The Secret of Life

Lately, I feel like I'm realizing just how much I don't know about life. It is incredibly humbling...and disappointing....that after 26 years, I don't have more answers. In my personal life as well as my career, I've been blessed with so much. Yet at the same time, I've seen some pretty difficult things. When I'm faced with the tough situations, I don't know even know what to question. How are these things in God's plan? How do you make sense of a shaken baby? Why are babies born everyday to abusive and neglectful parents, yet people who could truly provide a wonderful and loving environment for a child are unable to conceive? I don't know if things like this will ever make sense


But then I think of other situations where, at first, things were very hard to understand....a little girl with spina bifida who is unable to move her lower extremities. A few days post-surgery on our floor, she is able to wiggle some toes, and her mom cries with tears of happiness because they never thought she would ever do that. Even the small miracles in my life lately, like my sweet cousin who had breast cancer a few years ago and is having a healthy baby this January, despite the teratogenic chemotherapies she received in treatment. Seeing some of the bad things play out in a good way makes it a little easier to swallow the tough things in the present, at least for me. Like I always say, that's how I cope :)




I've always tried to believe that there is a reason for everything. My mom believes that the reason my parents moved to Kansas City is because I was supposed to go to nursing school there. My dad's heart condition got a little bit worse down in Kansas City, but we were lucky because they had good doctors there who referred him to the right place to get it fixed. And now he is doing so well! I also believe that I found red dirt music in order to connect with some of the best friends I could have ever made, which in turn, gave me the confidence to find my own "adventures" in Austin.But I think about some of the more difficult things in my life as well, like having bad luck with a person who I thought was a friend, and I can realize what blessings came out of them as well......definitely not then, but NOW I can see them. Things are okay.




I hear all the time from people, " I don't know how you do it, being a pediatric nurse," or "I just couldn't stand to see kids sick." But honestly, I view it differently. I've always loved taking care of kids and just being around kids because of their outlook and their ability to adapt. Kids don't want to be sick. Kids want to be happy. Kids are hopeful and resilient. And what they need from us, as caregivers, can be as simple as a little hug or a kind word or even a smile to reassure them that things are going to get better.




I really don't have the secret of life in this. I doubt I really am making any sense at all. But I've just been thinking that kids have the right idea. I've been trying to look at things with a more resilient and hopeful outlook as well.


Unanswered prayers, like Garth says, are some of God's greatest gifts. There aren't reasons for everything that we can really see in the here and now, but in the big picture at the end of our lives, I really want to believe it will all make sense. Like in Faith Hill's song, maybe the secret of life is that there isn't any secret. We just need to quit thinking and questioning when it doesn't go our way at first......because maybe its supposed to go another way. If we're as resilient and as hopeful as we should be, we'll have a much better chance of seeing it for what it is. And eventually we'll find our way, the way we didn't know we always wanted.







What I'm listening to: "That's the way"- Eli Young Band