A Story of True Love

Today on my way to work I found myself contemplating something that I had thought about previous, but never carried the weight that it does now that I have my own son. The situation I was thinking about was what Mary must have been thinking when she realized how privileged she was to birth God's son, Jesus, into the world, and at the same time the curse she would bear the rest of her life for the same reason. Now before you scream "BLASPHEMER" think about the situation. At first it might not have been apparent to her what Jesus final mission on earth would be (death on the cross to redeem the world). It wasn't obvious to any of the Pharisees who were the spiritual gurus of the day, and it wasn't even known by his closest friends, the disciples, as evidenced in Peter's words when he says in Matthew 16:23 in reference to Christ foretelling his death:

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”

Jesus mission may not have been completely obvious to Mary from the beginning as many assume, but lets suppose that the angel Gabriel, who also foretold Jesus birth, told Mary that her Son would be the redeemer, or that at some point in Jesus life she understood that Jesus was not just a story of a miraculous birth, but the one promised by God to redeem mankind in Genesis 3:15. The gravity of this hit me pretty hard this morning as I listened to a Christmas song that I had never heard before. I have embedded a youtube video that includes the song, as well as the song lyrics describing the above situation:

Hold on now, i gotta take a deep breath
I don`t know what to say when i look in your eyes
You made the world before i was born
Here i am holding you in my arms tonight
Noel, noel, Jesus our Emmanuel


You`re here, i`m holding you so near
I`m starring into the face of my savior, king and creator
you could`ve left us on our own, but you`re here
don`t know how long i`m gonna have you for
But i`ll be watching when you change the world
I Look at your hand, they`re still so small
Someday you`re going to stretch them out and save us all
Noel, noel, God with us Emmanuel


You`re here, i`m holding you so near
I`m staring into the face of my savior, king and creator
They could`ve left us on our own, but you`re here you`re here
someday i`m gonna look back on this
The night that god became a baby boy
Someday you're gonna go home again,
But you leave your spirit and flood the world with joy


You`d be here, i`m holding you so near
I`m staring into the face of my savior, king and creator
They could`ve left me on my own, but you`re here you`re here
Hallelujah you`re here hallelujah
You`re here

The emotions that accompanied this realization were overwhelming and I found myself wiping tears from my eyes as I rushed to work (already late, whats new). Having a new son myself, and trying to put myself in Mary's shoes, and having to live knowing that someday my son would give his life in such a gruesome manner was unbearable. I can't imagine the burden that could have been if Mary did indeed know the future fate of her first born son. Certainly if Mary wasn't aware of the situation, God certainly was, and yet in spite of the pain it must have caused Him, he followed through with his promised plan, and sent His son to this sin ridden world to die for a race of wretched men. I say all of that to say that I am so thankful that our God wrote and directed the most amazing story of love that has ever been told. The timeless message of our creation as humans, fall into sin, promised redeemer by God, and then the fulfillment of that promise through the birth of a baby boy will never get worn out, outdated, or overplayed. The message of our salvation through His birth, life, death, and resurrection is just as relevant today as it was when the writers of the New Testament penned it on the parchment. Praise God for his super-amazing grace to each and every one of us undeserving and ungrateful humans. Be sure to thank Him today for His love and mercy in your life, as well as the salvation you enjoy through the blood of His Son. If you want to know more about this amazing story, be sure to check out viewthestory.com where you can learn how to accept Him as your savior and make Him the Lord of your life. You won't regret it.

Merry Early Christmas.

Credits: You're Here - Francesca Battistelli
Extra: You can download a free MP3 Copy of this song at Amazon.com

Ten minutes starting...now

I am going to attempt the feeble and foolish task of drafting, proofing, and publishing a post in under ten minutes. While that might sound easy enough for some of you, I am the type that tries to perfect the things that I take pride in, my writing being one of those. So enough blabbering, here we go.

