babies...

Ok, so today was one of those days where I was dreaming about my future babies. Noah and I went for a walk through the conservatory down the road from us. And there were so many cute little legs and noses walking around with their parents that I wanted to die!!! We talked about names. We have already decided them, but we still like talking about it :) We also talk heaps about how we are going to parent. I have some amazing role models in my life (ahem, Monica Ritche) who I love talking to about this stuff. She gets my heart. She parents in a way that I totally hope to follow. I'm would ya say, in the 'alternative' camp when it comes to parenting. We will probably have our baby sleep in our room for a while. Maybe in their own cot, maybe in a co-sleeper. I want to breast feed. On demand. I don't want to do the 'cry-it-out' method. I will probably sleep train, but in a really really gentle and slow way. I want to love my baby through and through. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about no routine here. I know I will stick to a really strict routine. Babies and kids need that. They don't function well without it. I don't function well without it! Our kids will go to bed early so Noah and I have time together. We will have regular naps and outings. But when it comes to holding, feeding and loving. I just don't think I'm going to withhold. I know a lot of awesome moms who don't do this, and are more strict, and thats totally cool. And who knows, I'm sure by the time our little darling comes around I will have different thoughts. But Ive watched some mums who practice attachment parenting, and I feel like its more my style too.

I can't wait to just get to be home with my baby. Noah is going to be an amazing dad too. After a year or so I really want to be able to go back to work for a day or two a week, and it turns out Noah really wants to be able to stay home a day or two a week too. We think shared parenting will work really well for us.




We babysat these cuties every friday for a year. We had so much fun putting these guys in their car seats (into my two door car!!) and carting them to chi alpha. We had soooo much fun. It was great to be able to do it together while we were dating. I know we fell more in love with eachother because of it.

He knows its scary to be us...

God's been working on my heart a lot lately. On some not so wonderful things. I've had to face up to some insecurities in my life that have caused me to be negative and bitter. To be honest, I've had some insecurity my whole life. It comes with the crazy instability of moving countries three times, starting new schools and being teased in {a christian & private} junior high. It also comes from the fact that I have a hypersensitive disposition. I feel everything. As Beth Moore describes it (a fellow hypersensitive sister in Christ), most of the time my emotional nerve endings are exposed like live wires. My joys are high and my sorrows deep. I cry at airports when I see others say hello and goodbye, and cry for my patients. I cry when dogs die in movies. I have a tender heart. But it means it leads me to feel more than I should.

My pride has also been eating at me lately. I am learning (painfully) that I can't make myself feel better about myself by feeling worse about others. I can't find security in superiority (like duh, shouldn't I know that by now?!?!)

Insecurity has made a fool out of me lately. I let it get in the way of friendships because I am jealous of their (seemingly) easy lives. They get to work part time, have money to travel, have family & lots of friends closeby, or have never dealt with deep grief. Its ridculous. Insecurity leaves me feeling overexposed, foolish, and like I have lost my dignity.

But I can be unsure without being insecure. I can be humbled without feeling insecure. I have the power to stop comparing my circumstances to others. I am clothed in strength and dignity. God is my vindicator and defender.

I am reading a book about a missionary doctor in Africa. She's amazing. She too struggled with pride and insecurity. I will share something that touched me. it might touch you too.

""The first major "cost" that I had encountered in seeking to love God with all my heart was in the giving up of my pride - pride of nationality, pride of education, pride of natural abilities. God has continually to break me on each of these. They get in the way of love, real outgoing love. Then he has to deal with my self - self-reliance, self justification, self-pity. These too hinder the free flow of His love. Step by step, as God deals with my pride and the insidious love of self, He can take my heart and truly love others though it.

To love God with all my heart, is to give HIm my heart, that He may fill it and overflow it with His own self-giving love for all among whom He sends me to live."

My beautiful friends

With Laura Stitt and my Mum - how I need these two women so!!!


My beautiful sister and I in front of our favorite beach and volcano - Rangitoto


Jo and I, together again


Lana and I this past visit :)



I have beautiful, beautiful friends. Amazing women who inspire me day after day. Lana, my bestie from high school is in medical school. Jo, my bestie from {life, I guess?} has a degree in social policy, just completed her post graduate degree in counseling and works as a school counselor to abused and traumatized kids. She also works as a manager for a youth home for kids just out of prison. I said I have amazing friends! Then ofcourse there is my sister who is completing her double degree in secondary teaching and arts. She also leads worship on sunday and runs a "community of inquiry" - a group that welcomes people from all faiths and backgrounds to discuss things about spirituality and God (however they define them). She is available to people, and doesn't do the whole tracts & soapbox thing. a true radical.
My mum supported my dad through his seminary training, and now serves at the church as an amazing mentor to young mums and works at the seminary school. Laura Stitt is the coolest mom I know {to FIVE kids}, and does bible in schools with her awesome husband on fridays. These women bring more joy to my life than words can describe. I hope someday I can bless them in the way they have blessed me. I am a far better person because of them.

ofcourse there is Noah too :) his service, grace and love these past 16 months of married life have been incredible. I couldn't ask for a better friend and companion.

