I have a son. Some reflections from an exhausted first-time parent

I've been looking for a way to revive this blog. I think I've got it. Below is an unedited, stream-of-consciousness reflection I typed the day my wife Kelli and I brought our newborn son Jacob home from the hospital.

Perhaps I'll put more parenting reflections here.

To read a little more about my son and my hopes for him, see this actually edited and coherent column that appeared online for The Catholic Telegraph (<---- Click those words)

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I’m typing right now in the same chair I always type in at home. Straight ahead is still the TV, but the view is somewhat different. The TV is off, and to the left is a baby swing. To the left of that is a pack-n-play. Not far from that is a boppy pillow and a car seat.

I knew this little guy was coming for nine months. I had that time to prepare mentally, emotionally and spiritually to be a father. I didn’t know less than 2 hours after returning from the hospital that he’d own the living room. It doesn’t really hurt the look of the place though, it just makes our apartment look that much more like a home.

In that pack-n-play is the one-and-a-half-day-old Jacob Michael Stegeman. He was born July 23, at 6:51 a.m. He weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces and he is 19.5 inches long. He has some of me and some of his mother in him, but for the life of me I can’t tell who’s features are whose. He cries louder than I thought possible and his strength is surprising.

I don’t really know the focus of this reflection. I should be asleep, since he is for a moment, and I’m tired. Dead tired. I’ve slept about 3 hours over the last two nights, and my wife Kelli has had it even worse having slept about the same, but after going through labor. I just know that I’m a writer, and I needed to write something.

For the moment, I’m torn between my desire to sleep and my desire to watch that little man as he sleeps. I watch his chest rise and fall. I watch his little flails and listen to his little coos as I wonder if he’s about to wake up. He’s proof positive to me that some clichés are true. Namely, they say you fall in love with your child the moment he’s born. He wasn’t out for a full second before I let out a sound I can't describe. It was part shout, part laugh, part cry, part prayer and part shock. He cried immediately, and I was in love.

His mother is the real hero. Kelli went into labor at home at 4:30 a.m. July 22, Jacob’s due date. Around 7ish we headed to the hospital and about 12 hours later, and after just three pushes when the time came, we had a son. She was amazing, and has taken to motherhood with complete grace. She awes me.

But while July 23 is his birthday, we’ve had a son much longer. We’ve had a child in our minds since November 7 of last year, our three year wedding anniversary, when Kelli told me she was pregnant. We’ve had a son since a while later when the ultrasound tech told us that the little gray line on a black & white photo was a proof of his sex.

From then on I've thought about who he might be.

One of my favorite prayers these days is the vocation’sprayer written by Cincinnati’s Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr. It starts, “Almighty Father, you have created us for some definite purpose.” The prayer asks God to help people find the path God has created for them, be it priesthood, religious or single life, or marriage. It is a prayer, written by a bishop, that asks for more priests while acknowledging the ever-important point that we all have a vocation.

God created me to marry Kelli. He created her for me, and me for her.He made me a writer who would be a father, and he made her a multi-talented woman who chooses to raise children for His greater glory. 

He created us to be the family that begets and raises Jacob so that one day he will come to know that God has created him for some definite purpose too.

I don’t know what that purpose is yet, and Lord knows neither does Jacob. He just knows he likes to be held, hates to change clothes and he loves to eat. One day he’ll know his purpose. It could be anything. He could be a writer, an artist, a programmer, a priest, a ball player, or anything. It’s crazy to think that this little guy has the whole world in front of him.

I don’t know who Jacob Michael Stegeman will grow up to be. But I beg God for the grace and wisdom to raise him to know that his Almighty Father has created him for some definite purpose. That knowledge gives me solace. I haven’t slept, I’m eating a terrible diet, I have mind-numbing headache. 

I’m happy, and I place my trust in the Lord.

God has created me for this purpose, and with the help of His grace, I know we're up to it.