Since thanksgiving things have been pretty hectic. We were supposed to leave the hospital on Friday morning, so after packing our whole room up, putting it on a cart, and taking 2 or 3 trips down to the car to pack all our stuff to go home, the pediatrician came in and informed us that Graham's temperature was a little high, and as a result we needed to stay an extra day...sigh...

We were glad to stay an extra day on the off chance that the temperature might mean Graham was sick, but since we later found out he wasn't that made it pretty inconvenient. Anyway, my parents rolled into town on Friday at about 2:00 and we had a wonderful time visiting with them. My mother of course being the emotional lady that she is, felt it necessary to baptize Graham as soon as she arrived. By baptize of course I mean cry all over the place. Not really, but it was an emotional moment. The first Bennett grandchild has arrived, with many more to follow I'm sure (Nate and Jon you both need to get moving...).

On Saturday we again packed our things and ended up rushing out of the hospital much faster than we had planned, and only took a few quick pictures on our way out. Actually four to be exact. My mother volunteered to take some pictures of us with our camera (Nikon D90...yes it is amazing as a matter of fact) and didn't realize the shutter was set to continuous. She pushed down the button to take the picture... and held it down snapping off four pictures before she realized you don't hold down the button on an amazing piece of machinery like a D90. She was a bit embarrassed of her blunder, but we did get four amazing shots of the exact same pose instead of just one, so...I fancy myself on being a "glass is half full" sort of guy.

Well my ten minutes is quickly drawing to a close so I better wrap this post up. Let me quickly apologize for any misspellings, insults, or stupid things that I said that I didn't have the time to edit out. I usually just go through the first time and type whatever comes to mind, so this is a peering into the workings of the brain of Jacob Bennett. Hope you enjoyed.

P.S. I do love my mom and hopefully none of this was insulting. Entertaining is one of her best descriptions, along with intelligent and witty :)

Our most Thankful Thanksgiving

And now, a moment with your favorite author, Sir Jacob Bennett.

Nine months ago our God, He knew,

We needed more than just us two,

He worked real hard for quite a while,

So we could see your toothless smile,

Now that you're here we can't think for one minute,

Of returning to life without you in it,

That's why this thanksgiving, though not at home,

Is the best thanksgiving we've ever known,

We thank our God for such great joy,

Our first and best holiday with our brand new boy.

Yes although corny and somewhat out of poetic rhythm, when inspiration strikes there is nothing left to do but go with it, and yes, this is actually the best thanksgiving both of us have ever had. Truly!

Not only for our wonderful blessing of brand new life, but for all the love that we have been showered with both by our God and our amazing church family and friends. The Bible says in John 13: 35:

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

Never has the love of our fellow christian brothers and sisters been so evident to us. The number of text messages, e-mails, phone calls, and visits we have received over the last two days has been overwhelming (in a good way). I think we have packed half of the staff fridge in the break room with left-overs from Thanksgiving meals that people dropped off at the hospital. We are so very thankful for the amazing friends that the Lord has blessed us with since moving to Bloomington-Normal just a few years ago. So for those of you who visit this page before we get a chance to say it in person, consider this a BIG THANK YOU!

Of course how could we have a Thanksgiving post without mentioning our amazing families as well. Laura's Mom, Dad, sister Kari, and two nephews (Maxy and Totey) made the trek across 3 states to be with us during the labor and delivery process. They were immensely helpful as the words "dilated" and "effaced" have absolutely no meaning to me. I need to write a dictionary for first time dad's and become a millionaire (look for Daddy Dictionary hitting stores in the spring of '11). Kari also left our house absolutely spotless for us which is a huge blessing! I'm not talking about just making sure the shoes were out of the door way either. I'm talking mopping the floors, vacuuming all the carpets, and emptying the lint traps. That girl knows how to clean! Thanks Kari. My family should be here tomorrow and I think my Mom will probably be pulling a trailer with about half of Kroger packed in it. A new "Grandma Cooker" is in town folks, following in the footsteps of the legend Gram D. whom we all miss very much!

