“I don’t know why everyone keeps asking me if I have any questions when the truth is that nobody has any answers.” Those words stuck in my head for a few days as well as the face of the young mother who said them to me. She is a young, healthy middle class American who had a completely normal pregnancy. And a completely abnormal baby for reasons that even the specialist can’t seem to understand. This young woman and her partner had no thoughts that their pregnancy would end with heartache and a severely disabled child. The truth is that no one thinks that pregnancy will end that way. That happens to “other people” and “special cases” and “people who are older, younger, or don’t take care of themselves.” There is this assumption that everything will be fine if you are young and healthy or if you do the right things. But that just isn’t true.

        I am a person who tends to worry a bit. My husband describes me as a pessimist. Which I will sometimes confess to being. I know many women who go through pregnancy without any thought that something could happen to their unborn child. By the time they are eight weeks pregnant they have shared the news with everyone and are planning a nursery. I spent my first trimester wondering if my body would figure out that it was pregnant and needed to hold on to the baby. I have spent the second and third worrying that something will go wrong despite the fact that we have every reassurance that our baby is fine. One day the baby moves too little- perhaps the baby had a stroke in utero. On day the baby seems to move more and sometimes kick me in a slightly rhythmic pattern- perhaps the baby is having seizures. I have seen these things happen many times. Everyone tells you “everything will be fine.” But in my heart of hearts I know differently. Everything isn’t always fine. But I pray that little BJ will be while I brace myself for the fact that he might not be.

     A week ago marked my one year anniversary in my current job position in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The job was a longtime goal of mine and actually having it in my grasp seemed so improbable and wonderful at the same time. I spent the first few months immersed in the world of critical care. The unit seemed big and the nurses grouchy and all the information impossible to comprehend. The acronyms and medical mumbo jumbo rolled off the tongues of the staff much faster than I could ever understand them. I spent most of my time asking ceaseless questions: where do I find this item? why are we doing that? what does this machine do and why? what is that drug for? what does that mean? we are going to do what at the bedside?

      One year later I am still often overwhelmed with the amount of responsibility and activity that occurs within the walls of our little unit. The nurses are a bit more friendly and the words and procedures more familiar, but the job is not all it is cracked up to be. While I truly enjoy the position it does not hold the attraction and draw that it once did. I love the constant learning and being frequently presented to new and different cases, but I find that even in this there is not satisfaction.

“Indeed, I count everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him….” Philippians 3:8 ESV

“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” Ecclesiastes 2:24

   I am going to start this out by saying that no, I am not pregnant and no, I do not have children and no, I am not about to adopt a child. I do, however, work with children and know many people who have children and will one day probably want to have children of my own. And this is why the following interview with author Po Bronson caught my attention (to be fair, it caught David’s attention and then he mentioned it to me)

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112292248

This appears to be a shortened version of the actual interview, but interesting nonetheless. Curious if our library had the book I checked into it and put it on hold. I am number 151 on the list.

      David and I recently discovered that we are the proud owners of a red huckleberry bush. Native to Washington state, these pretty little bushes produce a small tart red berry. Like most people I am more familiar with the blue/purple version of this berry and did not recognize the bush offhand as one that had edible berries. In retrospect I should have considered this quickly considering the fact that every other fruit producing plant in our yard has proved to be edible.

At any rate, the delicious little berries have now ripened and it feels so terrible to let them go to waste. For part of the day today I was on a mission to save the huckleberries before they went bad. They proved much more time consuming to pick than I anticipated but I have a nice little container of them in my refrigerator. And a whole lot more of them waiting to be picked.

    Every Tuesday in the mail we get the local supermarket flyers and I sit down and peruse them trying to think through a healthy menu for the lowest price possible based on the grocery adds. It is not uncommon for me to visit two to three gorcery stores to purchase my weekly groceries. For instance, I always purchase milk at Trader Joe's because the 1/2 gallon is about 20 cents cheaper there than anywhere else and 20 cents a week adds up. Thier bananas are also 20-30 cents a pound cheaper than most of the markets. This week Top Foods has their honeydew for just 59 cents a pound and who could pass up such a wonderful treat while Albertsons has cherries for 2.98 a pound versus the other stores that list the new California crop at 4.99 a pounds. QFC currently has wild salmon for 3.99 a pound versus Safeway (where I normally buy our weekly fish) where it is 9.99 a pound (not on sale). Truly, I could spend hours trying to figure out the best possible combination. And every week I wonder to myself- is it worth it?