hold fast

In the past Psalm 139, in my opinion, was a Psalm reserved for reading at dedications and putting in “it’s a [insert gender]” cards when babies were born. I have since seen the error of my ways (different story for a different day) but it still has me thinking, what if no cards arrive? What if there is no celebration? What if it isn’t the happy occasion we’re envisioning? The first night I did night duty with sickbaby I read Psalm 139 over him for exactly the reasons I first set out - it’s a good Psalm for babies. They were literally just in their mothers womb, so it could hardly be more relevant. I really didn’t think about the words as I read them if I’m honest. I’d heard them so many times already. Then, a couple nights later I heard the same Psalm again, sung by Kings Kaleidoscope. And I heard it more clearly. “You heard my first heartbeat before I could breathe, Before my first cry, You knew me. You knit me together when I was conceived, When I was designed, You knew me. ...

(You’re all hearing this before the man himself, because he was gone when I got home this morning.) Let me set the scene with two important pieces of information. 1. A considerable number of the nursing students have declared their love for white skinned men. 2. Yesterday I left Daniel alone at the hospital while I went home to nap. So, last night’s fiasco began with the question, “Do you have a boyfriend/husband?” The assumption in sickbaby’s ward is that he is biologically mine, and therefore my boyfriend is an incredibly dark skinned individual. (I told them he could be whatever colour they wanted since he was also imaginary…) This led into a deep conversation about what colour skin was most attractive, which led to me being asked to ‘present’ some of my palest male friends to the nursing students (applications in the comments please.) At this point then, the mum of the little guy diagonally across from sickbaby said, “she has a brother you know, he was here all d...

A friend of mine is doing a thing called, “flaunt-free Friday”. The premise behind this is that we put all our good stuff on Facebook, but rarely talk about the hard stuff, the bad stuff. In that mind, let me tell you about my week. Rewinding to the start of last week, the gorgeous guy who I had spent the weekend with went back to the baby house. (He is only one.) But rather than leaving empty handed, I returned with the littlest from the baby house, lovingly named sickbaby. He had awful nappy rash, and just generally wasn’t in good form, so it was suggested he might benefit from a little one on one TLC. I happily obliged. Newborns do not sleep. Like at all. Ever. I began to slip on the second day, since I hadn’t slept properly at the weekend either. I was grumpy. I took sickbaby to Spanish class with me, because Dan had the two little big ones. Now Dan was grumpy. We headed out for dinner with Spanish school (and sickbaby), and in the trufi on the way home Dan offered to do a...