Updates
April 24, 2008Okay, so, I’m a bit behind on releasing news here because I’ve had my eyes glued to reports about how the dire global economy has started causing serious food shortages. Seriously guys, Haiti’s government has completely collapsed due to mass food riots, Japan has completely run out of butter, and warehouse stores like Costco are rationing flour, rice, and cooking oil–in the U.S., of all places. Methinks it’s a good idea to start a family farm and hole up for a while.
But enough doom and gloom–here at Chez Stout, we’ve actually been stuffing ourselves (to the neglect of setting up a food stockpile, ayyieee!). And by “we” I mean “me and Nolan,” to the tune of at least 2 1/2 pounds of weight gain in the past two weeks for him! He is now 3 lbs. 14 oz., which places him in the 18% percentile of growth… as opposed to the 8%, which is why we were fearing a premature induction in May (see this article on intrauterine growth restriction for more details). He’s still going to be closely watched, and I’m still supposed to be on modified bedrest, but we’re all breathing a huge sigh of relief over here (well, as much as we can breathe, considering his feet are all now firmly pressing against my lungs. Baby growth does have its tradeoffs, unfortunately). Pray that he continues putting on weight and stays cooking until mid-June. I am by no means ready to have a baby sooner than that.
And of course, the good news (and consumption) doesn’t stop there: the Church Ladies threw us a jungle-themed, potluck baby shower this past Sunday and we had an absolute blast–though it did feel awkward opening presents in front of everyone. Nolan now has more stuff than Aaron and I had coming up here, haha! To our pleasure, a great deal of the gifts were purchased off of our registry at Target, but a fairly substantial amount were homemade. The people at Lake Hills are, as always, far, far too generous–we now have nearly everything we need to care for our baby, and they also continue to make sure we’re provided for concerning meals, which is a wonderful blessing. I will soon be taking pictures of the massive amounts of good quality stuff we recieved for a new blog feature I’m calling Fun with Flickr Fridays.
Also, through the use of mad internet skills, I was able to track down the person who stole my phone, including not only his name and address, but pictures of him, too. I called him immediately in order to possibly discuss the return of my phone and the $300 worth of downloads he had on it, but he claimed that he “just happened to buy the same model phone … uh… with your number on it” from a legitimate T-Mobile store, five days after I lost the phone. O RLY?? When I asked him how the numbers of all of his friends “just happened” to show up on my online contacts, two days after I lost the phone, he had no idea. Luckily, I kept track of all of my bills, in both hard copy and online. With this information, I called T-Mobile and was able to sucessfully contest the $300 charges against Aaron and I. (It still cost us $60 to replace the new phone though, sigh, but I was able to keep the same number.)
The most shocking part of this was that I recognized him from the pictures. This teenager in overpriced-shoes not only had the audacity to steal my phone, but to get off the bus immediately after I did and ask if I was okay when I collapsed in a crying heap at the bus stop. It was quite a long bus ride, and he was sitting next to me as I panicked, trying to find my phone. When I saw who it was, I was filled with a burning anger. I was fired up and ready to send the cops to beat down his door. It would have been easy to incriminate him considering how much evidence I held. Aaron then counseled me to forgive him, saying that there wasn’t any permanent damage done to us, and besides, he’s just a stupid high school kid whose family is probably struggling (blatant assumption made due to the fact that his mother spoke no English). Aaron’s right, of course, so I’m trying to forgive this person.
Heaven help me, I’m trying.
Forgiveness is great. But “his family is probably struggling” isn’t a reason to forgive him the theft of your phone as his toy, is it? Rather, forgive him his trespass, but you missed an opportunity to teach him something.
And if he was willing to play the little comforting angel game immediately after stealing your phone I’d be much more inclined to have the authorities intervene in his life; something has gone wrong with his upbringing and he isn’t just “getting by”; he’s creating victims.
I commend your relatively easy forgiveness but question the reasoning behind it. This boy is still, technically, a child and letting him get away with it because his family struggles will not make him grow into a good man, or help his family struggle lesson. Nonetheless, it is nice to see the forgiveness. Shame he doesn’t deserve it.
I agree, forgiveness is one thing, letting him move on to stealing bigger and better things because he gets away with this one is a disservice. I’m not sure if you’ve already reported it to the police, but you might want to, just to put a scare into the boy. It’s stressful to have stuff like this happen when you’re pregnant though, so I can understand why you’d want to just let it go.
I don’t think “because his family is struggling” actually entered into the equation (at least, not for me). Cassandra was hopping mad after figuring out who did this to her. That’s understandable. She had a strong desire to call the police, report the theft, and teach this guy a lesson. She’d have been well within her legal rights to do so.
Unfortunately, forgiveness and calling the police were mutually exclusive actions in this case. You can read above about her burning anger, her desire to have the cops “beat down his door.” She wanted to make sure he got in trouble for this. Would it have been legal? Absolutely. Ethical? Probably, depending on your ethical code. Biblical? Not in this case.
With respect to Biblical teachings, there’s nothing wrong with reporting crimes to the police. There is something wrong with doing it in order to get revenge. I think Cassandra chose the better half – before we try to intervene in others’ lives, we need to make sure we have our own under control. Although not everone takes the Bible as their authority, I hope you can respect that we do and that this is the right decision based on its teachings. She learned a lot from forgiving this kid. I think it made her a better Christian, and I’m proud to be her husband.
He may not deserve to be forgiven, but isn’t that part of the very definition of forgiveness? “To pardon an offense or an offender” – you can’t forgive someone unless they deserve to be punished.
…Besides, from what Cassandra told me, the kid was kind of freaked out that she tracked him down. He’s well aware that he got within an inch of the law. Hopefully he will see the error of his ways; if not, he has only himself to blame.
You should have totally kicked his ass. I don’t care who you are a good ass kicking translates into “next time don’t steal peoples shit” into ANY language!
Can you tell I’m way less forgiving than you are? I prolly should work on that.
In case you didn’t know, I found your blog through DadGoneMad. I’ve posted a complete list of everyone who left their blog link on his Big Big Stars post in a post of my own called Blog Rolling With My Homies over on my blog, so if you want to see it come on over and sit a spell. I don’t bite..…that hard anyway!
If you did know just overlook this since my brain feels like mush from trying to comment on all 217 on the list!!