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Hours ago, the news media announced that the U.S. Military had killed Osama Bin Laden, the reason “terror” is in the political vocabulary.  President Obama confirmed it a short time later:

This news caused me to pause for a moment:

Osama Bin Laden is responsible for the deaths of thousands between the various operations under his leadership, inclusive of the worst terrorist attack in this country, and therefore, it is good news that he has been neutralized from effective leadership.

He was killed. I would have wished he could have been tried during a publicly-aired trial. I think it would be fair to say that it would be impossible to find an impartial jury, but that’d be okay. That being said, having people testify to the amount of damage he did and the pain he caused so many would most likely make him proud of his actions. In reality, could there be a way to bring him to justice that is fair (taking the high road, right?), that would give peace to those impacted by his truly evil acts without giving him pleasure and ensure he could not continue contributing to innocent death?

We are celebrating. Yes, I’m extremely pleased Bin Laden is out of the picture. While we won’t awake tomorrow with the world as it was on September 10th, 2001 and, in fact, we may be facing a greater series of threats since we did kill him, in the grand scheme, it is better for everyone that he is not in effective leadership of anyone. However, we are still celebrating his death. I’m willing to grant that his death was necessary; that there would be no way to neutralize his effective control (e.g. his means and desire to kill) without killing him. Even if granting that, celebrating death isn’t the answer.

I catch myself somewhat…happy…that he’s dead. “We killed the bastard!” But, is that what Jesus would have done? Would He mourn that we couldn’t help him see the Light? Or would He have played him the Judas card, “Better for you if you were never born”? My heart says one thing, my mind another.

Can we celebrate the victory without celebrating death? How?

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Lent is just around the corner, starting with Ash Wednesday on March 9th. Vanessa and I are starting to plan our Lenten observances and there is one thing that is common this year to every year.

When we decide to give up something for Lent, we never want to start early. Lately, I’ve been spending more time than I should in front of the TV. When Olivia was born, we had to be awake a fair amount of the time. She would only sleep when being held–otherwise, she would be screaming her little heart out. No, we tried everything. Everything. Yes, that too.

I digress. Since we had all of this time awake, since ya know, too many newborns die when their parent falls asleep while holding them and they fall into a position where they can’t breathe, I watched about 75% of the entire Stargate SG-1 series in the first couple months of her life on Hulu. Unaware of how most babies actually sleep, I setup a number of my favorite shows to record on the DVR in the days before Catalina’s birth.

While I don’t need to kill the same amount of time, I’ve tried to watch the same amount of television. Bad move. Thus, we’re going to cut out a large amount of our television watching.

I know this should begin today and not March 9th. But, I want to go into overdrive and watch just as much (if not more).  Lent can’t come soon enough.

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We’re due February 16th.

That’s not very long from now. There’s plenty to do, but at the same time, we’ve been through it before so it’ll be fine.

In all of the final preparations for the new one, I hadn’t stopped to reflect on Olivia in a few months. I still have this mindset of parenting as this incredibly difficult thing. All of the old things: “Sleep is so crazy”, “Always so tired.”, “Blah blah blah.”

Sure, sleep is never going to be quite what it was pre-Olivia (nor will it be anything like what it was pre-marriage, truth be told), but it has normalized. I’ve adapted to the reality that I’ll probably always be tired until after the first cup of coffee in the morning.

Olivia, though, is an absolute charm. If I don’t shift my mentality out of the past into the present, I risk missing out on quite a bit.

Her football signals have grown to the point where V thinks it has migrated from cute to borderline weird (touchdown, safety, no-good/incomplete pass, first down, touchback, offsides, holding, false start, facemask, and most recently, delay of game). Her vocab is not as diverse–a few animal sounds, “dada”, “birrr” (basically the same word that she uses for bird and ball), “boo” and, maybe as of today, “mama”.

She does what she’s told–put away her toys each night, help with her diaper changes (throwing away her creations). She has very strong and vocal feelings about the foods she want at each meal, which TV show she wants to watch (she has a very limited TV allowance), which parent she wants and about everything else.

She’s incredibly independent (most of the time). I’ve seen parents do the “okay, I’m walking this way… you can do what you want” while on a walk. By plan, after a few feet, the kid becomes fearful and runs back to the parent, right? Not Olivia. She’s made it about half a block before I give in and run after her. I don’t know how much of a good thing that is for a 16-month old, but I digress.

Over the past 16 months, we’ve had to adjust quite a bit. But, in the end, the “worst” of it has been long over.