The Beginning

What a very good place to start. Eight and a half years ago when my midwife looked at me just an hour or so after birthing my baby girl and announced,”Your daughter has hip dysplasia”, I could not have conceived in that moment that my life and faith would become completely intertwined with this diagnosis. While nowhere near life threatening and relatively minor pain, the words HIP DYSPLASIA have come to occupy almost a quarter of my lifetime, and the entirety of sweet Rylynn’s. Her first appointment at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children (henceforth known as TSRHC) was at 6 weeks old. Little did we know that the sweet nurse and capable and caring doctors we met that day would come to feel like extended family. Other than our immediate family and a few close friends, they are the only ones who truly know the struggles we have had to walk through and have been great supports through these last 8 years.

My heart grieves. It’s been 5 years since Rylynn’s last surgery, and we hoped and prayed that it would be the final one. So last month when Rylynn limped in the door after a busy school day and told me her right hip hurt, my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. I called TSRHC and miraculously, we were in Dallas the very next day. The day of the appointment I had to just about carry her to the car, she was in so much pain and unable to put any weight on her leg. As we went through the familiar routine of xrays and waiting rooms, my mind was spinning. How could we be here again? Maybe she just tripped or stepped wrong or pulled a muscle and the doctor will tell me I’ve over reacted and some tylenol and rest will be just the thing to fix her up. Instead, he had to come into that stupid waiting room for what feels like the umpteenth time and give me the dreaded line, “Well, it’s not good news”.

This blog is going to be updates on Rylynn, in case you’re wanting to know how this whole process is going to shake out. I’ll do my best to keep a report going. The other part of this blog is my processing. It’s been a faith journey, a bumpy one, at best. If you’re not super interested in the emotional and spiritual musings of this then you can read the reports and go on your way. But if you want to wade into the working out of my faith and what it looks like to do hard things with God as the foundation, welcome aboard.

If you’ve ever sat in a waiting room, knowing bad news was probably on the way, I’m so sorry. It’s one of the most anxiety ridden places I’ve had to be in. There are others, and I’ll share as we go along, but I’ll start with the waiting room. It’s one of the thin places. A thin place is where I feel like the spiritual veil separating me from God is just a little thinner. It’s a place where my heart beats faster, the peace and mercy of God are easily accessed, and a place it is really hard to reside. Inevitably, my mind will be spinning and I’ll pull out my bible app on my phone and the perfect verse is waiting for me. Hospital rooms, waiting rooms, bedrooms in the dark of night, places where I know the Lord is waiting for me because life is HARD. These thin places have turned a waiting room or a hospital room into hallowed ground. It is a place where the Lord meets me. Sitting in these rooms with my beautiful baby girl, several times over the years, has given me empathy and compassion for my fellow hospital room mommas. When I hear that a mom will be or has been in a hospital room with a child, regardless of the condition or outcome of the child, a hospital room with your child is not ever a place you want to find yourself in. A broken arm, a swallowed coin, an asthma attack, a cancer treatment, a hip surgery…it’s all hard. This is not the difficulty olympics. If you have been in a hospital room with your child, you have done hard.