Well, before this gets too long, let me just again thank our amazing and awesome God who always delivers on every single one of the promises given in His word. Make sure to spend some extra time in prayer today thanking Him for all the blessings he has given each of us.

Oh, and Graham says he is thankful for his mommy feeding him every 20 minutes and for daddy changing all 12 dirty diapers he had today.

Note to self: Read a book about using creative adjectives.

Graham, Guests, Goodies and...Starbucks!

Almost one day down and how time flies. It seems that although Graham was just born yesterday, his features and apperance have already changed significantly. When he was first born, the poor kid had a cone head which I promptly covered up with his little knit cap so he wouldnt be embarassed. Very concerned about his looks. Since then, his head has gone back  to its normal shape and is now a perfect little round baby head. His hair also looked curly when he was first born but only because it was matted down. After his first bath, his hair is nice, straight, smooth and dark. His nose was a little bit smooshed (very technical term) but has since shaped up and looks very normal as far as Bennett noses are concerned, and yes, it is NO doubt that the poor kid has my nose. Sorry Graham.

The nurses have been amazing and extremley helpful during the last 24 hours. I think our favorite was our nurse Cindy. It was like having a nurse who also happened to be your mother. She was one of those people that you meet every so often whose voice has a way of calming all stress. Our other favorite was Paula. If Cindy was a mother, then Paula was a grandmother. She was a little older, but gave Laura all the drugs she wanted, whenever she wanted them. So maybe like a grandmother from the other side of the tracks, but still super awesome and nice.

We have only had a few visitors so far today, Amy Freeze (thanks for the Starbucks), and Tia Bursack (thanks for the C section advice), but its probably better that way since both Laura and I are exhausted even though we refuse to admit it. Every time Laura has more than 30 seconds of down time, her eyes slowly shut, and she starts her little post-pregnancy, im swollen up and retaining fluid, snore. cute, and also a great way for me to tell that she shouldn't be bothered. Sort of like one of those cars with alarm systems that beep at you when you get to close. Nice feature in both scenarios.

Our teacher friend Tia

The rest of the day has been filled with learning baby care stuff, like how to change Graham's diaper which I have done TWICE now. I must say I am defiently not the best at it, but I can't imagine being the worst either. It took me about two or three minutes each time but mostly due to the fact that this kid can pack those newborn diapers out! I'm beginning to think a power washer might work better, so if you end up getting my name for Christmas, now you know. I also learned how to swaddle a baby which I probably could have learned from Matt Horine just as easily since he is a self proclaimed expert on the subject after being a dad for almost three weeks.

Well, I have to go before our next batch of visitors get here, the Knoblochs, who generously offered to bring Laura's favorite pizza of all time... Papa Johns. Hopefully the next 24 hours is just as full of adventure and learning as the first was.

Matt and Summer with Charlotte's card for Graham

P.S. Graham inherited the dreaded triple-sneeze gene from my mom and brother. I'm sure Aunt Nina will tease him mercilessly as he grows older, insisting on "blessing" him three times in his first sneeze. Sigh. Some things never change.

And now more pictures from our wonderful friend Summer Knobloch who very generously took and edited some amazing pictures. Check out the rest of her stuff at http://www.summerknoblochphotography.com. Thanks Summer!

CLICK ANY OF THE PICS BELOW TO ENLARGE THEM

He's Here

WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF THE BABY! Whoa there Speedy Gonzales, let's not get ahead of ourselves. After all, Laura and I were the start of this whole thing right?

I was recently given a piece of advice from a very wise and witty co-worker of mine when discussing our last trip home before the baby. His advice to me was to

"Enjoy this trip home, because this will be the last trip home that anyone waiting there will care about seeing you." 

Point taken. And for those of you who happen to be a little slow on the uptake, that would be translated roughly,

"The baby is the main course, and you are the cold green beans on the side that everyone knows they should pay attention to, but never really do."

