A Time of Reflection

Life Update

Hi! It’s been a while.

I’m writing this from paternity leave where my family has welcomed a wonderful, beautiful baby girl home…at 5 weeks old.

She spent the first 35 days of her life in the hospital where we found out she has a few things going on: Situs Inversus Totalis and something called Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia.

The first means that her organs all developed mirror-flipped from the normal person. Yes, that means her heart is on her right side, appendix on the left, etc.

She’s a little backwards, but I love her ;)

The second thing is something she will deal with her whole life that has made it a little more difficult for her to breathe on her own. She has a hard time clearing gunk and phlegm and mucus out of her lungs like you or I do.

So she’s home on oxygen for an indeterminate amount of time, but is otherwise happy and healthy as a clam! Her lungs will just need some help for a while (and, honestly, there is a potential for her to need oxygen the rest of her life, but that’s a worst case scenario.

…

And during this time, I’ve spent nights in her hospital room, sleeping on pull out couches or recliners, reflecting on things.

And I’ve spent time in prayer.

More importantly, I’ve spent a lot of time in the prayers of others. Because there have been at least hundreds, if not thousands, of people praying for my baby and my family.

The entire time, despite it all, (and lemme tell ya, there are a LOT of emotions and thoughts flying through your head when you have a baby in the NICU or a child that gets diagnosed with a chronic disorder or disease) I have felt peace.

I didn’t know what her life was going to look like. I still don’t.

But I knew that, no matter how I felt, I trusted that I was part of the prayers of others interceding on my behalf (whether I wanted it or not).

Through it all, I prayed a lot of “give us today the food we need.”

While my own prayers have felt lacking in the past several weeks, I can rely on the prayers of others and the prayers of The Lord’s Prayer to sustain me when I can no longer sustain myself.

And with that, let me encourage you: you are never praying alone.

I’ve said this many times, but having lived it out recently truly brought it home for me.