Springs...

What an incredibly exhausting week! We are quickly approaching 4 months with little Kaylan in the hospital and it has not gotten any easier. In fact, it seems to be getting even harder at times. We are so worn down from the multiple daily trips to the hospital, normal life routine, and taking care of a newborn. It’s a level of exhaustion that’s new to me. It’s beyond a mental and physical tiredness; it’s a fatigue that seems to have crept in to my soul. Sure, there are times when I have good nights sleep or get some good rest, but the routine of not only dealing with life, but having to process and internalize Kaylan’s recent analyses and diagnoses has really crippled our energy levels.



After almost 5 weeks of hearing “she just needs more time” from the doctors, they finally started an aggressive approach to finding out what is wrong with Kaylan and how to go about treating her. Now that she is finally on 3 medications including a diuretic and Prevacid, they performed another swallow study to try to figure out why she isn’t able to consistently complete her feeds. They did a series of trial and error thickeners and nipple sizes until they think they’ve cracked the code. It turns out that she had been aspirating on her feeds so they’ve upped the nectar content to slow the milk down so that she can handle it. So far, it seems to be working, but we are only a day in, so we will have to see. We are just glad that they are finally doing something to help get her home.


I was raised with the idea that faith is a constant. You either have it or you don’t. There is no in between. It is like a brick. Concrete. Absolute. Firm. Always solid. I am learning that faith is much better described as a spring or a bungee cord. There is time for expanding, stretching, growing, accepting. And there are times for contracting, questioning, giving, challenging and then repeating. I am leaning that Brickianity, for me, does not work. The minute I have God figured out with my definitions, my timetables, my expectations, my nice lines, then I am no longer dealing with God. I am dealing with someone I made up to fit my wants/needs. Someone I can control. Over the past few months, Brickworld, for me, has crumbled and I am learning to live with the faith of springs. Not my timing, His.

So as we continue to muster up energy to handle the craziness of having 2 babies in 2 different counties, I am being streched like a spring.  But as I am learning, spring-like faith is much more real than that of a brick.