Thomas

We still only had one vehicle, which often made it hard on Laura. There were other CBN employees who lived nearby with whom I would ride share. But if none were available and Laura needed the car, she had to get the kids up and drive me to work in the morning. It was time to try find another vehicle.

Many young couples are aghast at the notion of buying a mini van. They think it gives them the aura of no longer being young and wild and free. They consider mini vans part of the conspiracy of domestication. We were not one of those couples. We were part of the practical, comfortable and easier mini van point-of-viewers. We were on the lookout for just such a ride, albeit on a very limited budget. 

Car dealerships are notorious for sending out those sale mailings – you know the ones with the key that they try to entice you with to go try unlock the car but you will definitely win something if you just come to their dealership with the certificate? Well there’s a lot of psychology that goes into advertising but specific advertising generally is not about influencing everyone. It’s about influencing those who are in the market at any particular time for what they’re advertising. I was in the market.

Despite my skepticism, I decided to give it a shot. Of course my key didn’t work but they had achieved their purpose of getting me into the dealership and sicced a young salesman on me. I was not going to be manipulated by the sales gimmicks. I knew what I wanted and I knew how much I was willing to pay and that was that.

I told the salesman my conditions. He looked around and found a van in the back. It had just been traded in so it wasn’t on the front lot yet. It was one of the smaller, older Dodge Caravans but it had under 100,000 miles on it, which is what I was looking for. It also had a roof rack, which would be very helpful for trips, as it had minute space in the back.

The salesman talked to his manager and they came in a thousand dollars above what I wanted to pay. I said no, hoping they would come down. They didn’t. I told them thank you and prepared to leave, hoping they would reconsider. They didn’t. I left, all the while going around and around in my head about whether what they were offering me was a good deal or not. Before I got home, I decided that it actually was.

I was using a mechanic who had a shop very close to our home. As I knew very little about cars, I called him to see if he could take a look at it. I went right back to the dealership to accept the deal, pending my mechanic’s inspection. Thus we entered into the practical, comfortable, easier mini van domain.

Another reason we thought we needed a van was that we were expecting another baby. Several of our friends already had three girls and I was good with having another one. But I was also now ready to have a boy if it came to it. A number of people in our church were having four and five or even more children but we were probably going to stop at three. So I would have liked to have a son to carry on my father’s family name. My brother had had two girls so this baby was the last chance for that. Laura had never wanted to know what we were having and this time, since I would be happy either way, I agreed to not find out.  

Again, if we had a boy, we would name him after me – Stephen Thomas Williams II but call him Thomas to avoid confusion in the house. Laura had once talked about having twins and Thomas means twin. Alexis was convinced we were going to have twin boys – Thomas and Jordan. Strangely enough, the doctor did discover a second empty sac.

Just before the due date, Laura’s sister, Diana came to help. Once again, a Williams child’s due date came and went. Diana’s return ticket was approaching, Laura was very uncomfortable and she and Diana wanted to induce. I had a different opinion. I believed that God would have the baby come in His timing. I didn’t think we should mess with that. But Laura was two weeks late by now and her discomfort grew by the minute. Diana was able to change her ticket and we decided to go ahead and schedule the inducement.

Once again, Laura wanted no drugs. We went into the hospital early in the morning of October 5th and had the baby in the early afternoon. As it came out, I checked the tell-tale sign and through tears excitedly exclaimed, 

                                                                            “It’s a BOY!”

Another baby, another stork announcement


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Bit of A Wander

That summer our family went travelling. My father had a speaking engagement at a YWAM base on the island of Cyprus so he took us with him. Cyprus is an island in the eastern Mediterranean that has been contested by Greece and Turkey for many years. It is now an independent country but Turkey still controls the northeast. The YWAM base was right near the border between the two sides. We were told not to go up into the nearby hills because there were land mines. From there we traveled to Israel. We stayed in an apartment in the new part of Jerusalem, arranged for by a Messianic Jewish friend we had known in Hawaii. For some reason, Samuel and I spent a lot of time at the apartment playing cards but we did get to see a lot of the sights.  We got to run on the walls of the old city of Jerusalem. We went inside the Dome of the Rock or Al Aqsa Mosque, which is built on the site of the destroyed Jewish temple. It is holy to the Muslims because that is where Muhammed was supposed to have a...
Read more

A Challenge

Image
That first vacation in the Outer Banks began a seven-year tradition. As the kids got bigger, we moved on to a six-bedroom house in the same neighborhood so the girls could split up into two rooms. I found different adventures to break up the week each year like jet-skiing and go-carting or a trip down to the southern-most island. We also started a mini-golf night tradition for the dads and kids. The ladies were only too happy to have a night to themselves. As the kids got too big for my sand pools, I started to take them out boogie boarding, until we eventually held boogie-boarding competitions with me as the judge. I tried to not show favoritism but my kids usually won. In the later years, everyone started getting into surfing. We would play various games on the beach and made teams to compete in relay races. One year, inspired by the Summer Olympics, we set up all the boogie and skim boards to create hurdles. Back at the house, we began to teach the older girls how to play strategy g...
Read more

Outer Banksious

Image
We finally moved into our new house and just as we were getting settled in, we went on what was to become a vacation tradition. Just south of where we live, there is a string of barrier islands in North Carolina called the Outer Banks, which is a big vacation spot. For years we had been talking about getting together with some other families to rent a big house all together for a week. Our friend and pastor, Eric Hughes told us and our other good friends, the Waskos that, despite the fact that none of us had a whole lot of money, we should finally just go for it. We all agreed and I went to work. While Eric and Brian Wasko are the more visionary types, I am good at the details. I researched finding a house to rent at a price we could all manage. Both the Hughes’s and Waskos have four children so there were 17 of us all together, with 8 girls and 3 boys. The houses have a maximum occupancy so I had to find something with the right configuration of rooms and beds to handle all of us. I f...
Read more