My latest column "Dreams of a father" for The Catholic Telegraph

I'm sorry I rarely blog here anymore, I want to keep this blog but I need to find its purpose. For now, here's my latest column for The CT.

"Bear with me if this column is a bit of a departure from my usual style and topic. I’m a bit preoccupied, you see, as my son is due to be born July 22.

I don’t know anything about him yet, but I know his mother and I already love him and we already think he’s got a fun little personality based on his mischievous pattern of not letting anyone but mom, and sometimes dad, feel his kicks. (Strong kicks, for the record, the kind that might make him a good NFL kicker.)......."

Read the rest here.
http://www.thecatholictelegraph.com/dreams-of-a-father-my-hope-for-my-soon-to-be-born-son/14948

Sede Vacante

We are a world without a pope, but we are not a world without hope.

As Benedict XVI said prior to resigning, he takes joy in knowing that the Church is God's, not his, and not even ours. God has never left us without a shepherd, even in the times without a pope we know that Christ himself is the true head of the Church.

The Holy Spirit will assist the cardinals and soon enough we'll have a new pope. I don't have any idea who it will be but I know that, as Benedict XVI also said, the Lord can work through even insufficient means.

We are popeless, not hopeless, someone wrote on Twitter.

Covering this in the Catholic media world has been unique. The secular media seems obsessed with trying to portray as a Church in shambles, in a tailspin, mired in controversy, but what I see is something else.

The same divisions within our Church remain, the resignation was a surprise, and there are controversies, but we're a Church filled with thanks for our Pope Emeritus. We're a Church filled with hope for the future pope. We're a Church united, no matter what the so-called "Vaticanistas" on the cable news networks say.

Take faith friends, the Church has survived everything, it will survive this sede vacante, and the next. Our popes take on a great office, but they are mortal men. Our Church is immortal, as is its head, Jesus Christ.

So God made a Pope

UPDATE: Now edited to the version also posted at www.thecatholictelegraph.com

In response to Pope Benedict XVI's resignation announcement today, I give my take on the Paul Harvey classic, "So God made a farmer."

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So God made a Pope

And some time considerably after the 8th day, God looked down on the Church his Son had established and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a pope.

God said, “I need somebody willing to preach the gospel before dawn, shepherd a multitude, work all day with world leaders and then come back to Rome to hear the concerns of the faithful.” So God made a pope.

God said, “I need someone parental enough to baptize a child, man enough to accept Holy Orders, smart enough to write encyclicals and simple enough to reach the every man, woman and child in the Church. He’d have to be able to laugh at himself, and cry with his flock.” So God made a pope.

It had to be somebody strong enough to die for Christ or live for his Church yet soft enough to end schisms and reach his opponents. Someone to pray, heal, serve, rule, forgive, judge and guide a flock that would grow from 12 to 1.25 billion. So God made a pope.

It had to be someone that could handle bureaucracy, study the law, oppose heresy and not fear the wolves. So God made a pope.

God said, “It has to be someone who’s a sinner, but who I can use for my greater glory. It needs be someone with so much zeal they sometimes say and do the wrong thing, but with enough wisdom to accept their own fallibility when confronted. Someone who could pastor charismatics and Latin mass goers, nuns and brothers, bishops and laymen. So God made a pope.

It would have to be someone willing to bear slurs, oppose injustice, speak for peace, hold fast to truth and forever work to evangelize an unbelieving world. So God made a pope.

It had to be someone who can look inside, and try, perhaps even with a tear in his eye, and know when its time to let someone else carry the cross and the crown.

So God made this pope.

God bless and keep Pope Benedict XVI.

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If you liked this, you may also like Father Kyle Schnippel’s “So Jesus Called the Priest,” recently posted on the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s Vocation’s page. 

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This will be a unique and challenging time for the Church, but as the Holy Spirit has guided us for 2,000+ years, it will continue to do so. I look forward to continuing to cover this nearly unprecedented news.

