5 minute read
Sick Days
Because of the pandemic, her kids were doing virtual school. Smith had to balance teaching them with her sickness, all while working from home as a corporate recruiter.
“When your stomach hurts all the time, all you want to do is lie around. I had an old orange Halloween bucket that I had to carry around with me,” she said. “I had all these little rituals. I’d go lay in the shower and have the water run over me in the tub, because I’d rather just throw up in the tub than have to run to the toilet every five minutes. Every day, I would just remind myself that the end date was my due date.”
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Smith’s healthcare team put her on a pump that distributed a continual dose of the anti-nausea medication Zofran. She had a home health nurse that helped her manage the pump and her diet.
“The nurse educated me on how to eat when I did feel well enough to,” she said. “It was basically a bland diet—stay away from spicy stuff and things you crave but trigger you. For me, dairy was a big trigger. I always craved ice cream, but I learned that if I gave in, I regretted it later.”
Despite the limitations from HG, Smith was amused to find that she still gained a normal amount of weight throughout her pregnancy.
“I’m that lady that always gains 40 pounds when I’m pregnant,” she said with a laugh. Smith credits her healthcare team, Dr. Cathy Larrimore in particular, with helping her have a positive outcome. “One time I was hospitalized, [and] my potassium was really low. They brought this big fruit bowl up to my room. Later, I found out that Dr. Larrimore had sent it to me herself because she wanted to get my potassium up. We have a special relationship.”
Smith was naturally concerned about how HG would affect her son. Jayse was delivered three weeks early but at an impressive seven pounds.
“He clearly wasn’t missing anything,” Smith said. “I had a healthy baby. In the end, that’s all that mattered.”
Smith encourages other women experiencing HG to trust that their baby will be fine and to surround themselves with a supportive village of nurses, friends and family.
“Stay in tune with your doctor, build a relationship with your nurse [and] find a safe person who will let others know what you need,” she said. “Like my mom, I could text her the word ‘sick’ and she would let everyone know I needed help that day. My neighbor across the street was wonderful, too.”
Despite all she endured, Smith remains willing to go through it again to have another child.
“It’s crazy because my mom’s like, ‘You want to have another baby after all this?’ It didn’t scare me away from it,” she said. “My daughters are only two years apart. I think Jayse needs a partner.”
GRACE & TRUTH Conflict Resolution is an Opportunity for Growth
Saint Paul the Apostle provides a roadmap to healing division in his letter to the Church of Corinth, which urges the congregation to counter discord with love.
by NEELY RENTZ LANE
As a part of my ordination journey, I attended a workshop guiding clergy in conflict resolution and mediation skills. Conflict is inevitable in every social system—families, churches, businesses, etc.—but it can be a healthy opportunity for growth. When our social systems are experiencing conflict, our goal should be to remain a calm or non-anxious presence to avoid contributing to the uneasiness. We can show up in the conference room, the zoom call or around the dinner table as a non-anxious presence in times of high tension. It is about entering into dialogue and actively listening to one another. Active listening involves listening as another person dives in, and it is a way of showing love.
Paul exemplifies this in a letter to the Church of Corinth in 1 Corinthians 13:1–13. The Church in Corinth was in a quarrel. The body was up in arms about how it was to gather and be a church. People had stopped respecting one another and letting everyone’s voice be heard around the table. They started posting about one another on Facebook and engaging in gossip while making assumptions about one another, so when the church gathered on Sunday morning, their worship space was disruptive and divided because they did not recognize one another’s gifts.
As conflict mediator, Paul holds space for the divided and arguing congregation by urging them to engage in resolution on the basis of love—messy, hard, real, vulnerable, scrappy love. Paul writes to remind them that while they have different spiritual gifts, each comes from the same spirit—a variety of voices, beliefs, ideas and opinions, but one Lord. All these gifts are meant to come together in unity to glorify God, not to become the basis of division or separation.
Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Beloved children of God, have you forgotten the way of love? Have you forgotten what love looks like? What God’s love looks like? Because if you have forgotten, then your gifts don’t mean anything.” He is writing to the Corinthians to engage in conflict resolution by actively listening to one another so that the body could be who God has created and is creating them to be: the church. People of Newton County, we must remember what love is. Love is the willingness to engage in conflict mediation, resolution and transformation. Do we not need that more than ever in our society?
These past two years have been challenging. The temperature in our nation has been hot. The division is heavy, real and hurtful. We know it all too well. We can feel it when we walk into a room, only to be sized up and labeled. The conflict in our hearts, homes and nation can be felt when scrolling through your Facebook page, in our body language and in how we speak to and about one another.
We are not much different than the Corinthians. We are now the Church in 2022, and Paul is telling us to remember what love is.
Neely Rentz Lane is the senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Covington. For information, visit FPCCOV.org.
Neely Rentz Lane
