My Daughter is a Rock Star…and a “really hard prick”

Carly holding Ezra after being in ICU for 2 days.

After hearing my sweet daughter say it for the 4th time, I had to stop her. “Honey, you can’t keep saying that. You can’t keep telling everyone you’re a ‘really hard prick.’ You should say you’re a really hard stick.”  Her husband and I were trying to keep it together as the nurse examined all the burgeoning bruises from the failed attempts to place an IV. My girl was in trouble. She was 2 weeks postpartum, hemorrhaging so badly that 911 had to be called. She’d been rushed into the OR, was being prepped for a blood transfusion, had started running a fever…and she kept apologizing for having veins that collapse whenever accessing them is necessary. “I’m so sorry; I know I’m a really hard prick” had become her mantra, and I could suppress my giggles no longer. Her husband and I reminded her of the other way in which the word “prick” is used, and she gasped in horror. “Oh my gosh, how many people have I said that to today?” And even in her weakened state, she giggled too. My daughter is a rockstar.

If you’ve never feared for your daughter’s life as you held her 2 week old baby, I’m so happy for you. If you’ve never watched your exhausted son-in-law hold your daughter’s hand as she simultaneously received blood through a transfusion and pumped out breast milk for their baby, I’m so happy for you. If you’ve never taken your 21 month old grandson to a park to play, all the while wondering if his mother was going to be ok, I’m so happy for you. And if you’ve never received the text that your daughter has taken a turn for the worse and has been taken to the ICU, I’m so happy for you. These are things a mama’s heart can barely stand; they leveled me. But my daughter? She is a rockstar.

I won’t recount all the medical details, all the beautiful interactions with doctors, nurses, hospital staff, pastors, friends, etc…those are her stories to tell or hold as she choses. What I will recount is how present God was in all of this. That’s the thing…faith, fear, trauma and even loss all co-exist. So while none of us can expect to skip the fear, trauma and loss part of the equation, if faith is also present, we feel the peace of knowing God is holding us through it. And there is no doubt He was. Each and every aspect of my daughter’s case happened with divine timing, with divine intervention, and with divine interactions in the most unexpected places. I witnessed my daughter shaken with weakness but strong with faith as she was so very sick. I witnessed her being cared for by strangers who treated her like family. “Mom,” she said. “People are being so wonderful. They are so kind and keep going out of their way for me.” I teared up. “Honey, I want you to realize that how people are treating you is a reflection of who YOU are. You are someone who makes people WANT to be even kinder than they normally are. The light that is in you? It brightens the room for everyone.”  My daughter is a rockstar.

“I'm a really hard stick”, she said to a phlebotomist, looking up at me and emphasizing the word ‘stick’. I began to giggle.  Because after telling her to stop telling people she was a really hard prick, I couldn’t stop telling people she’d been calling herself that. This made her giggle, too. (That’s another place I see God…in the giggles that come at hard times -even if the word “prick” is involved - and sweep away some of the yuck for a moment.) This story? It has a happy ending. My kid is recovering beautifully at home now, with her 2 little guys and her husband. Her body is healing, her mind is settling, and she is smiling. My daughter is a rock star.