It has been 130 days since I first brought mom to the Emergency Room here at UCI. 62 of those days have been spent living here in the hospital. It is really bizarre to look back at all that has happened, a lifetime’s worth of ups and downs in only 130 days.

As I reflect back on those early days of the first hospitalization here I remember how scared I was. This place felt so huge and I was overwhelmingly aware of how inept I felt to walk the path that had been set before me. This hospital (and all that being here represented) was daunting and I felt so very small. I remember feeling like this place was a big, scary monster that was just gonna eat me up. Little did I know that these walls would be home and that some of the most defining moments of my life would take place here…

Some of the scariest conversations and realizations I’ve ever experienced happened in these hospital rooms.

Some of the most difficult phone calls I have ever had to make happened in these waiting areas.

I would pace these hallways, desperately trying to make sense of it all.

I watched my mom go from being sick to being in critical condition more than once.

I’ve lived in 11 different rooms here.

This place will always hold some of the scariest moments of my life, but in the middle of it all, if only out of necessity, it has become a type of home. Doctors that started out strangers have become family; we have celebrated everything from birthdays and holidays to the small successes on mom’s road to recovery.

I have lived here.

I have cried here.

I have laughed here.

I have learned here.

I have grown here.

I have believed here.

I have doubted here.

I have loved here.

I have truly lived here.

A place that I thought might eat me up turned out to be a place that grew me up.

Mom’s road to recovery is not completely finished yet and I can’t guarantee that we won’t be back here at some point, but today we walk out of here together. At the time they originally wanted to do mom’s surgery, the truth is, they didn’t believe she would survive it. Today we walk out of here together having both survived and the gratitude I feel in my heart at this fact is overwhelming. There is still some fighting ahead but we walk out of here with life on the visible horizon before us…

Days and nights I feared would never end, have ended.

Things I thought we wouldn’t survive, we have survived.

And life I feared we’d never get to live can now be lived.

That is  the evidence of God’s amazing grace in our lives and it’s the story I hope and pray my life will continue to tell.