Joyful Along the Way

"I wish I could know if we are sprinting a short race or running a marathon."  It was the only answer I had when my dad asked me how we were doing.  He was standing across from me, with Beckett in his hospital crib between us.  It was last September - about a week after Beckett had been trached and only a few days past one of his desatting scares in which nearly a dozen medical staff flooded his room in the NICU to help him recover.  "I think you've already been sprinting a marathon," he responded.   I felt a weight lift immediately.  It was freeing to have him affirm that this journey had already been long, heavy, and hard.  Freeing to have my pain acknowledged.  Freedom to call it a marathon, to slow down and pace myself.   Last weekend our little family was able to participate in our local marathon and the events included.  Brody ran in a youth fun run.  His little three-year-old legs pedaled out a full mile.  He wasn't  the fasted but he was steady,

I have heard the phrase "new 'normal'"  or "your 'normal'" all too often in the past 15 months; I have used it for myself and more people have said it to me than I can recall.  I hate it.  I really do, and I use the word hate incredibly sparingly.  "New 'normal'" means a very different life than anything I had pictured.  It means adjusting to change, significant change.  It implies there is at least some sense of a "normal" that we all come to expect in this life and that chance of "normal" will never be my reality. Over the months I have been grieving many "normal" things I expected at the discovery of pregnancy #2, things that are rightly anticipated when one finds out they are pregnant: I grieve my boys wrestling, I grieve Beckett running, I grieve having Beckett on my hip while I make dinner in the kitchen, I grieve juggling two kids while running errands, I grieve taking my two boys by myself to