Perspective

I love my job. I love learning something new every single day. I love to sit and hold babies that have tubes and monitors and everything else on them so it takes 5 minutes to position in my lap, but as soon as we are both still that heartrate starts to calm. I love to pray for my patients, and it's amazing how the Lord prompts very specific prayers for each child. I love getting to see kids talk for the first time after they've been in a coma and see not only the faces of the parents, but the light in the child's eye when they realized they just spoke with meaning. I love getting to help a new Mom feed their baby for the first time and the cameras come out and it's such a special, "normal" moment--even though the baby is 2 or 3 or 6 months old. I love getting to work so closely with brilliant people who teach me so much, yet listen to what I have to say and even ask my opinion. I love all these things, but most of all, I love getting to know the families. The stories. It's so so so hard to have your baby in the hospital, but I think at this time the families are most vulnerable and just share their hearts. It's such a blessing to me to just listen and see the way the Lord weaves in and out of each and every story and each story gives me such perspective. His creation. His sovereignty. Even in the sick, very sad cases of abuse, neglect, drug/alcohol use, etc He is SOVEREIGN. Autism. Cancer. Inoperable brain tumor. Coma. Rare genetic syndrome affecting ability to eat by mouth. Heart transplant. Nonaccidental Trauma (abuse). Trach/vent baby whose family has abandoned him after 5+ months of hospital stay. Those were the diagnoses in the order that I saw my patients today.

Tonight I was looking at the blog of one of my patient's families and a Mom shared this. It's so true, so I'll leave it with my blogger buds :):


Holland:

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip-to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy!".

But ther's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced that Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for awhile and catch your breath, you look around...and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills...and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy...and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned".

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away....because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.

But, if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things....about Holland.

-Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987