Welcome to keepupwiththepaces! We count it a blessing that you are taking time to keep up with what God is doing in and through our life. Our hope is to share with you victories, struggles, and opportunities to walk with us on this journey. May God bless you as you have blessed us!
I know that I have never been great at multitasking, but learning to be believer, a husband, a dad, and a employee all that same time has proved that I am only not great at multitasking, but perhaps actually horrible at it! For two weeks now I have meant to sit down and update you all on the kids and life. However, I have yet to master the art of holding a child while typing; thus me using my lunch break to write this!
Before we get to everyone’s favorite part (the pictures!), I want to update you a few things going on right now.
Deedra is really an amazing mom! She loves and cares for Cohen & Lily so selflessly. She has been such an encouragement to me in the Lord as I have gotten to see her walk in this new role. I am proud of her and humbled by her example. Keep her in your prayers as she sleeps less than all of us and yet continues to lead the charge for caring for the twins. She is truly a blessing!
My (Jeremy) sister Samantha has been living with us for almost 2 months now. She has been an incredible blessing to Deedra, myself, and the twins. I am not sure that we could have made it this far physically and mentally without her. We are so extremely grateful for her selfless service and friendship. She is truly an example of a godly women. Yesterday, she found out that she was accepted into the Dedman’s School of Law at SMU, praise the Lord! We are so proud of her.
A couple other updates. Work for me is going well. The Lord is granting the opportunity to shape many of the comments of what leadership development looks like across the Mars Hill Churches; which is humbling. I am also getting to write more. I had a few daily devotions for Mars Hill go out on the church blog (http://marshill.com/blog) on April 10th, 18th, & 25th. I have also had a couple articles posted on the Resurgence blog (http://theresurgence.com) on Calling, Extreme Leadership, & Fundamentalism; and have a couple more that will be posted on the Gospel & Leadership and Empowerment in the next few weeks. The cool, humbling, and bit overwhelming thing is that an average of over 100,000 people visit those blogs daily!
Thank you for praying for discernment regarding our Lead Pastor Residency. We had 196 initial applicants, 68 which got through the first part of the extensive application, 36 more that made it to the next phase, 16 that made it past that, and 9 who are being invited out for assessment next weekend as the final step in the process! We are almost there, so continued prayers for discernment and wisdom are greatly appreciated.
Lastly, I have to mention this as a proud dad, on Monday Cohen rolled from his belly to his back all on his own! He is only 10 weeks old! Supposedly, babies do not do that until like month 4 or 5. He is definitely an overachiever!
Okay, now the moment you’ve all been waiting for, more pictures! Know that we love you and are grateful that you are with us on this journey. Your prayers are needed, appreciated, and effective. God bless!
Riding in style!
The sibling rivalry begins!
If they only would do this more often!
What a stud!
Mom with her little man.
First day out of the house, praise the Lord!
Celebrating our 6th anniversary Woodland Park Zoo style!
Such a beautiful girl!
One of my all time favorite pictures!
It seems like just yesterday that I posted the first pics of Cohen & Lily; both weighing in just under 5 lbs. Well, it has actually been a month and now the twins both weigh over 7 lbs! They are growing so very fast!
Cohen, Lily, and Deedra are all doing well, praise the Lord. For the most part, the kids are eating, sleeping, and chilling well. It has been a fast month, but one in which we could not have gotten through without our family. After Deedra’s mom and sisters left, my mom and Dad came up to meet their grandbabies! It was great to see them and they were such a blessing to us.
One of the things we are most grateful for is that my little sister, Samantha, has sacrificially committed to move up to Seattle and help us take care of the kids through August; praise the Lord! I am not sure what we would do without her. She has been such an amazing blessing and an example of God’s love for us.
Please continue to pray for the six (Deedra, the twins, Samantha, Pax, & myself!) of us as we figure out how to do life together and continue to minister to one another, our neighbors, and our church body. Pray for energy, patience, that we’ll walk in the Spirit, and that we’ll enjoy this season of life!
Thank you for your prayers and for joining us on this journey! You are a blessing. Hope you enjoy some more pictures!
These first 3 pictures where ones taken in by a professional photographer the day we came home from the hospital. Compare them to the latest pictures and you can see how much they have really grown!
Lily is so beautiful!
Our little man!
One happy Pappy!
Aunt Sam & her favorite niece!
Sibling rivalry begins!
As promised, below are more pictures of Cohen, Lily, and the fam. I have to confess, I am pretty sure that these are the cutest babies in the world!
