Grandpa and Manoah oh so cute.
Have remarkably similar

Interests

So Here's How It Goes...

For those of you who were wondering, the story of Manoah's birth goes a little something like this. Anjuli started contractions around 6pm on Monday March 12th, they were minor, but regular. We didn't sleep much that night, and we were scheduled to be induced at 5am the following morning. The contractions continued as they had been for most of the night, and so we didn't go into the hospital until we were scheduled. Malina came with us, being or resident medical expert, we were very excited that she was able to join us. Once we got there they put Anjuli on Petosin (sp?) and here contractions began getting stronger and closer together. We waited as she effaced and dialated, and at around 10am our doctor came in and broke her bag of waters. The nurse suggested at that point that if Anjuli was going to get an epidural to do it now because it was only going to get worse, and so we gave the go ahead for the epidural... and that turned out to be a good decision, because according to Anjuli once her water broke it was, without question, the worst pain in her life. So we just waited some more. At around 2pm our nurse came in and said that every time her uterus was contracting Manoah's heart rate would go down (which meant his umbilical cord was being pinched somehow) and they were going to watch that closely. As the next hour passed his condition didn't improve so our doctor told us it would be best to do a cesarean section, we agreed and then all of the sudden things started to move really fast. The doctor and nurses wheeled Anjuli into the O.R. and I got suited up in my scrubs, and then twenty minutes later they brought me in with Anjuli all prepped. Then they went to work, and let me tell you, WOW, nothing like seeing your beloved wife fileted open on a table! Six minutes later out came little Manoah... Honestly he looked a little weird. His head was all coned, his eyes were puffy, his skin was blue, and his hands and feet looked like he had been in a spa for 9 months. He weighed 7lbs 4oz, and was 21in long. Tall and skinny, just like his dad! They started doing all these different things to him to make sure he was healthy. Then Manoah and I left to the nursery so they could run a few tests while they stitched up Anjuli. About 20 mins later they brought him in to Anjuli and he latched right on and began to eat for about an hour. Both sides of our family were there and it was so incredibly encouraging, Anjuli and I are very blessed to have the family we do. Three days later they sent us home, and get this, they don't give you a nurse to go home with you, not even an owners manual, nope they just send you right home, as if you knew what you were doing. Freak me out, geez! Anyway we've been home for about 5 days and we love our son. He is sleeping on Anjuli right now, and he is very handsome if I do say so myself. He is very strong it seems, and also quite mellow, he'll cry a little here and there but mostly he sleeps, eats, poops, pees, and every once in a while you'll get him to peek out from behind his eyelids and when he does that it is a little gift.

And Now Introducing For The Very First Time... Manoah Nathaniel Paschall

Today we came home with our son. He is beautiful. Hope you like the pics, we'll give more info when we are a little more situated. Thank you for all your prayers!

Manoah is coming tomorrow!

Anjuli is having contractions... and we are also scheduled to be induced at 5:00 am. So either she'll go in naturally tonight or we'll be induced tomorrow morning. Pray for us! We'll update with pictures as soon as we are able too.

Reflections on My Plot of Ground

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourshing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am ever so slowly coming to the point in my life when I must accept that my plot of ground, "the given" of my life, is my own and not someone elses, or something else. My life is what "is." There has been much frantic searching to make my life more than it is, to "expand my plot." This causes a deep and misierable sort of spiritual anemia. This anemia gives way to a malcontentedness and uneasiness with my life. It makes me feel like Bilbo Baggins who, by carrying the ring of power for a little too long, felt like "butter spread over too much bread." We are each given a finite spirit that is capable of only a limited number of things. We mistake our longing for the transcendant and infinite beauty of God for our longing to "make something of our lives." I make that mistake.
Now with the dawning of a new day in Anjuli's and my own life, I am pressed to consider these things all the more. Can I accept "the given" of my own life? Can I accept "the given" as the will of God? Can I accept the will of God as "good, pleasing, and perfect?" I daresay that were I to accept this I would discover the very inner life of Christ who, "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant... he humbled Himself." These "boundaries" or "limitations" on my life are profoundly humbling. I can make no more of my life than God wills it to be, but it is precisely those limitations, "my little plot of land" that ought to be my teacher and guide which leads my longings to the transcendant God "in whom I live and move and have my being."
This leads me now to consider my family; my beloved wife, and my son, and how this is "that plot of ground which is given me to till." As I quiet my heart, I find that if this is the plot God has assigned me, if all I do with my life is love my family, fulfill my commitments to my work, then I will find that secret joy with which Jesus lived and loved. I will close this entry with a quote from G.K. Chesterton's work Orthodoxy wherein he describes this secret of joy. "Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."

On Becoming "Dad"

Yes it is a strange thing indeed, more strange than being called "mister" for the first time, more strange than hearing someone say the two words "Anjuli" and "Paschall" together. It is a strange thing to look at the word "dad" as a referent to myself. Father doesn't quite sound right, it sounds like something on a government document or something people say at country clubs who have just finished Perrier and have a Ralph Lauren sweater wrapped around their necks (it makes me wonder why we call God "Father" but not "dad"). But "dad," it feels warm and strong, it is word so full of life and love. Now it refers to me... almost. Manoah is due in less than two days, and within the next week I will hold my precious little boy in my arms and experience a part of my heart that has been dormant since I was concieved. I will live and love in completely new ways... And it all feels curiously strange (kind of like altoids are 'curiously strong'). I am sitting next to my bride who is carrying my son and it feels beautiful. It's funny how the most natural thing in the world (child birth) feels so transcendant, unfamiliar, and almost unnatural. I could perhaps write a novel on my thoughts on the word "dad" but suffice it to say that it is a word, from the earliest stages of a childs life, that expresses his or her most fundamental connections, it is a word that changes very little from when you are two until you are seventy-two, it is a word whose meaning is utterly basic, which our very hearts cry out, by the Spirit "abba...dada...dad." Yes it is a strange and beautiful word.

Just Around the Corner...