Priveleged

I'm sitting in the living room of my amazing friend, Shauna's home.  Just breathing.

We've come out of the whirlwind.  My first time at NIH is already starting to fade into memory and story.  The edges are blurring and the sharp scary places are being covered with a layer of mental flannel.

And I get to be on the other side of it all.  I get to be here.  I get to stretch my toes out in the sands of the other side of it all.  I get to be Val--the mother of three beautiful daughters, the wife of the most amazing man in the world, a fretter, a worrier, and you know what else?  A perserverer.  A survivor.  A seer.

I've been reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp and thinking about counting up the grace that God lavishes upon me.  I haven't done so with pen and paper this trip, but I have kept running lists in my head.  Sometimes I was just going through the motions reminding myself of the bright spots in the midst of the fear and the pain and the hassle and the hard.

I counted Thanks for a husband's hand to hold, and a baby's coo, and a nurse who listened.  For Skype dates with my girlies, and hospital gowns that felt substantial, and a sense of humor to keep me grounded.  For doctors who reminded me of benevolent monarchs, and surgeons with cool names and gifted hands, and Fellows who don't sleep and patiently answer questions, and the kindness of strangers who are all in it together. 

I have sweated both the big and the small stuff these last few months.  I've narrowed my vision at times.  Plane tickets falling through and Taxi's not arriving and infections not going away just days before surgery and being scolded left and right for daring to have an infant and even worse wanting to feed her left me breathless and afraid.  They were small things.

I'll go home and sweat more small things.  The girls that I long so much to see right now will exasperate me.  There will be details to work out for the next trip back.  The weather won't cooperate.  And Andy will end up working a crappy shift when he goes back to work.

I will fret and I will stew and at times I will even feel a little sorry for myself.

But how amazing that I get to!  How amazing that I get to live this wild and crazy life with such beauty flecked in amongst the hard stuff!

I get to be here.  I get to hug this sweet snuggling beauty that is Alaine.  I get to squeeze the hand of my husband.  It may take a long weary day of travel to get there, but I will get to gather up my big girls and revel in their hugs and their stories and their complete oblivion to the enormity of what happened while Mommy was gone.  I get to walk through it all to moments like this when I can see with clarity that all of it--even the small stuff that I sweat in my narrow vision--is gift. 

Before we left, while I was stressing over the details for the gazillionth time, Shari told me, "Things have a way of working themselves out and when they don't we find our way through anyway." 

A lot of this trip felt like finding our way through anyway, but we made it.  I'll go to sleep tomorrow evening in my own bed surrounded by the people who love me most in the world. 

This world is dark and it is hard but it is full of such sweetness.  I know it's cliche to reflect like this.  I know that it just seems so predictable at a time like this, but the fact of the matter is, it's so freaking true. 

I'll go back to sweating the small stuff soon.  Maybe even in the next hour or so.  But for now I'm so blessed to really see that even THAT is something that I get to do.