Messages from home, missing my daughter

I just recently returned from a trip to St. Louis, Missouri that required that I remain away from my growing-like-a-weed, 3-month old daughter. Not ever having been away from her for that much time since she was born, I found myself missing her and her mother terribly.

I wasn't entirely without contact with her or Melissa while in St. Louis. Melissa took measures to make sure that I could hear Katie giggling and cooing in the background whenever I would call during the week. Hearing her little voice over the phone probably just made things worse. But it wasn't just the phone calls.

To sidetrack for a moment, before I left, Katelyn was having (to put it diplomatically) a bit of difficulty moving things along in her digestive tract. Melissa and I were both mildly concerned, though it never seemed to affect Katie's good humor. Thursday night marked the seventh day with no appropriate diaper activity on Katie's part, and Melissa mentioned she was going to try the old standby: prune juice.

Meanwhile, I was in St. Louis with almost a hundred other ministers, elders, and theologians from across the country, discussing ways we might bring about a revival of church planting in the churches of Christ. Our time was spent listening to short presentations, gathered around tables for tackling some of the concerns around church planting, interspersed with times of worship.

At one point during the day, after nearly an hour of worship, prayer, and powerful singing together, I looked down at my phone (set to silent mode, of course). The small red blink indicated I had a message waiting. Amidst the quiet prayers being offered around me, ministers kneeling and praying all over the room, I quietly flipped open my phone to see the source of the message.

Turns out it was a text message from Melissa, reading, "BABY HAD A POOP!!!"

Needless to say, my laughing out loud followed by slapping a hand to my mouth and looking around the room sheepishly didn't add to the worship ambiance. I promptly showed it to Dwayne, who himself contributed to the broken silences.

Sometimes you just gotta smile at the simple things in life.