It’s late summer 2020. The house is quiet and dark and I’m awake. Jordan is asleep beside me and the girls are tucked in across the house, their little girl hair sprayed across their pillows, their chests rising and falling slowly, rhythmically. I have visited them a few times already to kiss their cheeks and whisper prayers of thanks and protection over them. I’m so grateful for these people - my husband and my children. I love them so much it terrifies me. That’s a new feeling, the fear - like a fog that always hovers just over top of every moment of motherhood now, of life. ​

I’m only a few months out from feeling my whole life spiral out of control when Bonnie was rushed into emergency surgery for a septic joint. For weeks words like “could be cancer, could become septic, could lose the leg” were lobbed at me while I floated somewhere outside of reality. And the toll her illness took on my emotional, mental, and spiritual life still reverberates my insides in ways that sneak up on me. It is the closest I have ever come to my world crumbling and running through my fingers like sand. It was the first time in my life that I was the real grown up, the decider. The one everyone looked to for what we would do next. I was the one at the center of her care. - the one the doctors looked at first when they came in the room. It was the closest I’ve ever come to crushing pain. To losing what I love the most. I didn’t. She was fine after all of it. She doesn’t remember any of it. But I’ll never be the same. And tonight, months later, here we are in the the thick of a COVID surge. So right now, lately, I don’t sleep well. 

After I check again that everyone is safe in the quiet dark, I stare at the fire alarm light blinking blue on the ceiling. A secret thought is running through my mind and I don’t understand it. It’s a whisper I can only hear in the quietest most secret place in my heart. But it’s scary because I know now in ways I didn’t understand before that this desire would be my greatest joy, but also could be the source of my deepest sorrow if I ever lost it. I want another baby.

Tears fall because I’m too scared to ask for it. Too scared to want it. We’ve already decided we’re done. I should be grateful. Not push my luck. I have three healthy children. No one would understand. I don’t even understand. But tonight and really every night lately I feel the pull of another soul who is connected to mine across space and time. We are already connected. We always have been and we always will be. But what keeps me awake is a sudden awareness of the existence of this soul and the thought maybe we are meant to be together in this life, in this world. 

My fear of what might go all wrong is palpable and paralyzing. I don’t want to hurt the way that love sets me up to hurt. But to love is to be vulnerable- able to be hurt. So I can hide from pain and limit my love. Or I can risk it all and open myself to great suffering with limitless wide open love. It seems obvious to choose love, but I think we all hide from pain in our own ways. We qualify and justify and deny and evade love because we all know deep down that if we love big we will get hurt. 

So I hide. For months of nights I stare at the blinking fire alarm light and wish away the desire to love another baby. It’s too risky. I’m already in too deep with the people I love now. The suffering will find me. It will find them. And that feels unbearable. The anxiety of it all crashes into my body in panic attacks and headaches and a racing heart. I quit alcohol and caffeine and sugar. I exercise and read and pray and eat well. I take supplements and get blood work done. And while my insides are healthy my soul still isn’t, because my soul is made for limitless love. And I am still living limited. 

Time goes on like this. Limited. Afraid. Closed. Wounded. 
​
Now it is early 2021. I have tried to will away, pray away, clean lifestyle away my fear, anxiety and my secret hope for another baby. But it all still pulses through me, asking me to give in and give love a chance. Give God a chance. So finally I speak it out loud. I tell Jordan that I want another baby. And he is so honoring and so gentle, but he does not understand. We do not see each other. He is here in our real lives, I am away in our could be lives. But for months we work and work to find each other. And when we do, everything changes. A baby is coming.  
And while this prayed for, begged for baby grows in my belly, I pray every day that I hold a healthy baby at the end. I am terrified that it will all go wrong - that I have asked too much and gone too far and that it will all slip right through my fingers and I won’t be able to handle it. 

But God doesn’t work like that, I’ve learned. He doesn’t bait us with a desire and then switch it all just to teach us a lesson. Pain and sadness happen and life can go all wrong. And He can work through our pain to create beauty, yes, but I don’t believe he causes our pain to make a point or teach us a lesson. I didn’t know that I believed he might work like that until I was begging him not to. My faith was so weak.