With that in mind, let me go ahead and give you the spark notes version of our baby story and then get onto the important stuff...the pictures. On Monday morning, I went into work expecting another normal day. Laura's family was in town and she was technically supposed to be on bed rest, so she stayed home. I went through my first two hours of teaching, and was getting ready to leave for a scheduled doctor's appointment with Laura when she called and informed me she had been having contractions all morning. I quickly changed plans and thanks to Teresa Jordal (aka Mother Teresa of CCA) found a sub (or three) for the remainder of the day.

I met Laura at the doctors office where I promptly tried to show off my new name memory skills I have been working on, and embarrassed the both of us by calling Lisa the RN,  "Doctor Damaraen", who wasn't even in the office that day. Laura was checked by nurse Lisa and had not made any progress since our previous appointment on Thursday. Bummer! We were sure her contractions would have cause SOME sort of change. Apparently we were wrong.

We were given instructions to go to the mall, walk around for an hour or so, and then return to the doctor's office for another check to see if anything had changed. A bowl full of Panda House Lo-Mein and a few power laps later, still no change. Double bummer.

We went home and spent the afternoon lazing around and playing with the boys (Max and Sawyer) and then headed to Famous Daves with the Neisler fam for dinner. Laura starting having some pretty serious contractions at the restaurant and after timing them to be about 4 minutes apart, we decided it was time to head into the hospital.

We arrived quarter after nine, and after being checked for the third time in one day, still no progress. Triple bummer. We thought for sure they would send us home, but instead they kept us overnight and gave Laura some pain meds so she could sleep. In the meantime, I found something productive to do and started a LOST binge, finishing off the most amazing TV series I have ever seen.

The next morning, Doctor Damaraen came in, checked Laura, found little progress, and then promptly broke her water with little to no warning. Okay... so up to this point things had been pretty calm. I was positive we were going to be sent home and enjoy a regular albeit painful next few days waiting. However, when the doctor broke her water, things became real very quickly. I think I might have felt my face go white when I realized the baby was going to be here today! We thought for sure that things would really start to roll now. They started Laura on a med called "Petosin" which, for my two brothers that are reading this right now and have no clue about anything baby and have never watched "A Baby Story" on TLC, is a drug that they use to induce labor. Cha-ching! Baby any minute now right?! Wrong.

Let's just cut this short a bit and say that after waiting for quite some time, and a scare with irregular baby heart beats, it was decided that a Cesarean section was the way to go. The nurse came in and told us in a little over an hour they would be performing the surgery, and that I needed to suit up in full scrubs, and that Laura would be started on various meds in the next few minutes. We were only slightly surprised, and actually somewhat relieved for multiple reasons. The baby would be under less stress for one, and secondly Laura would get 9 weeks of maternity leave now. God knew what he was doing.

The hour flew by, and before I knew it, I was holding Laura's hand as we walked through the big hallways of the hospital and into their elephant sized elevators. Once we hit the area of the hospital that was freezing cold, I knew we were getting close to the surgery rooms. I was right, and about seven minutes later, our own little man Graham was bleeding on my arm. True story, when they first showed him to me, he got blood all over my arm. Tough little dude that Graham. The emotions overwhelmed us both and we shared a few thankful tears for the God who had protected our little man and brought him into the world unscathed. I watched with nervous anticipation as the nurse put him onto the little plastic table / cafeteria tray and suctioned out all the little holes where fluid could be hiding. He seemed to be breathing fine, and looked to be a good color, which I quickly reported to Laura who was still trapped beneath a blue sheet on the operating table.

The nurses asked me if I wanted to go see Graham while they fixed him all up, so I made sure  Laura was okay then walked over to his little tray. I noticed immediately that he was of Deshetsky blood. The first thought through my mind was that this must have been exactly what my Uncle Ralph looked like when he was born. He has my nose, Laura's big eyes and eye lashes, thick hands, long fingers, and lots of dark brown hair. He was perfect. They wrapped him up like a little piece of french bread and brought him over to Laura where we had a very kind Chinese doctor take a picture of Me, Graham, and the top of Laura's head (sorry babe).

