I stared at my one week old sleeping baby as I tried not to slide off the seat. The ambulance driver was not the best, to say the least. My baby was wearing an oxygen cannula, which wasn’t actually hooked up to oxygen yet, and we were on our way to a children’s hospital two hours away. The doctors weren’t sure why she wasn’t breathing well in her sleep.
They just knew she wasn’t.
The next week was followed by an ICU stay, where a child down the hall died, a child next to us wasn’t breathing well, and our baby lost color as the nurses gathered in panic. I still felt like I hadn’t really slept since delivering her. An hour or two here and there doesn’t really let you get caught up on sleep. My whole body felt like it was shutting down. I even hallucinated in a half dream/half wake state at one point from exhaustion. I thought we were going to lose her. I remember not being able to put one foot in front of the other because I was crying so hard.
Two months later, and after much arguing with doctors who made me feel crazy, I convinced a doctor to let her get a sleep study (she let her so that “mom would feel better about it.”) Turns out, she had the most severe form of sleep apnea doctors had almost ever seen, and we were sent to trauma ICU the next morning.
Next was a series of unnerving talks with doctors, failed IV and blood test pokes on her, and forgetting to eat which led to the hospital calling a code on me because I apparently fainted.
We were sent home with oxygen and a pulse ox, but no answers (we now have more answers, but that’s for a later post.)
The getting pregnant was a two year process full of failed treatments and tears, and the pregnancy itself was full of massive bleeding, miscarriage scares, bed rest, severe nausea that almost required hospital admission, a congestive heart failure scare, and a number of EKGs. And, when she was born, we found out she had barely been hanging on to the placenta, had weird heart beats, bad jaundice, and a broken clavicle.
We have been through the ringer. I’ve lost close friends that bailed, and I’ve gained close friends that decided to love me for no reason. We’ve gotten super sick, cried super hard, had days that felt like hell let loose demons in our lives, and nights where I was so traumatized I couldn’t stop shaking.
And you know what?
It sucked.
It sucked, it sucked, and it sucked some more.
I should tell you all that I’ve learned from it. That I’ve grown into so much better of a person because God works all things for good and He had a purpose and it was a beautiful mystery of sheer grace and all the cliche things I should say but all I’m going to say is…it sucked.
I’m so tired of trying to spin everything with a positive twist. We do that. WHY DO WE DO THAT?
Sometimes your grandma dying just freaking sucks. Your dad having a heart attack sucks. Your husband losing his job sucks. The fact that you can’t get pregnant sucks. And it’s okay to cry and cry and cry and say it sucks.
Because you can’t heal from saying something is okay when it really does suck. You have to own the suck, acknowledge it, take a swim in it, but don’t drown in it. Admit to yourself that that break up, that divorce, that fight...sucked.
Stop saying there’s a reason for everything. Just say it sucked and start the slow process of healing from it.
Okay and yes, for disclaimer’s sake, God can work the situation out for the good, there can be a reason behind it, and you can grow. Blah, blah, blah. But sometimes -not always- but sometimes, bad things just happen. They just... happen. No explanation.
And. They. suck.
Be okay with saying it sucks. And then start to heal.