Selah. His power is made perfect in my weakness. On January 17th, 2022, the precious soul who called out to mine is embodied in a beautiful 7 pound baby boy. He is placed right in my arms here on Earth. And heaven celebrates with us. We found each other, or rather, we were guided right to each other. We were always going to come together, but by grace, we came together in this world in God’s perfect timing. It is all as it should be. And we float here together in a thin place - where the space between Heaven and Earth comes so close they almost meet, they are only a whisper apart. ​

We have a name picked out, but it isn’t really his. He tells us his name. Grant Michael. Grant for a spiritual desire granted us in this world. Michael for my dad, and because God ushered him right to us as a holy gift. He completes our family and settles my soul. The future is unknown, and my fear of all this love still edges in. But for a flash of eternity here in this life, the six of us are together. The chances of it are impossible - that we’ve met each other here. So I’ll call it a miracle every day that I breathe. And I’ll rejoice in knowing that for all eternity we will never be apart for long. 

Grant Michael, I have loved you forever. And my darling beautiful boy, we are not limited. We are limitless love.

We all have stories that shape us - a lifetime of experiences and interpretations, assumptions and conclusions drawn. We form opinions and shape our world view based on how we interact with and interpret the world and people around us. We engage with the world everyday based on dozens of stories we’ve come to believe. Sometimes, though, it’s worth re-examining our stories, questioning them, and asking ourselves some honest questions. Why do I believe what I believe? What experiences taught me this? Does what I believe still serve me and help me? Does it serve and help others? Does it point to the glory of God? Is my story true?

In my life, I have found myself in lots of untrue stories that don’t pass the re-examination - stories like, ”I’m not a good mom.” “I can’t get through this.” “I’m not smart enough or qualified enough for what I’m trying to do.” “I don’t have any friends.” and “I could do it better than her.” These stories come from a place of perfectionism and scarcity. When I look at them closely, they don’t serve or help me and they certainly don’t serve or help others. They do not point to the glory of God. They are not true. And they are not my stories anymore. 

But lately I have found myself examining another story. It’s the story I tell myself that doctors are good. That they have my best interest at heart. Right now I am seeing so many people doubt, defy, and even out right call doctors liars. So I decided to examine my own story to see if it still holds. 

Here is my story and these are my findings. 

This is Dr. Raines. He’s my dad. And he’s a family practice physician. His job and his patients are a huge part of my story. He’s written a whole lifetime worth of chapters in my story about doctors. When I was a little girl, he worked some nights in the ER. I remember going to visit him and being so intrigued by the tiny little closet room with a rickety cot where he would pass the nights between patients. We’d maybe take him dinner or just stop by for a few minutes, and then we would leave him there. My mom would wrangle the three of us home by herself, feed us dinner, clean up, put us to bed, and go to her bed alone. And he would wait in that rickety little bed with the fluorescent light flickering in the hallway until someone needed him. And then another someone. And then another. All night. When he got home in the morning, we would ask how his night was. Sometimes he would say “Pretty quiet.” Sometimes he would just raise his eyebrows and say “Busy.” I always kind of wondered what he saw on those nights. I know in the ER he's delivered babies, sewn up gashed legs, pulled bugs out of ears, and rushed to heart attack patients. He’s treated prisoners and politicians and millionaires and poverty stricken. His ER nights are one one chapter in the story I believe about doctors. That chapter is true. It is good. It serves me to know that someone is waiting in that rickety little bed for my emergency. And it serves others that he was. It points to goodness and it glorifies God. I believe what that chapter taught me. 

As a teenager, I was really excited when my parents let me have a phone in my room. It was, of course, just a phone to the landline for our whole house. But now I could talk to my friends in privacy without having to whisper in the living room, unless of course someone picked up the phone downstairs and I had to yell, “Hey I’m on the phone!” Sometimes, though, my dad would pick up the downstairs phone and just say into the line, “Katie, I need the phone.” I would get off immediately. He had to answer a call. It didn’t take long to learn to unplug my phone on nights when my dad was on call. I was stunned at how many middle of the night phone calls I had been sleeping through for my entire life. Sometimes he would just talk, and sometimes a minute or two after the phone rang I would hear him walk down the dark hallway and go out the door. His truck would crank and disrupt the night, and he would go to the hospital. Sometimes he would come and go several times a night. He’s been to people’s homes in the middle of the night. And he’s been called to the side of the road where the kids in the car were the same age as his sleeping children just a couple of miles away. He doesn’t talk about that one. But I know he was there. He would go where he was called and he would help. Sometimes people died, and he would  be the one to tell their families. I can’t imagine that. Then he would come home and wait for the next call. Those constant phone calls form another chapter in my story. It is good. And it serves me to know that someone will answer the call in the middle of the night and come to the hospital or to my house, or to the side of the road to try and save me. It serves others that he did. It points to goodness and it glorifies God. I believe what that chapter taught me. 

