New Life

I had the good fortunate and blessing of being part of the birth of little Johnny or Juan this week. It is too easy at times to let all of the ‘bad stuff’ that happens keep you down or in the mindset of saying ok now what is next? Yes, there was another multiple shooting this last week that killed 12 people. It is so depressing if you pay attention to the media. I was able to be totally taken in with the birth of this little six pounder.

It has been a lifetime since I was in the hospital with our little Heather. Unfortunately she wasn’t born in your typical way because she arrived 3 months early and was literally flown within a few hours to Mt. Zion a hospital in San Francisco that was 5 hours away from our beach paradise in Los Osos, CA. I don’t have any memory of actually seeing Heather without her being inside of an incubator or having a respirator sticking out of her mouth. It wasn’t until she was almost 4 months old that we were able to physically hold her. Yes, we could touch her and be with her but it required wearing a hospital garb, gloves and a mask.

The miracle of birth is always an experience that pushes you to see the good in life and realize that there is always hope. Yes, this little guy does matter and will have a large group of people around him that care and desire to see him get the best. I get to be in many ways a surrogate grandpa because the young mom decided to name him after our family. I know that being Godparents is a special honor that does bring about it responsibilities that are more than just an honorary title. My hope is that as little Johnny grows up that Anne and I will have the honor of helping him discover God in a real way.

Parenting starts from the time of conception when we decide in many ways what we are going to do with our little one. My prayer is that this single mom will finish school, get a job and be that mom that is able to multi-task and give her son the example of someone that isn’t afraid to work hard. She is very fortunate to have an amazing mom who already is an incredible grandma for little Johnny. It is a 24-7 time commitment initially with any newborn. Yes, it will be a few weeks or a month before the little guy can sleep through the night or sleep at least three to four hours.

I can now see how easy it will be to go around gloating when I have my own grandkids hopefully in the very near future!