Thank you for your continued prayers. I really cannot express how grateful we are to the Lord for you. As I proudly post these pictures, I cannot help but think that if we were still in Texas that many of you would be getting to meet Cohen & Lily face to face. Don’t get me wrong, we know why we are here and we are grateful to the Lord that we get to be apart of making disciples and planting (starting new) churches all over the world. Yet, we very much miss our family and friends, especially in times of celebration like this. Know that we love you and look forward to the day when we can see you again. God bless!
This is Cohen's "chill" look. It also happens to be his primary look; praise the Lord!
Lily is our attentive one. Her eyes are almost always open, scanning her new world to see what is going on!
While I think Lily appreciates having some room outside of the womb, every once and while she likes to remind her brother that she hasn't gone anywhere.
The boys hanging out.
For all those skeptics out there that thought Paxton would loose his spot in the family, think again!
Deedra and I had been praying for discernment and clarity on when to go to the hospital. For two weeks she had been experiencing changes in her pain and contraction rates, but we never really new when labor actually began.
On Wednesday morning (2/16), we had scheduled appointments for a sonogram, a none-stress-test (NST), and an appointment with our OB. After the sonogram, we were waiting for the NST and Deedra had a very “different” contraction. Once the nurse hooked Deedra up to the machines to monitor the babies’ heart beats and her contractions, it only took a few minutes to realize that the Lord had granted us clarity because Deedra was in labor!
The nurses wheeled us across the hospital complex and we began what would be a long day and night of labor. After about eighteen hours, the doctors realized that Deedra would need a C-Section in order of Cohen and Lily to join us.
At 7:21 am Cohen Maddox Pace was born! He was 4 lbs. 15.5 ozs. and 18 inches long. At 7:22 am Lily Alana Pace joined her brother in the world! She was 5 lbs. 2.8 ozs. and 18.5 inches long. It was such a beautiful, surreal, and emotionally overwhelming moment!
While both babies where healthy, there were still technically premature, so the doctors moved both of them to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for a “transition period”. I was to hold them before they left, but remained with Deedra as the doctors finished the operation.
Afterward Deedra was escorted back to our room and I headed up to the NICU to check on Cohen and Lily. By the time I got upstairs, Cohen was ready to try and feed which marked the end of his transition. I was able to take him downstairs to with him mom almost immediately, praise the Lord! Lily, on the other hand, was having trouble regulating her breathing so she had to remain in the NICU for several days. To be honest, the hardest part of all this was seeing my sweet little girl all hooked up to machines and not being able to hold her or take her to meet her mom.
On Saturday morning, the Lord in his graciousness answered our prayers and Lily was able to officially join the family! We were discharged on Sunday afternoon and have just enjoyed our first night in our home as a new family!
We are so grateful for all of our family and friends and the prayers that have been lifted up for Deedra, Cohen, Lily, and myself over the last few days particularly. The Lord has been merciful and kind to us in so many ways; especially through each of you. We are also extremely grateful that Deedra’s mom (Lana), and sisters (Alicia and Brook) for getting quick flights out to Seattle to be with us in the hospital and help us take care of Cohen of Lily. They have truly been a blessing.
We are home now. The kids are doing well and mom is healing nicely. We are bit overwhelmed by it all, but are excited for what is ahead for our family. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Thank you again for joining us on this journey!
As much as you have enjoyed the narrative, I know what you are really hoping for is pictures, so here you go!!
Cohen and his beautiful mother!
Our little Lily's first few days in the NICU. Still so hard to look it, but we were blessed by the wonderful NICU staff.
Early close up of Cohen.
Lily's first day with the rest of the family.
Just in case you were wondering how our "other child" was doing while we were away...
...pretty much continuing to enjoy life! Now the question is, what will he think after a few days with the babies at home!
Lily and Cohen enjoying a nap this morning! Don't worry, there will be more pictures soon!
We just returned from a full day of doctor appointments. Praise the Lord, Lily, Cohen, and Deedra are healthy and progressing nicely! We are at 35 weeks and 2 days. The average delivery week for twins is 34 and full term is 37, so we could be meeting our kids any day now! Below are pictures of mom, the kids, and a few other happenings over the last several weeks for you to enjoy, but before you do I wanted to update you on my job and ask for some specific prayer.
