and it is by the heart that He measures us.

I am finally beginning to understand that the Lord is after my heart above all things—it’s not my service or finances or sacrifices that He’s most interested in. “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him” (2 Chron 16:9). Regardless of what path I take in life and the right (or wrong) decisions I make to take this job or that or move to this town or that one, His desire is that I would love Him wherever I am. I am learning that I choose to love Him in the middle of those major and minor life decisions. In the midst of suffering through what I did not choose, I can choose to still believe that He is good and faithful. I can choose to forgive and let Him heal my heart. I can choose to let others in. I can choose to believe in His promises. Or not. Every choice counts and every one matters. Each one draws me closer to Him or pushes Him farther away.

Sometimes it takes me awhile to ultimately choose to surrender my idea of what my life should look like instead of what it currently does. I have to choose to lay my agenda down in order to submit to His leadership over my life. That’s okay. God does not despise the wrestle we go through in our hearts. We are not robots, and He did not create us as such. We are emotional human beings created in His image. He does not despise the turmoil. He delights in us even in our weakness. In the Song of Solomon, when Jesus calls His bride higher at the beginning of her journey, she at first says “no” (Song 2:17), saying turn away and I will stay right here where I’m comfortable.  He does not then rebuke her but rather draws back for a time and lets her search for Him (3:1-3). After she finds Him again, He does not rebuke her but rather lavishes affection upon her and declares who she is to Him and who she is becoming (3:4 – 4:5). Filled with new confidence of His loyalty and patience for her, she then says “yes” to His original invitation (4:6). It is from this “yes” to Him that the rest of the story turns. He is patient as she struggles through her decision to be totally committed to Him. In the midst of the struggle, He motivates her by love not condemnation. The point is not that she said “no” at first but that she ultimately said “yes.” I’m convinced that God is most concerned with that ultimate “yes” in whatever situation. When I choose to say “yes” to Him in the midst of the good or the bad, it opens me up to the fullness of His love and desire for me, which is the true sustaining motivation of my life.

The beauty of this freedom to choose is that we can do it wherever we are. It is not dependent upon any circumstance but is universal to the human race across the earth.

It is our heart that He not only desires, but requires.

Choosing God is not a one-time decision. Knowing the history of His people Israel, the Lord tells them through Joshua after they had crossed into the Promised Land and conquered all its inhabitants, “If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Josh 24:15). These were His chosen people yet God says to them, “Choose to serve me and love me today. I have led you to this point. I have fulfilled my promise to you. Now choose me again today.”

Let us choose Him again today.

This blog is my attempt to become a better writer, hence the title. I’m a little rusty – I haven’t done much writing in a very long time, BUT it’s time to start again. Here I go…