Listening

It is so rare that we really just listen. I'm not talking just about listening to what someone is trying to say to us but about that we just don't take time to listen to sounds around us.

When Jordan was first home from the NICU, I was so worried about him. They told me "heart problems, mental retardation, and die before age 1," a phrase that I can't get out of my head nearly 8 years later. So when he was first home from the hospital, Mike was with him in his bedroom, feeding him a bottle and talking to him. I was in our bedroom watching tv, but I heard them through the baby monitor and turned it up. I then sat there crying as I heard the cutest little baby noises coming from our little boy and such loving and sweet words from his father. Everything was okay.

A few days earlier, when Jordan was still in the NICU, we were putting the final touches on his room. I took clumps of his new clothes into our bedroom to remove the tags and fold them neatly. Mike was in his room working on the crib. After a few minutes of silence, I heard a very delicate and sweet lullaby coming from the baby's room. Mike had assembled the mobile I had picked out to match the room--a jungle theme with really adorable giraffes, elephants, and monkeys in pastel blue, pink, yellow, and green. Hearing that soft lullaby coming from his room, I felt again, everything was okay.

And right now I'm sitting in my home office editing something on gastrointestinal surgeries, and I hear Jordan and his dad in our backyard sword fighting and playing pirates. Jordan is going to have his tenth surgery in 3 months, and I'm very worried about it and really dreading those feelings when they take him back to the operating room and we're left there to wait for hours upon hours. But right now, hearing them play fighting, jumping around, swords clashing, again I feel like everything is okay.