So raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways.

 

I keep thinking lately about how the heroes of all the good stories don’t know what they’re really made of until well past the first chapter.

 

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I’ve been struggling with how–and whether to–write this post. But when I considered the reasons not to, they all came down to one word: fear. No, this is not just my story–it’s The Kid’s too, primarily even, but this blog has been a place where love for TK has been born within people who’ve never met him; it’s a place where people who’ve never seen him in person him have gotten to know him. This is his story, but it’s mine too, and really? It’s everyone’s, one way or another. So let’s keep telling it.

 

The developmental pediatrician, after a two-hour appointment halfway through which TK fell asleep, tired and ill, on my chest, diagnosed TK as being on the spectrum. You know the one I’m talking about–the one with words and letters like autism and Asperger’s and PDD/NOS. The one with a hundred different delays and a thousand different behavioral quirks and a million different ways to be, all summed up in a science informed by questionnaires and observation and best guesses. This is the place where TK resides, as far as one doctor sees it.

 

It’s a diagnosis surrounded by doubts: mine, the speech therapist’s, the occupational therapist’s, the physical therapist’s, the caretaker’s who is licensed to diagnose these conditions herself. And those are just the experts. (Yes, I consider myself an expert: on TK, as his mother, and, to a certain degree, in this field, as a pediatric dentist who is trained to treat special needs patients and has worked with hundreds of them in the dozen years I’ve been practicing. Also, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.)

 

I don’t bring up the doubts to act defiant or be sassy (sanitized form of bitchy) or imply that we don’t want to join that club or be one of those people. There are no those people anymore, and not ultimately because of a diagnosis but because of grace. There is room for mystery here, though. So what I’m saying is that between the experts who have met him more than once and the medical issues that have plagued him since birth that have only recently, and partially, been resolved (shout out to wonky vertebrae and tilted heads!), we’ve got a lot playing into his speech delay and his unique way of looking at–and dealing with–the world. And then there’s the small matter of the trajectory of my story, of ours, thus far: the way of things not always being as they appear, of there being more beneath the surface and beyond the initial diagnoses, of there being just more, always–and here you have us, embracing whatever Now brings while letting More be what defines us and leaving room for Yet.

 

That might all sound like a bunch of flowery language for what ain’t just a river in Egypt, so allow me to provide assurance that the practical details are being attended to: multiple phone conversations with our insurance company to determine coverage, email exchanges with therapists new and old to decide upon beneficial treatment, research into early-educational environments that best suit TK’s needs and style of learning. We’re embracing this diagnosis for the doors it opens–doors to interventions we might not otherwise have access to. And we’re embracing all the parts of TK that aren’t defined by a diagnosis: the way he scrambles to greet and hug us, the way he laughs at my jokes and my driving, the intuitive tenderness shown in the way he interacts with Little Brother, the way he looks into my eyes when I tell him I love him. Regardless of which labels fit, none of them would ever be our answer because he is more than the results of a questionnaire or a folder handed to me at the end of an appointment. We are no more running scared from this diagnosis than we are allowing it to be the bottom line of our story; we’ve already got a bottom line.

 

All great things are not fully knowable, this I have learned: love, marriage, divinity–they aren’t summed up by the laws of science as much as they are partially captured in verses of poetry and strains of music, enigmatic and immeasurable glory. I’ve learned to make space for the mystery rather than resent it; to recognize it as beauty and treat it as a gift, as part of every great story: the slow unfurling of grace over a lifetime, this telling of stories in moments that roll into years. We pitch our tent now on a spectrum but our permanent citizenship is in the land of grace, in the spaces between Now and Yet and Partially Known and Fully Known, in the love that calls us by name, not diagnosis, and fulfills everything in its perfect time.

 

Whatever it is or isn’t, don’t be afraid, my friend wrote, the one who’s been through it. Don’t worry–it will be okay. Also, have some wine. And The Husband’s work colleague wrote the same: Don’t worry, he echoed. This is more of a gift than it seems.

 

Which took my breath away in its unexpected, work-email reminder of what I know to be true but can always use help remembering. High school friends and finance guys and there, in all of it, the language of grace: all is gift. THIS is gift. How can it be anything else, when the one writing the story is perfect love?

 

I had prayed going into the appointment that whatever happened wouldn’t wreck me, that I’d remember what is most true and not lose sight of that, not become unmoored from what I believe. And as TK’s tiny hand grasped mine and we walked to the car, I looked down at him: my boy. The one called TK, James, son, brother, grandson, cousin, nephew, friend. The one called fearfully and wonderfully made. The titles that matter most, given by the people who know him best. By the one who designed him. And I felt the relief flood me: nothing had changed. I was walking out with my boy–the same one with whom I had walked in. He is the mystery that is constant gift, the always-reminder that grace makes us recipients, not victims. I look up and I see the source of hope; I look down and I see holy ground.

 

So here’s to letting the story unfold in its own time; here’s to the beauty of not knowing everything, yet knowing it can’t be anything but gift. Here’s to grace in arranged blocks and a voice waiting to be heard yet speaking to our hearts every moment.

 

Here’s to you, The Kid. (*Raises glass, drinks ALL THE WINE.*)