My baby is one month old!

Chiara is a month old today ... and I've decided that merited a change in me. It's funny how the Spirit works, and I'm finally responding to His prompting to be a record keeping woman.

I've had quite a spiritual journey during the last month. When Chiara had so many complications I honestly wondered if I'd been wrong about the nature of God. How could He possibly take my new mommy moments from me and make it a nightmare? I'd obeyed Him and worshipped Him and testified of Him all my life ... and He took away the joy I'd been imagining and anticipating for so many years. I had a really hard time not being angry. It was scary how clearly I felt my heart hardening. I literally questioned my faith.

I learned to breastfeed hiding behind plastic dividers in the NICU. I waited two days to hold her after she was born. I cried alone in my hospital room with every new report from the doctors without Eldon ... facial paralysis, skull fractures, internal bleeding, lung trauma, blood issues ... so many things. I came back to the hospital every three hours to nurse her - hoping Chiara's nurses would say she'd eaten enough to stop feeding her through a tube. I watched her in her little crib from my wheelchair because I was too weak to stand. She was attached to about a dozen monitors and looked so small and helpless there, bundled up under her heating lamp. Those were the hardest days of my life, I think. I was exhausted, I had complications from the epidural that kept me in constant pain, and of course I was worried about my baby.

But the Lord's ways are not our ways and we can always trust that He knows better than we do. I learned an immense amount of trust in Him this month. In the end I'm grateful.