365 Days with Toby
A video scrapbook from the crazy paths of parenthood…
On 31st October 2018, Tobias Onyx (ahem, pronounced ‘Onix’ not ‘Oinks’…) popped out into the world at South Lakes Birth Centre here in Barrow.
As has become Ham tradition, we’ve tried to capture a second of video for each day of his first year.
Why? Well, at one level I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for a emotional montage, but as one of our favourite singer-songwriters JJ Heller puts it:
“Everything is sacred when you take time to notice,
Big love happens in the small moments…”
We’ve tried to capture the mundane and the mediocre, as well as the memorable. There’s the tears, Calpol-heavy high temperatures, and a whole lot of tiredness. Admittedly, there’s also been a fair few parental tantrums, but they tended not to get filmed! You might even spot a paramedic…
But through the daily rhythms of family life, the LORD is good (‘Tobias’)!
Onyx, if you’re wondering, is a precious stone that crops up all through the Bible’s story, from creation to new creation – and a few significant places in between (like the Temple and the High Priest’s breastplate). There’s a lot of pressure these days on kids to ‘find themselves’, but we chose it for a middle name as a reminder that Toby doesn’t need to craft an identity or a story for himself, but rather we find life, hope and identity as we look outside of ourselves and discover God’s big story, centred on Jesus Christ.
Thank you to everyone who’s been alongside us in this first precious year of Toby’s life: family, church family, friends…
And Zoe, it’s been a joy to walk/laugh/crawl along this crazy path with you… life is meant to be spent! #OurLifeForTheirs
If you’re really trying to kill time, here’s the rest of the gang…