BOOM.

Examples of God being freaking excellent to me in 2015:

1. My baby is alive. She's still fetal and everything, but she is continuing to grow and kick and generally rock at fetushood, by all indications. Her face, in the little "4-D" sonogram (which, what? Is the fourth dimension not time?), is that of a miniature valkyrie, cheekbones and chin already jutting. She persists in growing while I persist in my ever-humbling battle to put adequate amounts of food into my body on the daily.

2. I don't know why feeding myself like a sane person is my version of Everest, but it is giving me a new appreciation for the Gospels, which I am reading now -- I finished Mark on my birthday and spent this morning trying to care at all about Luke's genealogy of Christ. (Which I still don't, really, but I appreciate that Barclay does).

Given the choice between the model of self-esteem in which I attribute likable qualities to myself without issuing caveats or employing ironic finger quotes, and one in which I acknowledge myself to be wholly fucked, on par with the wrath-fleeing vipers antagonizing John the Baptist, but loved anyway thanks to God's ability to do literally anything -- well, I know which one rings true for me. There are six people in this world whose love is a real thing to me; five of them are totally disabused of any notion of my inherent adequacy, and the sixth is still in diapers. (To be honest, even he is onto me, these days; just last week our proposed trip to the transit museum was rescheduled because mommy apparently cannot manage to enter and exit the library in less than an hour.)

God's grace, and its power to cast a light by which I am worthwhile, is believable to me because I have been loved with grace by the people around me. That is infinitely more remarkable to me than if I actually were good enough/smart enough/liked by people, doggone it.

3. DAY SHIFT. I can't really explain how dramatically I've experienced the shift from nights to days, though if you have any kind of mood or anxiety disorder yourself, I may not have to. I really struggle to organize and make meaning of my days, and not having time in the mornings to collect myself and time at night to close out and come to terms with what happened during the day is very hard for me to manage. It's not that I'm happier since switching so much as it feels like I've gotten a huge part of myself back.

4.  My husband. Not to get all #blessed, but I need to put out there that my husband is basically amazing, pulling 7 day workweeks when I'm on at the hospital and he's left to wrangle our three year old singlehandedly on his days off, doing pretty much all but the most idiot-proof of housework tasks, then staying up all hours putting music into the world because holding down a full time job and raising a toddler isn't enough.

I understand my father, whose reaction to women apart from my mom has always been an indifference bordering on actual blindness, much better now: I married the other best person in the entire world and now get to go home to that person every night. You, person engaging me, are no doubt amazing, too, of course: it's just that at my house is a man whose domination of life is such that even my viperish heart recognized it, without Jesus having to steer me there, firmly, by my collar.

5. New York. This city is so full of amazing people, doing amazing things. There are so many books to read, things to learn, so much work to do and be part of, that even on day shift, I find myself exhausted. It's become hard for me to put myself to bed at night or stay asleep til morning. This weekend, I held my pee for a solid three hours because I was too engrossed in nursing to want to stop long enough for a bathroom break. Then I stayed up three hours past bedtime, unable to stop reading library books, which I had stacked in my bed because I couldn't settle on one and was alternating by chapter. At least I know where Mac gets it from.