Wise words from my mentor

God has blessed me with an amazing mentor. She has known me since before I was born. Held me when I was a baby, and held me when I cried my eyes out at 18. God knew I would need her, and laid out the path to our friendship years before we either knew it would exist. Here we are in 2010, just after Noah and I were married. {and with her hubby and two beautiful adopted daughters} We only see eachother every couple of years, but are kindred spirits. She is always there, even from far away. I am so thankful God put her in my life. I love I have a woman years down the track from me who can guide me, pray for me, love me and encourage me. In only ways another woman can. we need that. God designed us for that.

She often sends me quotes and words of wisdom that she feels/thinks I need. I keep them close. This one on growth was just awesome, and I had to share it. Its from a book that she read.


" I met with my boss who was in his fifties. I told him I was anxious to find the perfect job for me, and quick. In his opinion, it takes about 10 years after college to find the right fit, and anyone who finds it earlier than that is just plain lucky. So use every bit of your 10 years: try things, take classes, start over. This time is about figuring things out. This is also a great time to start some counseling to become more whole and healthy and/or meet with a career counselor. You might have just enough space from your parents to start digging around your childhood a little bit. Unravel knots that keep you from living a healthy, whole life. Do it now before more time passes.

This is a perfect time to get involved with a church you love, no matter how different it is from the one you were part of growing up. Be patient and prayerful, and decide that you're going to be a person who grows, who seeks their own faith, who lives with intention. Try different kinds of communities, different sizes and denominations and traditions. I know most people need a season of space, a time to take a step back and evaluate the spiritual context of their youth. I didn't go to church for a long season in college, and that space and freedom was so important for me. It gave me the perspective I needed to find my own faith. But it's very easy for a season of space to turn into several years without any kind of spiritual groundedness. It's easy to wake up several years from now and find yourself unable to locate that precious, faith-filled part of your heart and history, because it slowly disintegrated over months and years. Don't do that. Do whatever you have to do to connect with God in a way that feels authentic and truthful to you. Do it now, so that you don't regret the person you become, little by little, over time, without it.

This is the thing: when you start to hit twenty-eight or thirty, everything starts to divide, and you can see very clearly two kinds of people: on one side, people who have used their twenties to learn and grow, to find God and themselves and their deep dreams, people who know what works and what doesn't, who have pushed through to become real live adults. And then there's the other kind, who hang onto college, or high school even, with all their might. They've stayed in jobs they hate because they're too scared to get another one. They've stayed with men or women who are good but not great because they don't want to be lonely. They mean to find a church, they mean to develop honest, intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don't do those things, so they live a kind of adolescence, no closer to adulthood than they were when they graduated college. Don't be like that. Don't get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. Walk away, try something new. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season, of twenties, is about becoming. Don't lose yourself at happy hour, but don't lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop once in a while and go out for coffee or climb into bed with your journal. Ask yourself some good questions like, Am I proud of the life I'm living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey? Do the people I'm spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that's keeping me from moving forward? For a while in my early twenties I felt like I woke up a different person every day, and was constantly confused about which one, if any, was the real me.

Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with the people you love, and with other people who believe God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don't spend time with people who make you feel less than you are. Don't get stuck in the past, and don't try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven't yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life's path."

Wonderful Fall Weekend

Noah and I had a tough week last week. One of my major faults is that I get WAAAAAAY too emotional about things. And when I am stressed out/burnt out, I can be so ridiculous. So I was rotten last week. I threw a tantrum that noah didn't charge his phone and left me waiting for him at school for ages. I got upset about money and paying off {frustrating} loans. I cried about missing New Zealand (ok, that one is allowed). I had a freak out about decision making for next year. We seriously have some major decisions to make. Noah finishes his masters in may and then our life is wide open. The hard thing about being married is that now you have TWO people's lives and careers and school to figure out. I know it seems like, duh - isn't that obvious, but you just kinda forget about it until major decisions have to be made. I'm applying to medical school, and Noah's applying for jobs. we are praying our tails off that we find them in the same place :) Plus we are applying for stuff in Australia and New Zealand, not down the street. And when you apply for stuff overseas there is a TON of paperwork involved. Sigh.
So normally I take it one day at a time. When I don't, I freak out.
So back to the beginning of this post. You know those crazy hard conversations where you are both super emotionally charged and sitting on the edge of your seat because you are trying so hard to communicate but its just not reaching the other person in the same language??!!? gah, we had several of those. So several hours later of tears, anger, frustration we worked it out. We forgave eachother for the harsh words. And cuddled. And bought frozen custard with snickers and m&ms and went "phew!". Its crazy how easy it is to miscommunicate. It pretty much boiled down to me being frustrated that noah couldn't be responsible enough to charge his phone, and noah wishing I was more patient. Well, we aren't perfect but we can forgive. I'm so glad I married someone who will sit down with me and work through the hard stuff. Even when its soooooooooooo emotionally draining and hard. We had these a lot more our first year when life was AWFUL in Minnesota and we haven't had one in months. So we were a little out of practice.
To be honest, so many of our arguments come out of me acting with my emotions instead of just saying, "hey babe, what you said/did hurt me and I would like to talk about that." why is that sentence so hard to say in the moment? Lord please help me to work on that one.
I also struggle because I HAVE to tell Noah how I feel. I'm not one of those woman who can just say, 'oh well, I'll let my husband do/say that". I find that inauthentic. We are two people, and we want to be known by eachother. In the good and the bad. If you can't be honest about something, how will you truly know eachother?