There are so many chapters my dad has written in my story about doctors. I could never detail them all. There are the basketball and football games when I was a cheerleader in high school. Sometimes a player would get hurt and lay writhing or motionless. I would glance sideways at him and watch him sit up on the edge of his seat. If they didn’t get up fast enough he would trot down onto the court or the field and he would help. He was always on. He answered every call. 

There are the dance recitals, dinner parties, weddings, and family gatherings where he’s been pulled aside and asked for help or for his opinion. There are the house calls he still makes or the times he tells someone “Just come by the house and I’ll take a look.” More people than I can really count have told me about my dad. “I’ve followed Dr. Raines all around the South Georgia, to every practice since Cuthbert. I’d follow him anywhere.” “Your dad saved my life.” “Your dad saved my grandmother’s life multiple times.” 

He didn’t have a cell phone when I was growing up. He had a pager. It would beep and a phone number would appear. He would get up immediately, find a phone wherever he was, and call the number on the pager. He didn’t always know who he was calling or what would be needed on the other end. He would dial, wait for an answer, and calmly and clearly just say, “This is Dr. Raines.” Any time we heard that in my house we would all quiet. No fighting, no interrupting, no distracting. Someone needed him. He had to answer a call. 

My dad has written most of the chapters in the story I believe about doctors. But there are other doctors too, who have penned chapters in my story. In 2019, Bonnie was 18 months old. She was healthy. She had never even had an ear infection. One day she woke up limping. Just like that. Fine one day, limping the next. No injury. No fever. We called my dad and he said she needed to be seen. Over the course of the next month we had an entire team of doctors working for Bonnie. Her labs were normal. Her scans were normal. Her knee tap was normal. But she was not getting better. She was getting worse. And there was never a doctor who turned us away, dismissed us, or belittled us. 

Her local pediatrician gave me her cell phone number, “Call me with any changes”, she said. She called to check on Bonnie after she dropped her kids off at school. She met us at the office early before her first appointment when we were worried. She made sure Bonnie was seen by the best specialists in Jacksonville. On our end, we contacted every doctor we knew. From Alabama to Georgia to North Carolina to Louisiana to Massachusetts, we called every college buddy and sorority sister turned doctor we could think of. Every one of them stepped away from their dinner table, from bath time, from date night to answer our call. They listened to our story and asked us questions. They suggested new tests to ask for and questions to take to her doctors. And every single one followed up to check on her. One morning, Bonnie went from stable to critical in a matter of hours. I called her pediatrician and asked if I should bring her in. She said, “Take her to the Jacksonville ER right now. I will call and tell them you are coming.” That night Bonnie was taken to emergency surgery. There was an on call pediatric orthopedic surgeon at the hospital passing the night on a rickety cot in between patients who needed her. She answered the call and performed surgery on our baby at midnight. Probably, she saved her life. And while we were in the hospital, Bonnie’s doctors left their own babies sleeping in their beds and they drove to work in the dark and made their rounds and helped Bonnie. 

These doctors wrote a more recent and terrifying chapter in my story, and still when I examine it, my story still holds. Bonnie’s chapter serves me because doctors saved her life. And it serves others because they will be there for the next baby. And for that next baby, they will also step away from the dinner table, from bath time, and from date night. They will pass the night on that rickety cot. They will drive to work in the dark. And they will answer the call. This chapter points to the good of others and the glory of God. I believe this chapter. 

Yesterday my dad lost two more patients to COVID. They didn’t have to die. He is tired and weary and frustrated. Every day he sits with people who don’t believe it’s true, don’t believe it will happen to them, and don’t believe their decisions affect the community at large. They choose a story I don’t understand.  Of course I know they have a personal story about doctors that is shaped by a lifetime of experiences and interpretations, assumptions and conclusions drawn. I wonder if they have examined it lately. And I wonder if it still holds. I wonder if their story is one that serves them, serves others, and points to the good of others and the glory of God. I wonder if their story is still true or if they can leave it behind because it’s not formed in truth, but in pain and fear. But I stand firm in my story. And I know that tomorrow, my dad will answer every call, even from the ones who don’t have a story like mine. And he will try to help every person.

