Rick Beeman

I haven’t written in this blog for quite awhile.  Its not because there hasn’t been big things happening in my life, because there have been many big things.  Rather, I don’t want this to become like a Christmas card.  Christmas cards are when you get those form-like letters telling you how great the sender is, and what amazing things they accomplished over the last year.  But the truth is, this is Christmas card, its unavoidable.   I just feel so incredibly blessed right now.  Things in my life are going very well.  That is not say that my life is perfect.  My life is far far far from perfect.  Yet I have developed an attitude and methodology of looking at life and it really works.  I’ve said it many times before in the space of this blog and it bears repeating.  Instead of focusing on what I don’t have, I simply focus on what I have.  I have a beautiful wife, a healthy and happy baby girl, a new house, a dog that lo...

I apologize that it took me so long to get this up here.  Life has been busy, but pretty fantastic.  I feel like I am the most blessed man on the planet.  Having a new life to be responsible for sure helps you keep your perspectives and priorities in check. God is faithful.  I'll write a little bit more in an update later this week.  For now, a picture is worth a thousand words. Rick

It was a nice moment earlier tonight.  Jennifer was taking a break from baby duty, my mother, father and I were on the couch.  We were all watching a movie.  I am pretty sure my mother was in heaven as she was holding Sloan while she slept.  I believe Sloan is different for her then most other grandparent-grandchild relationships.  Sloan is a little bit more than that.  I think Sloan represents not only God’s faithfulness to me, but to her as well.  Not only did I lose the relationship with my children like I used to have, but she lost her relationships as well.  They used to be very close, now they barely speak at all.  Its just another tragedy of divorce, the kids lose out on all the relatives as well.  When my divorce happened, it really hit my mother much harder than myself.  Why, because I knew how to channel my hope through faith. I learned to have peace in the midst of the raging storm.    For my mother, it w...

I went to the movies today.   Going to the movies is one of my most favorite things to do in the world.   I was reading Wild at Heart by John Eldredge a few years back.   His theory was that God speaks to us most in whatever mode are most passionate about.   That could be nature, athletics, music, etc…   Well I am very passionate about movies and that is where he really speaks to me.   To be honest he speaks to me all the time because I have learned to listen, but I feel his presence most when I either watch movies or listen to sermons from Joel Osteen or Steve Madsen.   So I was watching a movie today, Cowboys and Aliens.   I love going to movies, did I say that already?   I estimate I’ve probably seen over 15,000 in my lifetime.   But please don’t ask me how many fiction books I’ve read.   I think you can count them on both hands and 20% of those were written by Alexander Dumas. (bonus points if you can guess th...

The first few days of Sloan Violet Beeman’s life have been quite harrowing.   As a parent you feel helpless sometimes.   Sloan was just a little over 12 hours old when Jennifer was feeding her in the hospital room.   Suddenly she started spitting up.   Jennifer quickly grabbed the aspirator and tried to clear it but it didn’t work.   Then Sloan started choking.   We quickly called the nurse.   The nurse took one look at her, had a panicked expression and whisked her out of the room.   Jennifer and I just looked at each other not knowing how to react.   What do you do in that situation?   After a few anxious minutes of trying to console a near hysterical wife we both tried to calm down.   I (by experience) have learned no not stress about much.   God has proven to me time and time again that he is in control and I trust him implicitly.   But there was just something about this that was different.   In...

Sunday night was a pretty eventful night.   At about 9:00 PM we got our first and only (so far) offer on our house, which had been on the market since March.   We went back and forth and finally agreed on a price.   The next day we were scheduled to go into the hospital for the induction.   So Jennifer on Monday being a very 9 months pregnant hoofed it with our real estate agent to look at 12 houses to buy.   I think this was important.   The hospital finally called us at 9:00 pm to tell us that a bed had opened up.   So we got our bags and headed off.   We got admitted right away.   Jennifer was already dilated to one centimeter and was experiencing contractions already.   She was going to try to have the baby naturally.   I think all the walking helped.   We were trying to do whatever we could to avoid a C-section.   That was the plan if the inducing didn’t work.   For Jennifer’s health, we had to get this baby o...

For children, divorce is like the father grabbing the left wrist of the child and the mother grabbing the right wrist in a tug of war for control and affection of the child.  Kids are obviously the ones injured in the tussle.  Alienation is using words and actions so the child will shun the other parent in the tug of war.  I for the most part have let go of the wrist in order to not further harm the children.  Here is how Wikipedia describes Parental Alienation: Parental alienation is a social dynamic, generally occurring due to divorce or separation , when a child expresses unjustified hatred or unreasonably strong dislike of one parent, making access by the rejected parent difficult or impossible. These feelings may be influenced by negative comments by the other parent and by the characteristics, such as lack of empathy and warmth, of the rejected parent. I have mentioned past illustrations of alienating actions in previous versions of this blog so I wont re...