Happy Birthday to Marisa!!

Today was such a sweet day -- good for my soul.  Luke and Gretchen and I got to drive down to celebrate Marisa's first birthday!  (The child who will sleep in the car is the one that got to go :)  Amelia spent the day at the pool with my parents so was having fun too!) Sweet baby girl is already turning one!  What a perfect day -- beautiful weather and food and people.
It was an intense week at work -- a week in which I love what I do -- I feel like it is such an honor and privledge to get to enter into peoples' stories and lives at such vulnerable times.  This week I worked with an amazing family that is facing heartbreaking decisions about the health and life of their child ... I cried with them and prayed with them and it never ceases to amaze me how people will allow their nurses into their lives and hearts in powerful ways.  My job changes me.
I don't always know how to transfer what I do into my home life.  Parts of it I keep separate for survival purposes (I've done pediatrics for enough years now that I'd be the most paranoid mother alive if I let every story impact my parenting).  Parts of it make me want to grab the sweet moments of life and hang on to them just a bit longer.  Parts of it leave me wondering why.  Parts of it make me KNOW that suffering and joy exist in this life in a strange tension that we are all struggling to figure out.  Today I soaked up getting to spend a whole day in the sun with my boy and some of my favorite people in the world.  Today I watched Marisa enjoying her first birthday cupcake surrounded by people that love her. Tomorrow may have troubles I can't even imagine yet.  But I will live in today and trust Him with tomorrow.