I told Beau yesterday that I’ve gone from anxious to leaving this hospital to now being comfortable here … maybe comfortable is not the right word, but just accustomed to being here. 

That sounds pretty pitiful, but after being here for almost three months now, that’s how my feelings have changed.

I don’t want to be accustomed to this place. I definitely don’t want to be comfortable here. I’d rather this be unfamiliar and foreign to me.
Even La Petite Belle said that at this point, she doesn’t care when she gets out of here, as long as she can be pain-free. Agreed.
I’ve grown accustomed to the pull-out couch …
to the daily routine …
to the Keurig machine in the family room …
to the very heavy IV pole I have to get over the threshold to the bathroom …
to the full parking garages …
to changing a hospital bed …
to the ice machine adjacent to our room …
to the wait for a washer on the 16th floor …
to the view of MD Anderson from our window …
and to being VERY comfortable with most of the nurses and doctors.
So comfortable that I’ve told them NOT to tell me one more time that “this is a long process” or “this is going to take a long time.” Yeah. I got that.
So, they don’t say it now. And, then they tell the next attending doctor not to say the same.
We had a setback this week, just when the doctors were finally talking about discharge by the end of the month.
La Petite Belle collapsed again, unconscious. This time on the bed. Thank God for that! I told her she was really putting that “fall risk” wristband to work. 
The moment was pretty scary. She was unresponsive to me, which sent me out the door, yelling “Help! Help in here!” Before I knew it, there was a team of people in the room. She was given oxygen and all kinds of tests were run. It was scary to her also. She started to panic once she realized this had happened again.
Her passing out, turns out, was due to the same reason as before … losing blood. She had been vomiting earlier in the week with more blood. Her hemoglobin had dropped drastically, just within a day. 
The doctors pumped her full of blood, platelets, and plasma. They drew blood for all kinds of tests and did an ultrasound. She was even sent down for an MRI. After everything came back, it seems she has a bacteria in her blood. This same bacteria is most likely the cause for a step back with her GI issues that had been occurring the previous days. Now, she is on antibiotics to get rid of it and hopefully she will be back on track with her healing very soon.
When La Petite Belle collapsed, Beau was here soon after. Knowing that he could be here or we could be here in no time confirmed even more the decision we made to move closer to Houston. Although being here is still a difficult transition for us all, we know that God has brought us here.
I have learned something very important during this time and it’s this:
Your faith does not make things hurt less. 
Your faith gives you comfort through the hurt and hope for the future.

But, when you walk through hard stuff, it just hurts. It hurts terribly. There’s no way around it.
I’m learning to LEAN IN to the hurt and not bury it or try to distract myself from it.
God is in the hurt.
There’s healing when you lean in.
God wants to hear from us in the hurt.
We may not get the answers we want, but He still wants us to tell Him our fears and concerns.
He comforts. He holds us.
And, when we truly love Him, we have to truly trust in His plan, even when we don’t understand it.
Today, and every day, that is what we do.
We simply have to trust. We have to trust in a God to whom we dedicated La Petite Belle, as a baby, long ago … that He would protect her … that He would guide her … that He would watch over her … that He would use her to further His kingdom.
We just have to trust, comfortable in knowing He’s got this under control.
If you would like to financially support Katie’s (aka La Petite Belle) journey to healing, you can find more information here: www.gofundme.com/Katieg.  All funds go to cover medical bills and expenses.