One day my mission president, Michael Hoer, asked his wife, “Why is it that difficult trials happen to everybody else and not us?” Sister Hoer didn’t think that was quite true. She responded by listing a few trials she felt they had faced, proving that they had gone through their fair share of rough patches. President Hoer responded to each point, explaining why it didn’t count as a real trial. Sister Hoer later remarked that President Hoer doesn’t have trials, he just has new adventures.
When I heard Sister Hoer tell this story it struck a cord with me, which is probably why I found myself thinking about it in the NICU. My son William was 4 days old and had trouble breathing for no apparent reason his first three days of life. We had successfully weened him off of oxygen, antibiotics, and IV fluids, and he seemed to be holding his own. We were planning to take him home the next day, and the nurses had set up a series of standard tests to be sure he was ready for the wild world outside the NICU. To my shock, he totally bombed his car seat test, meaning that the poor kid couldn’t keep his oxygen saturation levels up while sitting in a car seat. This wouldn’t keep us from going home, but it did mean we had to bring an oxygen tank and respiration monitor with us.
I was devastated. It might seem silly, since we were still homeward bound, but after days of beeping monitors, holding my baby’s hand while his stomach was pumped, sinuses flushed, lungs vacuumed, and IVs were placed in both hands and feet and eventually the side of his head, after crossing my fingers as they did an ultrasound on his murmuring heart, examined his possibly-clubbed foot, and deliberated about whether or not he really was deaf in his right ear, I had hoped to leave the monitors and breathing tubes behind. I thought we were going to make it scott free, finally driving our baby home like normal parents and I couldn’t help wondering, why my baby?
So there I sat in my rocker next to my baby’s NICU station, trying not to cry in front of my husband, 100 doctors and nurses, and the REALLY tough moms and dads whose babies had been in the NICU for weeks and months with no clear idea when they’d ever get to leave. And then this memory of my mission president flashed into my mind and I realized “This isn’t a trial, it’s an adventure.”
Suddenly, even though nothing had changed, I felt completely different. What’s so great about having the same newborn experience as everybody else, anyway. We didn’t have a baby to keep up with everybody else’s plain old vanilla lifestyle. We had a baby to bring some spicy and adventure into our lives, and if oxygen tanks and monitors were part of the deal, then I’d take it.
It was in that moment that I really decided I needed to start this blog. I’d been thinking about it for a little while as a way to get myself out of my own way. My husband had sparked the idea in me, actually. We were talking about parenting when he observed that all the unpleasant things about parenting are required and the fun stuff is optional. Parents have to deal with the crying, day and night. You can’t escape the poop, the spit, the demanding feeding schedule, and the nagging worry that comes with a baby. But the snuggles, the cheers every time he lifts his own head, the quiet moments singing lullabys… Those are completely optional. And it’s the same with life. Car batteries die, it snows on your spring wedding day, illness, bills, heartache, and loss invade everybody’s peace once in a while. But the beautiful summer sunsets, star-gazing hikes, and spontaneous forays into unknown environments are yours to miss.
I am occasionally so focused on the details of life that I miss the adventures that are there for the taking. So this is my way of fighting back. I want to live in the stream of life and enjoy it, whether rapid or still.