Medical mama—this title and this view hit me. It hits me at different times and in different ways, but it hits me, hard. 

Some days, I crumble with thankfulness that God has such a specific plan for my sweet, golden, middle daughter, that He would make ways where it feels there is no way. 

There are other times when it hits me with anger and bitterness because I can’t figure out why, in a world full of medical interventions, this is our “fix.” 

It hits me. 

In the wee hours of another night in the hospital, it hits me that grace and grief can meet in the same spot. I can feel both of those things. 

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I can be so incredibly thankful I can’t breathe, and I can have to catch my breath when I am so incredibly overwhelmed. I can be thankful, telling a hundred people that God is healing her in His own way, and still not believe it all the time in my heart. 

I can fight for people to see our hard, our dedication, and our triumph while still wanting to stay in bed every morning. 

This medical mama life . . . it’s hard, but so is motherhood. It doesn’t matter what we are called to bear. Maybe it’s the diagnosis you can’t breathe under, maybe it’s the tantrums that follow being two, maybe it’s the marriage that needs mending. It may just be getting up and doing it every single morning, but whatever it is we—as women, as moms—feel this pull to not feel the grief. If we don’t acknowledge the way it was supposed to be, then we aren’t heartbroken over what is. 

Grace and grief can meet at the same moment. They can sit there like two friends working out a hard conversation over coffee trying to figure out what comes next and how to respond. Grace and grief . . . they can intertwine and mingle like a great dance, taking off in the bridge of a song. 

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They tell me my daughter needs “time.” Man, a sentence I have come to hate, but maybe so do I. Maybe I need time to allow that grace and that grief to ebb and flow in the corners of my heart that call for order. The truth of it is, the gospel exists in that very thought. When we needed grace—in the middle of our grief where death held a sting—Jesus comes in, the epitome of grace, and takes our place. 

This journey is hard, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I know that the thankfulness I feel while writing this may be gone by sunrise, but I also know joy comes in the mourning. Grief and grace . . . they co-exist, they are intertwined, and I am done untangling.