I carry your heart

I love you because God gave you to me. The enormity of your eternal soul gets to me sometimes, it seems too big to handle. Not overwhelmingly big, but humbling big. Humbling because, for this small moment in time, God has asked me to care for you.

This life I never wanted, but said yes because I felt the pull of God. It’s a vocation fulfilled. It’s everything I was afraid of, everything I was running away from, but it fits and is so right.

We didn’t have an easy start you and I, and we were separated for quite some time. When the nurses brought you over I looked at your pale little body and then smiled at the camera for our first photo. I didn’t think you were real at first so looking at you was too hard, so I looked at the camera. And then I was alone.

I was wheeled into recovery, and was left to wonder about you. Sure nurses came in and out, Maj J stopped in at one point, but really I was left to wonder about you. What you were doing, how you were, what you looked like. I don’t remember praying, but I remember thinking that God was here, and He knew my heart. The words I could not pray were being heard. No longer inside of me, I knew you were your own person now. I want so badly the strength to be the person God wants me to be for you.

You were so very gentle with my body, and I thank you for that. I felt you move but they were always graceful movements, no hard kicks or jabs in the ribs. You were there, you were gentle. Even now, you do not ask for much.

I frequently look over to make sure you’re still breathing. You little life next to me makes me feel a heavy sense of responsibility, a responsibility I feel neither worthy of nor ready for. I want to do everything right and it drives me nuts that I know I won’t. I am going to screw up, and I pray I don’t hurt you in the process. I know I will, I know I am not perfect. I know I will hurt you, physically, spiritually, and mentally. It’s how it goes, it’s what being a parent is all about. I am not going to do everything right. You’re my first, so you’re kind of the experiment. I get the privilege to see you, to see who I am in you.

I don’t know when I’ll stop being nervous something bad is going to happen to you (I’ll possibly never stop being nervous). Some days I’m afraid I’ll wake up and it was all just a dream, that you somehow won’t be here, or that somehow you’re not mine.

You've changed me forever. In a very scary and thrilling way I will never be the same. In what ways I won’t be the same, I don’t know yet. But your little life next to me holds promise beyond measure. You are a gift, and I will spend my whole life letting you know what a gift you are.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

~EE Cummings

Change

I wasn’t ready for life to change as much as it did in such a short time. But the ironic thing about life is that the tighter you hold on to something, the faster it slips through your fingers. I look back and wonder where the time went. I was always told that the older you get the faster time goes. Well now I’m living that warped time speed and I don’t like it. It’s getting harder and harder to hold on to the moments.

Life has completely changed since I first started this blog. I’ve gotten married, met a pope, and am having a baby-all within a very short amount of time. I read back through old posts and my biggest worry was how I was going to pass nursing school, and deal with a military move across the country.

I used to work with religious sisters, and they absolutely changed my life. An important lesson I learned was that change was good and should be welcomed. If things didn’t change, how would we not become stagnant in our faith. How would we fight complacency unless we were able to not only say “Lord thy will be done”, but live “Lord thy will be done”.

And some days I’m sad. I was the first of my close friends to get married, the first to have a baby, the first to really graduate college. My life is moving in a different direction, and it’s not like I am not friends with them anymore, but somehow in someway things are different. They still get to go out late at night, drink whenever, and not really have major worries beyond themselves. They don’t want to hear me complain about how different my body is acting or about all the things people don’t tell you about pregnancy (even in nursing school there’s stuff my body is doing that was never covered in my classes). And even though we’re separated somehow, Christ has still bound us in friendship. It’s just a different relationship now, and I wasn’t ready for all the ways they would change.

And so as life continually changes, the one person I cling to is Christ. For when everything changes He stays the same, He is the constant. And I pray somehow, someway my kids will have that same love for Him. Especially as this world gets crazier, or as they grow in and out of their own friendships, that they remember the greatest friend of all.

a little catch-up

Well what can I say, too many things in life changed, and I was too busy living to blog about it.

I got married-something that took a lot of prayer and a lot of trust in God. It's something I learn more and more about everyday, and reflect on how holy of a vocation it can be.

We went on our honeymoon 2 months later (you know after the holidays and stuff since that's what nursing calls of you).

And we are expecting our first child...all in a matter of 3 months life has drastically changed.

What doesn't change? Love of God.

What I first found out I was pregnant, I did not accept it as God's will. It's so easy to toot a pro-life horn, but so different living it.

The reason I didn't want to be pregnant...PRIDE. Well if I had to pick one it might as well be the root of ALL evil right?

You see I was prideful that I, a nurse who had tracked her cycles for 2 years, couldn't make NFP "work" when it finally came time to put it into practice. And now all the birth-control-loving people at work would say they were right and I was wrong. If you really want to "control things" you have to take it into your own hands.I felt like I had something to prove.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I don't want to control things. Anytime I've ever done that in my life it's NEVER worked out. I want God to control things.

More so if I am going to live the pro-life message, that's what NFP is for. To say I don't know what will truly happen, but I trust and I am open. Even when I don't want to be open or I don't feel very trusting, I WILL. It's holds not only my soul and conscience accountable, it holds my husband's as well.

And what was I trying to prove? That God's plan is the best, and that being open to His plan brings so much JOY. I truly feel that in my heart, and I pray that the people I work with see that.

Some days it's really hard working in the healthcare industry that says  a child's life is only worth something when it's wanted. That ALL life is only considered human insofar as much as it's deemed wanted or useful.

Well haha I work in that industry, and I don't buy that lie. Now it's time to lie a life contradictory to that.