I have really enjoyed my job as Leadership Development Manager at Mars Hill. I have a great team and it seems like the work we are doing is timely and beneficial to all the Mars Hill Churches. On January 15th we launched four new churches and also a Lead Pastor Residency Program (http://marshill.com/pages/serve#pastor-residency). The program is designed to assess and equip men to start new Mars Hill and Acts 29 churches around the country. Our prayer is that we would be able to find 10 men this year to train through the program and send out to plant 10 new churches. This is a huge undertaking and so I would very much appreciate your prayers for wisdom, discernment, and that the Lord would make clear to us the right men.
A couple of other quick updates, I am starting to write for the Resurgence which is a leadership blog. My first post went up this past Sunday, and you can find it here: http://theresurgence.com/2012/02/05/developing-a-philosophy-of-ministry. I am also finishing up the elder process with Mars Hill as we are getting more and more plugged into our local church in Ballard. Please pray for more connection and deeper biblical community. We want to serve others and we need others to help us along our journey of maturity in Christ.
Okay, as promised, here are some pictures that tell a better story than my words! Thank you again for joining us on our journey. Your prayers and the realization of your staying up with us continues to be a great blessing to Deedra and myself. May God bless you as he is so abundantly blessing us!
The snow was gorgeous, but it also meant we were trapped in our house at the bottom of a hill for 3 days!
Mom and Pax modeling the nursery as it slowly but surely comes together.
Deedra thought it would be nice to model the aprons that at the moment are a little tight!
We sent this picture to Deedra's sister Alicia and her little girl Anna...
...Now everytime Anna sees it she lifts her shirt, points to her belly, and laughs!
This was the clearest shot we could get of Lily; her foo! She is just not a fan of the camera.
Cohen on the other hand loves the lime light.
That's a double wide glider behind Deedra. Apparently twins require double of everything!
We finally finished the nursery!
Any Day Now!
There have been some (Cassie Bryant!) who have said that I (Jeremy) am a bit of an overachiever. While I am not sure if such a description applies to me, it may very well apply to my kids! This week we found out that Cohen and Lily are well above average size for “singleton” babies; which means that they are huge for twins! I am one proud dad, though Deedra’s reaction to the good news differed (for some odd reason) from mine!
We also found out that Cohen is pretty much taking up all the room in Deedra’s belly, so while little Lily has appeared shy in the sonograms the reality is that she is just squished.
Below are few pictures of mom and the kids. Thanks again for your prayers and for joining us on our journey. Please continue to keep Deedra and the twins in your prayers as we are just a few weeks away from them joining us.
Cohen!
Our precious little Lily
Family pick in the "room of death"!
Just to give a little perspective on how far we have come, this is Deedra at 16 weeks...
...this is Deedra at 30 weeks and that is the same shirt!
Just in case you wondered who is who!
Tuesday will mark the beginning of the 28th week of our pregnancy. 28 weeks! It seems like just last week when we found out we were pregnant, and just the other day that we left for Seattle. We are 7 months into our pregnancy, 3 months into our new life here in Seattle, and just a couple of months away from meeting Cohen and Lily!
Time is flying! So as we cruz along through this season into the next, we want to give glory to God for his mercy and blessing upon us, let you know about what we are doing, and share some pictures along our journey.
God has been so merciful to us through all of the transitions, stresses, and opportunities this year. He has been clearly before us and alongside us through each turn of our journey. We are grateful for how he has blessed us through our family and friends, our children to be, and the opportunity to serve him here at Mars Hill. Most of all, he has blessed us by sending his Son to die on our behalf that we might know him and that we might get to live the life he has for us. We give him praise for he is worthy.
I am enjoying my role with Mars Hill Church. It is exciting to be a part of what God is doing in and through this church. In January, we are launching 4 new churches in 3 different states. You can find out more about Mars Hill, what God has done here, and what he is continuing to do, and how you can pray and participate here: http://marshill.com/.
One of my responsibilities is to help develop a Lead Pastor Residency program so that we can recruit, train, and send out dozen of church planters each year. We are going to be opening up this program in January. Please pray as launch this exciting program. Pray for faithful men to be raised up and for the resources needed to do so.
Deedra, Lily, and Cohen are all doing well, praise the Lord. Our doctor said that Deedra is the ideal patient and the the babies are growing directly on pace. Below are some pictures chronicling the babies growth and our preparations. Enjoy and God bless!
Papaw pointing to the prize!
Deedra's favorite time of year! I hear such things are hereditary!
This may now be my favorite picture!
Paxton is helping us test out the new furniture!
Yeah, that's two car seats!
