"How do people do this?"

That is the question that I've been asking everyone that I have talked to lately. The staff NICU chaplain whom I've worked with and cried with at breakfast Monday morning, the social worker who came to visit, the friendly nurse, the attending doctor who worked so hard to figure out what was going on, my good friend and neighbor, my therapist - I keep asking and asking, thinking that someone has to know. Other parents have very sick children. How do they make it work?

How do you handle the fear of watching your child not breathe well? How do you handle telling your child that she can't go outside and play like other kids because she's too sick? How do you tell your not sick child that you are leaving again and will miss (again) something important to her? How do you deal with the exhaustion of being in the hospital? How do you answer your child when she asks why you are letting people hurt her with needles when she just doesn't understand that it's to help her? How do you answer the question "how is your child doing" when you have no idea what people really want to know? How do you manage to have any normal when you are watching like a hawk for the first symptom that might mean trouble? These questions and so many more are what I want to know when I ask, "How do people do this?"

I got answers from all those people I asked. Some of them weren't answers I liked. "A lot of families end up having a parent that stays home with their sick child." Yeah, I don't like that - I am planning to start a chaplaincy residency this fall.

"You do a lot of crying." I think I have that covered.

"You know that it's okay to feel mad and sad and scared and lonely." That was good to hear. We do feel those ways sometimes and then we feel ungrateful.

"Give yourself space to feel exhausted." We're learning to do this. Learning to take recovery days after the hospital. It feels indulgent, but we are finding it necessary.

"You lean on your friends." We have learned this. It is uncomfortable but we are so lucky to have the people we do. We get phone calls. We get visits. I walked in yesterday from the hospital to find two of my friends cleaning my house so I didn't have to face a mess when I got home. We are learning, humbly, to let ourselves be cared for. We'd rather be on the giving side, but we are learning to accept it.

These answers help but I don't know that they really get what I'm asking. Maybe I'm asking, "how do people get through this without falling apart?" Because sometimes I feel like I am. I am reaching and stretching to find the solid ground right now. I'll keep looking and I'll probably keep asking the question and I'll give thanks for the solid places in my life - friends, farm, marriage, God - and take the shaky parts as they come. And if anyone has an answer, believe me, I'd be glad to hear it.