My story stands the test. That is why when my dad calls me and tells me firmly that I need to be vaccinated, and when he calls me to make sure my children will be wearing masks at school, I depend on the story I still believe about doctors - that they are good, and that they have my best interest at heart. I remember the nights they spent in the hospital away from their families long before COVID. I remember the house calls, the constant phone ringing, the basketball games, the patients whose lives they saved. I remember the decades of answering the call for the good of others and glory of God. And I choose to trust my carefully examined story. It is formed in truth and goodness. This is Dr. Raines. And I stand with him. 



Notes: 
A special thank you to the doctors who helped us with Bonnie in 2019, Dr. Melissa Wood-Katz, Dr. Chase Samsel, Dr. Laura Beth Gandy, Dr. Courtney Self, Dr. Clare Budden, Dr. Grant Zarzour, Dr. John Fennessy, Dr. Samir Midani, Dr. Merielle Amoli, and Dr. Luke Rasmussen. You wrote a chapter of truth and goodness in my story about doctors. I am forever grateful that you answered my call. 

​This week's post is inspired by Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island, GA, 
where washed up, stripped down, bare and broken trees are strewn across a long stretch of beach. It's a pile of brokenness that draws people from across the country to visit, play, climb, propose, get married, and take family photos. Without the brokenness, we wouldn't have the treasure of its strange and arresting beauty. Without the brokenness, the beach would be just another beach. The brokenness was the way to the beauty. 

​I'm as far away as I've ever been. I guess. Alone in the middle of the woods. The wind rustling the leaves in a loud whisper. That was the first thing I noticed - the wind. How it moved the tall pines against the sky, then swooped down to flutter the bushes beside me, making me turn to look. The wind soft on my skin and bringing me the smell of the marsh - salty and muddy. 

I walk with my arms folded across my chest. Blocked off. Protected. Separated from the world around me. Afraid of it? Maybe. I notice I'm fidgety. I want to take pictures and chat. But there's no one. This moment is mine. Alone in the woods. 

I loosen my arms and let them fall by my side. Breath deep. Join the world I'm in. Become part of it. I walk more confidently. But I notice I keep looking down. Focusing on my own steps, and missing what I'm part of. I look up. Where am I? What do I see - when I look? There is so much I can't see it all. Life. Cooperation. Death. Struggle. Peace. Creation. How did I miss it? I feel ashamed. It's so hard to let go and be fully here.

Why don't I do this more? Be part of. Look up. Notice. The world is full of miracles, and I walk with my head down. Eyes trained on my own feet. Arms folded. Shut off. Afraid. Now the sun is shining on my face. Beaming warmth and light and life. 

How can I keep this moment? Recall it. Reclaim it. Whenever I fold my arms. Whenever I look down and draw inward. How can I hear the wind and smell the marsh and feel the sun and see God?

I will. I will remember. I will call up this moment when my heart longs for the wild freedom it was made for. I will close my eyes and come back here to this feeling, and I'll remember how to be free. This moment will fade, and my memory of it will be washed over with life and new moments. But the feeling of being here - I will remember it. Seek it out again and again. Find God right where I am. The Kingdom is here. I can reach it today. If I just look up. 

I’m flying around the house barefoot, my unwashed hair still swept up in a 6am ponytail as I start the end of day sprint to the finish line - a laundry basket on my hip, taco meat sizzling on the stove, and a toddler under my feet. In passing, my eyes resignedly noticing the dog hair in the corner, the finger prints on the window, and the marker on the table. The big girls are in the playroom, and behind the closed door they’ve jumped into a new realm - a very real one - of princesses and villains and magic and mystery. I half hear the tragedy and adventure unfolding while I wipe and fold and stir and sweep away the day.

I have an air pod in one ear, and I’m trying to soak in the profoundly beautiful and heart breaking conversation between two of my favorite authors on the other end. I mentally note the disparity between the depth of their words and the mundane reality of the moment I’m living. 
​
I’m trying with every ounce of my grown up brain to sink into the depth of the conversation pouring into my ear, to talk lovingly to Bonnie at my heels, to be enchanted by the drama unfolding in the playroom, and to just not burn dinner. It’s strange how my world has shrunk so drastically in the last six months, and yet I’m still moving so fast. Multitasking, distracted, disconnected. And too much is whipping past me, I’ll never soak it all in. My brain is skimming rapidly over the surface of an ocean of ideas and possibilities, thoughts and emotions, experiences and connections, and hopes and fears.

