I haven’t said much on social media since my son was born, mostly because it was an entirely different experience than I thought it would be. Having a child that immediately goes into the NICU is scary and overwhelming and traumatic. However, as I reflect on the past month of our lives, I realize that God was teaching me in the midst of all of it. Today I want to tell you about the first lesson I learned – finding contentment in the ordinary. Here’s something you may or may not know about me – I am the queen of high expectations. I create SUCH high expectations for myself and for others. I put lots of pressure on big days like birthdays and anniversaries. Sometimes, it’s good, because it pushes me to be the best I can be. But most of the time, it’s really not a good thing because it can make me feel resentful when things don’t work out how I planned. Thankfully, God broke down a few walls in my heart by using our experience with Owen’s less-than-ideal birth story. Here’s how: Going into the hospital, I had the big sister/little brother shirts. I had the big sister gift. I had the picture poses worked out and exactly how my two kiddos would meet for the first time. I was all kinds of worked up about exactly how it would all shake down. It all mattered SO much, because – hello, you’ve seen the Facebook posts. People do these amazing things and I wanted that amazing experience too. And I was going to have it. I was going to be in control of these ridiculously trivial things and make them spectacular. And then, Owen was born. And he was blue – literally blue. And he wasn’t crying. And I never got to see his face because nurses swarmed in and took him. Something was wrong. When you’re in the midst of life and death, the trivial doesn’t matter. At one point, sitting on the hospital bed, I cried to my husband telling him I didn’t care how my babies met or what they wore. I just wanted my new baby to be healthy and I wanted to hold my little girl (it had been DAYS!) and I wanted us to all be together. That was all. Because I’d been living life mostly coasting from one blessing to another, I had allowed myself to get worked up about absolutely trivial things. Not just outfits and meeting plans, but about this person who didn’t like me or that person who had a problem that wasn’t my fault. I was letting little things like politics get under my skin. I was comparing myself and my schedule to so-and-so’s, trying to make myself a carbon copy of someone I felt had it all together, and getting frustrated with myself when I didn’t deliver. But then, the NICU happened. Suddenly, it didn’t matter who said what or what my daily schedule did or didn’t look like. None of the little things mattered anymore. The only thing that mattered was the safety of my family. The only thing that mattered was being connected to the Father – praying to Him nonstop was the critical thing, not making nonstop summer plans that made me seem like I had it all together. Sitting in a hospital room without my baby, I was reminded of how many times people in the Bible were commanded to be still. Owen’s birth was a be still moment for me. It made me stop and focus on nothing and no one else except the One who could heal him. It made me pray without ceasing, not check social media without ceasing. It made me lean on His understanding and not my own. There is a reason we are able to count it all joy when we fall into trials, because God is working in us and producing something great within us. In the midst of trials, God is gifting us with peace and endurance and strength and wisdom. In difficulty, God is able to remove the hard parts of our hearts (in my case, too high of expectations) and replace them with His peace and love and hope. That is why we rejoice when things are hard. That is why we can sit in a room, crying and scared, and experience a peace that passes understanding. He doesn’t always take away the hurt, but He always provides the blessing of peace and assurance. His presence does that. And how thankful am I that even though my baby wasn’t present with me in the room after he was born, my God was there. Never leaving and never forsaking; teaching me to let go of things that don’t matter and focus solely on what does – Him.