Graham was then brought upstairs where he was welcomed into the world with lots of love, kisses, and of course cute hats from the Neisler clan (Kari, Max, Totey, Ma, and PaPa). I think the next few minutes were nerve racking ones for Verizon as we almost single handedly took down the Bloomington-Normal branch of the Verizon network. Pictures, texts, and facebook statuses were being sent to friends and loved ones around the U.S. thanking them for the prayers they  had been saying for us during the last day and a half.

We couldn't be more thankful for our perfectly happy and healthy little boy who, by the way, has an insatiable appetite and lots of poopy diapers... now I KNOW for sure this is exactly what my Uncle Ralph was like when he was born.

Ending one saga and beginning another

While this is supposed to be a "family-oriented" blog, I do currently compose half of that family so I figured I could make a post that is only semi-related to the baby stuff. For the last six months I have been on a quest to complete the entire LOST series. Many of you have already had the joy of finishing each season, and as of last night, I joined the ranks. 

While Laura was on pain meds for contractions and sleeping in the bed next to me, I popped in the last disk of season six, and waited eagerly for what everyone promised me would be a very disappointing end to the story that took over half a decade to build. I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that the ending was everything I could have hoped for (@ 2:30 AM). 

True there were still questions left unanswered (that's what bonus materials are there for) but if they answered every question you had ever asked yourself, and tied up every loose end, that almost would have been more anti-climactic. The island as well as most of the episodes were wrapped up in layers and layers of mystery. To have it all come unraveled at the very last second and to see clearly what was behind it the whole time would have been no fun at all. It's kind of like magic. The first time you see a trick, you know there most be some explanation for it, some method or slight of hand, but you have absolutely no idea how it was accomplished and it blows your mind. The first thing everyone asks is "how did you do that." They really think they want to know, but truth be told, if the method was revealed, it is more times than not much simpler than what the spectator was dreaming up. It turns the illusion from a mind blowing experience into something cheap, something they can explain away.

Enough of my rambling. Hopefully if you have had the privilege of watching LOST you know what I mean. If not, then I would highly encourage you to take the plunge, get a free one month netflix streaming subscription, and begin the most amazing series I have watched to date (with Band of Brothers being a tie).

And now its time for baby mushy stuff...

And now how do parallel universes and magic tricks relate to a baby you might ask. While it is disappointing to be at the end of a series that took up much of my free time the last six months, Laura and I are about to embark on a journey that will likely take up ALL of our free time for at least the next 18 years. Slightly more epic you might say (yes I know epic is overused). I couldn't be more nervous, and more excited at the same time. I know that life is going to change forever, and that lots of things are going to be different tomorrow than they are today. I trust that this journey, although not filled with explosions, black smoke, and electro-magnetism, will be much more exciting than anything I have experienced before. We look forward to sharing our journey with all of you through our face-to-face encounters as well as through this here blog. We will keep you updated as you keep us in your prayers...deal?  

Update: For those of you who are still lost (pun intended) as far as the whole LOST finale is concerned, or for any part of any season, check out Lostpedia. It's an amazing resource for all of us LOST freaks. Good luck!

A Labor of Love

As most of you are probably aware, Laura and I have recently had the blessing of becoming first time home owners. Owning your own house is wonderful! We are so thankful to finally have a place to call our own. As most of you also know, having your own place brings along with it the joy of maintenance and of course the necessary "upgrades." One of the first such upgrades on the list of upgrades to complete was the nursery. This was a project that I was equally excited about once I saw an amazing idea for a wall on projectnursery.com. Little did I know that once I had committed to the idea, it would be my sole purpose for existence during the next month and a half. The story and pictures of the (nearly) completed nursery to follow.