Anywho, I love after a hard conversation when we get into bed, look at eachother and laugh. I love that I can be real with my husband. I love that we are equals. I love that I came home and he made dinner. And lit the candles in the house to make it smell better. I love that we support eachother to grow more and push ourselves. We are better together, because we say the hard stuff. But we know we are loved unconditionally. He has seen me at my worse, and yet still loves me. What a beautiful picture of Gods love. And how much more does God love me than Noah does? Marriage is precious that way. You just have to form the deep grooves early on, so that when the carriage starts to shake from the storms that life brings, it is stable in the grooves.

Those deep foundations are hard. and painful. but bring life in the end.

one crazy semester

Daily & Weekly life of the Hensleys:
This semster I am being CRAZY and doing school full time and work full time. Yes, its nuts. I needed to finish my BSN, and it was cheapest to take more credits in a semester because of the whole 'banded' tuition thing. PLUS I get a raise, a bonus and tuition reimbursement from work when I complete it. I had already decided to do this plan by the time my work offered me a 0.9 to come work with them. Well, I wasn't stoked about working a 0.9 (9 days in a 14 week period....a lot for nursing because nursing is WAY INTENSE)...but I couldn't turn it down. Thankfully Noah is in school mode too. So this is what our lives look like
- wake up at 0530 am.
- Amy drops Noah off at the bus stop on the way to work.
- Amy works until 3:30pm.
- Amy leaves and picks Noah up at 4:08pm.
- Amy & Noah get home and eat.
- Amy & Noah do school work from 5pm - 9pm.
=- Amy & Noah chill out, either playing a game, talking or watching a fav show from 9-10pm
- Amy & Noah go to bed.

oh yes, our lives are SO exciting. Haha. On my days off I spend the whole day writing papers and posting online discussions until Noah is done with work. I allow myself a couple hours every two weeks to chill out, maybe go shopping or do something I enjoy.
Phew, its pretty intense. No time for gourmet cooking, baking, reading books or decorating. But only for another 12 weeks :)
We live a crazy life, but its ours and I love it! Its not perfect and we definitely get WAY STRESSED OUT. WE have said mean, mean things to eachother because we get burnt out and (I) stress out about the little things...like the house being messy. Sigh. Something I am just going to have to get over, cuz I'm not perfect and can't do it all.

My life is too complex to blog about

Sometimes I think my life is way to complex to blog about. For example, today my patients consisted of a tylenol overdose, a Hmong with a herniated disc, and an Anterior/Posterior Fusion. Not about the latest technique for folding towels, the date I went on with Noah, or what I made for dinner. But to be honest, I would rather read a blog about tylenol overdose anyways. So I will write one :) My PSA for the day is to be seriously aware about how much tylenol you are taking. Tylenol is everything!!! ok, not everything....but in a lot of narcotics, cold/flu remedies and a basketful of over the counter products. Its not that hard to consume over the maximum amount - 4,000mg. Taking two extra strength tylenol four times gets you there. Anything over that is tough cookies on your liver. My patient the past few days has had to drink 17 glasses of a medication called acetylcysteine - its the antidote to tylenol toxicity. It smells like rotten eggs. Seriously. Its so bad we have to mix it in a cup of coke/pepsi for it to be tolerable enough to swallow. Plus you have to load people up on potassium and phosphorus because your electrolytes suffer. Then you have to drink heaps of glasses of nasty tasting potassium/orange juice concoction because your liver is so shot you wouldn't be able to metabolize anything orally. I felt seriously bad for my patient. Not a fun time.

Even though my life is crazy, I really do love it. I love working as a nurse, caring for my patinets; advocating for them; managing their care in collaboration with the doctors, social workers and rehabilitation staff. I see so many people on a daily basis, and hear so many stories. I could never imagine working in any other field than health care. Its addicting, and will forever be in my blood.

A friend of mine wrote out a list of the 101 things she wants to do in 1001 days (about two and a half years). She had a pretty long list. Unfortunately I don't have the time (full time school + full time work + part time volunteer) to do all the awesome stuff she wants to do....but I do have a few dreams. They might not be down to earth daily ones like mailing people packages and designing dream dates with hubby BUT 1)I want to apply and be accepted into medical school. 2)I want to go to Nepal and deliver babies with an OBGYN in rural hospitals. 3)I want to become an HIV educator. 4)I want to do a 6 week internship with the World Health Organization in Geneva. 5)I want to meet and serve my neighbors intentionally. 6)I want to do an in-service on buying fair trade at church and at work. 7) I want to buy a microscope. 8) with the microscope I want to teach myself how to diagnose malaria on a slide. 9) crochet caps for neonatal babies in Africa. 10) Love my patients more. That is my 10 in 1001 days. I hope I can do it :)