Dylan Griswold

“As my father, St. Francis, put it, when the heart is pure, “Love responds to Love alone” and has little to do with duty, obligation, requirement, or heroic anything. It is easy to surrender when you know that nothing but Love and Mercy is on the other side.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater

“But that last clinic appointment, that last time I saw Katie, I could look at her and see heaven. I don’t ask you to understand or even believe me, but I could see it. Just as clear as I can see Death. I saw heaven through Katie. It’s not that I think I see it; I know I see it, just as I see heaven in the eyes of my bratty kid or any of my other hundreds of patients. I know there’s value. I know there’s love. I know that there’s a loving God welcoming Katie into heaven. I could see it. I can’t explain it. I can’t begin to ease the stabbing hurt in Katie’s family. I won’t even try. But there is heaven.”
― Daniel Fulkerson, Nothing Good Happens at … the Baby Hospital: The Strange, Silly World of Pediatric Brain Surgery

“Woman’s] unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude toward human beings, not only toward her own child, but every human being, which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.” … Women first learn and then teach others that human relations are authentic if they are open to accepting the other person: a person who is recognized and loved because of the dignity which comes from being a person and not from other considerations, such as usefulness, strength, intelligence, beauty, or health.20”
― Erika Bachiochi, Women, Sex and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching

“She continued, “I had an ultrasound when I was about twenty weeks pregnant, and they found the spina bifida and hydrocephalus. I saw a bunch of doctors. Every single one of them told me all the things that were wrong with my daughter. Some people told me to abort her—you know—my child. All of these doctors told me all the problems we were going to have. “Then she was born and the doctors told me about the lesion on her back and the size of her head. She was going to be taken to the Baby Hospital away from me, and she needed surgery. All I could think about was everything wrong with her and maybe I’d made a mistake keeping her. “Then Thomas came into my room. Do you know what he said? He said, ‘What a beautiful baby!’” She paused. “No one else had called her a baby.”
― Daniel Fulkerson, Nothing Good Happens at … the Baby Hospital: The Strange, Silly World of Pediatric Brain Surgery