Things started off innocently enough. The room needed a new coat of paint, and since I myself tend to favor minimalist design, we decided to go with a slightly off tint mauve color in a horse hair texture finish... actually flat gray. I know, maybe not as exciting as what you were hoping for, but I just LOVE the look of clean lines and colors that are only slightly different in brightness. The other color, as you might have guessed, was white. The colors were decided, and off to our new favorite store we went, Menards. You would be amazed how many different shades of white and gray these geniuses and crayola have come up with (no seriously we used crayola color swatches in the store). after what seemed like an eternity, we were finally able to decide on "bright white" (shocker) and "mountain sunset" or something artsy sounding like that. Whew! On to painting.

Three of the walls were slathered (I'm horrid at "edging in" I found out) with two coats of gray paint, and the last wall got a coat of white primer followed by two coats of the cheapest white paint I could find. Then came the fun part. The wall we were attempting was nothing short of geometric perfection. A perfect crosshatch pattern that would give an end result that you might call something like "lattice." Being a Math teacher myself, I figured it couldn't be too hard to tape twelve perfect 45 degree angles, in two directions, across a crooked wall, with my pregnant wife... (slap to forehead here).

OUR ACTUAL CALCULATIONS

Not that you will care, but I will share the process that we used to tape these 45 degree angles in case you are ever in a pinch and need to do the same. Oh and hold up just a minute, before you go on to theorize how easy this would be, I want you to take a quick minute to figure out for yourself how you might have accomplished this feat. You go ahead, I'll wait right here...

(show your work here)

Done? okay, well as you might have discovered, it's actually sort of difficult. What we ended up doing was measuring the height of the wall, and then measuring that same distance from the bottom left corner of the wall and making a mark. Incase you are not aware of what shape is created when you have four right angles and four sides the same length, it happens to be a square. One of the wonderful properties of squares is that if you cut a square in half from corner to corner, the angles you will be left with are perfect 45's! Ta-Da! Now all we had to do was use that mark on the bottom and the mark on the top as our guides, and then mark 21 inch increments from there across the top and bottom of the wall. I know this is getting long so I'll do a quick bullet point summary of the rest of the process and then show you some pictures.

1. Measure the SQUARE and make our initial marks
2. Measure additional marks 21 inches away on top and bottom of wall
3. Snap blue chalk lines from top of wall to bottom of wall along corresponding measurements
4. Tape said chalk lines with $8.00 a stinkin' roll tape
5. Repeat for opposite direction

AND I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED PAINTING! You might now be able to see why this took so long to complete. Thankfully Laura was a trooper through it all and actually helped immensely with the taping and measuring process. Once the taping was done, I got out the gray paint again and went to town with a roller. I laid it on thick so it would only need one coat, and then pulled the tape off while the gray paint was still wet. The result was better than either of us could have imagined, and produced the sharpest paint lines I have ever seen. We were both SUPER happy with the result and I got a big kiss for all my hard work...totally worth it :)

Well maybe some other time I'll share the story of how we made the little glass mobile that hangs above the bed (don't worry it won't fall, I tested it thoroughly), but for tonight, I'll just reward your great attention by finally giving you what you actually came for... pictures! It's late, Laura is sleeping next to me along with the dog, and I'm hittin the hay. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the rest of our adventures.

The Beginning...

Well, this is attempt number 3 on my part to start a blog. It seems like each time I decide to begin one I am so excited and into it, and then life gets busy and the posts slowly stop. Well third times a charm, right? I'm determined this time around, and I have a little bit of motivation coming soon! :)
Jake and I thought this would be a perfect way to update everyone on the daily, realistically weekly, happenings of our baby boy, who should be here any day, and the changes we are about to encounter too! So, all of that to say....stay tuned! I promise to have another post up by the end of the weekend...maybe it will be letting everyone know that HE'S HERE! :)