And the child lept in her womb...

Baby Kate (we are going on the assumption that it's a girl now) has been kicking a lot in the last couple weeks, and it is so thrilling. It's amazing to feel her moving around, to know she's there and that she's okay.

I've been thinking recently about the verse in Luke's birth narrative, when a knocked-up Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist at the time. It says "when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child lept in her womb." When this passage is read aloud every Christmas, it seems so supernatural, as if it's totally unheard of for a child to leap within the womb and it couldn't be anything other than a great omen of messianic coming. Now, it seems so real, like a perfectly normal--if positively glorious and miraculous--occurance.

Nonetheless, it makes me think of how people are prone to ascribe significance to those most energetic kicks. I don't know if the timing of baby's kicks actually have any correlation to what's going on ouside the womb, but it's kind of fun to take stock of what I could know about my daughter's tastes if there is any validity to the theory. She likes...

• pumpkin spice lattes
• Daddy's preaching
• praise and worship music
• Mommy ignoring the alarm clock
• Disciple Bible study videos

and apparently...

• being blogged about :0)

Pastors and Country Stars

When our cruise ship got back to Mobile Monday morning, Matt turned his phone back on and found two voice mails and a text asking him about filming a Trace Adkins country music video at the church. How cool! I'm not a huge country music fan (I adopted a mildly positive "can't-beat-em-join-em" stance after moving to Nashville) but I love cool claims-to-fame like this.

So, Matt spent 18 hours yesterday (literally, 5am til after 11 pm) on the set of a music video shoot starring Trace Adkins and Stephen Baldwin. They filmed the plotline part and Trace singing his song inside and outside of the church, and down in the creek where Matt baptized several kids last spring. The song, Muddy Water, is apparently about a guy being baptized. Matt spent the day hanging out with the stars, the director, the extras, and everybody, helping out with production, and even demonstrating proper baptizing technique for the actor playing the pastor!

We're hoping this claim-to-fame will attract some attention for Bethlehem in the Clarksville area (the church is way off the beaten path, so most people don't just stumble upon it!) The Leaf-Chronicle came and did a story. Check it out here, and watch for us on CMT!

Homage to Howard Olds

I meant to write a post like this on the day of Dr. Olds' funeral, six weeks ago. I wanted to say how beloved he was to so many (Matt and I arrived at the funeral 45 minutes early and were still parking at the bank next door and sitting in the overflow room!) and include some excerpts from his last book--the one I was privileged to work on with him and Cal Turner.

Unfortunately, I never did write that post. Fortunately, the folks at Church Central (a great ministry resource website) did it for me. Check out the article, with book excerpts, here.

Another note about Howard's funeral I want to share doesn't have to do with Howard himself, but was a beautiful moment that I know he would appreciate. Matt and I were sitting in the overflow room, as I said, so unlike the thousand or more early birds who fit into Brentwood UMC's sanctuary, the couple hundred of us in the overflow room did not have access to hymnals. The service was shown on a screen, but they didn't show the words to the hymns on screen, so we were left to our own devices when it came time to sing. I honestly can't even remember what the first hymn was ("Be Thou My Vision," maybe, or "Amazing Grace"?) but all these Methodist pastors, congregants, and friends were still able to sing all four or five verses together at the top of their lungs. It really brought tears to my eyes. That was a true "body of Christ" moment, and I know Howard would have been touched as well.

Praise be to God.

So...it might be a girl

We had our 20-week ultrasound this afternoon. We'd been prepping "Baby Wes" for days, saying "ok, be sure to smile big, and show us your wee-wee." Because of the Intelligender test, we were fairly confident it would be a boy. After all, the site says the test is 90% accurate in lab tests. (Only 80% accurate in actual usage, but that's because of human error and we followed the directions to a T!) You'll recall how distressed I was when the pee turned green, since I had my heart set on a girl. Over the last two months, though, I've talked to Wesley every day, and looked at boy clothes for him, and even let my quest for neutral bedding veer slightly to the boy side. He was "my little guy," and I got kind of attached to (the idea of) him.

As the day of our "big" ultrasound approached, Matt and I talked about how we would feel if it turned out to be a girl. Matt--though ecstatic about a boy--said he would be totally fine either way. I--despite my earlier desire for a girl--knew that I would feel a little wierd about the gender "changing," even just in our minds.

We told our ultrasound technician about the Intelligender test, so she was looking extra-hard for a penis, too. She checked out all the other organs, took lots of measurements and snapshots (all very cool!) and kept going back to the groin area time and again, each time without announcing any conclusion. Matt and I are both totally untrained, obviously, but each time we got a clear shot of the area, it sure looked like a girl to us. No pee-pees here! Just some white lines in the crotch that looked very much like labia. Finally, she said "well, we can't say for sure, but it really looks like a girl to me." See her crotch, with the little white lines? (Picture baby sitting on the glass of a Xerox machine to get a sense of the angle.)

So, Matt and I don't know what to think! We trusted Intelligender, but it really looked like a girl on screen! Ultrasounds are more reliable, of course, if you see a penis than if you don't, because it could just be hiding (and s/he did keep her/his legs together a lot). We're confused now, since we really want to know "for sure"--we are the Internet generation after all, the age of easy-access information! Right now, I feel kind of how I did when Intelligender said it was a boy. I had trouble picturing myself with a boy, so I couldn't think of the baby as one gender or the other, and didn't know how to talk to him. So, we'll let you know if we start thinking of baby as "her" and "Baby Kate" or not, or if we just live in limbo, like they did in "the olden days." Either way, s/he's a cutie, huh?

In closing, I can't help but think of this gem from "Monty Python and the Meaning of Life"...

Woman who's just given birth: "Is it a boy or a girl?"

Doc: "It's a bit early to be assigning roles, don't you think?"