I feel like I’m on a speed boat that barely touches the top of the water. I want to jump in, but I’m going too fast. I see beautiful places blurring past me - waiting to be discovered, explored, known and made into home. I want to sit and watch those little worlds unfold in the playroom, to scoop up the little person tugging at my shirt and cover her in kisses, to follow and chase the flashing ideas that pop like lightning into my head, to delight in my husband and the marriage we’ve made. I feel the spray of the water wetting my skin, and I crave to be in over my head. To swim ashore and feel the sun on my face and the wind at my back. To make a home in my own life. I can’t stop, though. I have to keep moving - live off the spray and the pretty blur. Submersion is impossible. Going ashore is a dream. I’m jostled and chapped and endlessly speeding forward. But toward what? 

But toward what? Just the thought downshifts my speed. I look up to the horizon. Wait. Where am I pointed? What is my destination? Why am I moving so fast? There is so much to see right here. I can’t take it in. I’m passing it all by. I’m missing it. I strain my eyes ahead of me. I must be going somewhere that matters more than this. Otherwise…why? I squint and strain to see what’s ahead. But there’s nothing out there. No land. No life. At least that I can see. 

The boat stalls, and the spray that was sustaining me evaporates from my skin. I see now that I’m burned and chapped and tangled from my speed and the elements. The silenced motor still vibrates my insides and hums in my head.

I’ve stopped. I can see my surroundings.. They are big and glorious and miraculous and terrifying and mysterious. I can see now that the only way to experience everything around me is to jump in over my head. Hold my breath and leave the boat. Motherhood and marriage and God and people and even myself -- that's the beautiful blur I was seeing. And it's all just waiting for me to jump in and swim ashore. Anchor here. And find home right where I am. 

And there's a miracle in anchoring right here. In stopping to be right where I am. It makes no sense, really, but it actually takes me where I’m going. You see, staying in the boat, and speeding by with no clear view and no home under my feet? It never ends. The destination never materializes in front of me. I’m chasing a mirage and missing my life. But the miracle comes when I drop anchor, jump in over my head and come ashore to my own life, drenched and exhausted from fighting the waves to get here. Then I can stand on firm ground. Then I can soak in the awe and beauty and mystery and glory of my life today. And then my tomorrows can begin to materialize in front of me.  

In this moment, today, stopping the boat looks like turning off the stove, pausing my podcast for another time, picking up the toddler, and cuddling her in my arms while I sit outside the playroom door and let myself be transported to their world. Dropping anchor means looking my husband in the eye and telling him I love him, saying yes to one more song at bedtime, and going back to my podcast when the house is quiet because it's important to me. Swimming ashore means putting my phone away, saying no more often, making mistakes, and accepting help. And standing in awe of today means taking a moment to pause and praise for being delivered to this enchanting shore. 

So, I’ll anchor here. I don’t have to live off the spray and the blur. I’ll jump in over my head — leave the boat and swim right to this beautiful place. I’ll submerge myself in unknown waters to come ashore and be home.  I can put my feet on solid ground, and be surrounded by beauty right now. I can plant seeds today, and watch them grow into my tomorrows. And I can walk forward in wild freedom knowing that there will be good fruit there.  Because I anchored here. 

1. Talking openly and often with my girls about racial injustice. 
2. Educating myself on black history, biographies, racial injustiice, and racial reconciliation. I'm starting with these three books*:
   1. Be The Bridge by Latasha Morrison
   2. The Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby
   3. Becoming by Michelle Obama
3. Actively bringing diverse voices into my life, home, and business - as friends, colleagues, collaborators, teachers, and mentors. 
4. Donating to the NAACP. 
5. Joining my community to form a local Be The Bridge Group. See how to start one in your community. 

This list is only the beginning of my own personal anti-racist work, but I hope it encourages you to take a small step towards self education, lamenting, repentance, and reconciliation.  

Love + Light, 
Katie

*Book links are affiliate links. I am part of the Amazon Affiliates program.