Catholics Come Home Commercials: Are they working?

So this outreach is really for our readers in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, but to any of my blogs readers, we can certainly have an interesting discussion on these matters right here at 1fromthepews.

Have you seen the commercials? What are your thoughts? Nothing posted in these comments will be reproduced in print or online without express permission.

I got a new job, and what that means for this blog

So I've recently been hired by The Catholic Telegraph. The Catholic Telegraph was established in 1831 and is the oldest continuously-published Catholic diocesan newspaper in the United States.

Its a great job and I'm excited to be using my talents to serve the Lord and his Church.

But I don't yet know whether I will be able to continue this blog. As an employee of the Arch Diocese of Cincinnati, I work at the pleasure of the Arch Bishop, and I do not wish any opinion of mine to be confused as speaking for him or for the Church in Cincinnati.

Whether I continue to blog or not, thanks for everything so far, readers.

Though my position is of far less importance and infinitely less note than His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, I will close with his words upon his election to the papacy.

I am but "a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord... The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me."

How I wasted my vote for the presidency, and why I did it

So all the voter guides and all the all the yard signs and all the ads and all the Facebook messages are almost in the rear view mirror.

This morning I left a little early for work and headed to my local polling place to cast my vote. The four old women running the polls were cheerful and helpful, the electronic machine was annoying, but effective.

I walked in and stared at the presidential tickets longer than I  thought I would. See, I had decided some time ago that I could not vote for Barack Obama/Joe Biden or for Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan. A little research told me I couldn't vote for Gary Johnson, or for Jill Stein or for Randall Terry. I intended only to abstain.

The sign outside the voting booth reminded me that write-in votes will only be counted if they are for candidates who have declared their intent to run, and Lord knows I didn't know who fit that criteria anyway. Still, with the full knowledge that my vote wouldn't count I selected write-in and used the complex wheel system to type the following name.

JULIA STEGEMAN.

Julia Stegeman is a 90-year-old woman from Cincinnati, Ohio. Well, she lives in Cincinnati but if you asked her where she's from she'd say Fayettville, Ohio. She's probably a Democrat. She was born on the heels of World War I. She witnessed, from Ohio, Pearl Harbor, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq. Her husband, who died in 1996, was a veteran.

Julia Stegeman lived through the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the counter-culture revolution, hippies, Woodstock, Nixon, JFK etc.

She's been daughter, wife, mother, grandma and great grandmother.

While Julia Stegeman supports many liberal seeming policies that I do not personally agree with, I voted for her anyway, because I trust her. She's brilliant. She's measured. She's not reactionary. She has infinite faith in the potential good of people and the good of this nation. Still, she's not naive. Thanks to her age, she's also got a great sense of perspective.

She plays a mean game of Scrabble.

In case you you haven't figured it out, Julia is my grandmother, or Mema as I call her. She's 90. She's never missed a bill payment. She still balances her own checkbook and lives alone under her own care. She's part of what we've dubbed the "Greatest Generation" but unlike so many in her age bracket, she believes that my generation and the one after it have even more potential for greatness.

Alas, Julia won't win, and in fact history won't even record that she got a vote. But I looked over the options they gave me to choose a president, and found them wanting. I saw an incumbent who doesn't respect my freedom of religion. I saw a challenger who doesn't know what he stands for. I saw a trio of third party candidates that just didn't seem like someone I could support.

So I took my vote and cast it for someone I believed in. Officially, it doesn't count. Maybe even in the objective sense all I've done (as a conservative) waste a vote against Obama. Maybe it doesn't matter either way.

I voted for an amendment to Kentucky's Constitution, I voted in the House and State House race for established candidates. I abstained from all the local races I didn't follow well enough to know.

But I voted my conscience on the presidency. I believe in Julia Stegeman, and she believes this country can be better than it is. So do I, and that's why I voted for her.