The Kid has had his head examined. Multiple times. Way back when he was a newborn (three loooong months and another world ago), his pediatrician noticed some asymmetry there, as well as a favoring of one side when it came to neck movements. She sent us to the physical therapist and we did some “necksercises” (my word, I’m already trademarking it, don’t even think about stealing it). There was some improvement, then some regression (he apparently follows my life patterns)–so she sent us to the (insert soundtrack of doom here) pediatric neurosurgeon.

They wanted to make sure his skull wasn’t fused together in the spots where it’s supposed to be, well, NOT, so the neurosurgeon felt around and ordered some x-rays. So our poor little child, who–unbeknownst to us all–would, a couple of weeks later, be lying on a bed in the ER with a catheter shoved up his woohoo, was on that Monday morning lying on an x-ray table as The Husband and I held him still and the beam passed over his skull. He was an angel. I was a wreck. But we were all okay. As was his head.

Last week, we were back to the PT to kick the necksercises into high gear now that we had the all-clear from the surgeon. She recommended a scan of his head because the asymmetry is still there, and damn if we’ll let his modeling career be deterred by THAT! (I am not serious about modeling. I would never let such a vain enterprise interfere with his work for the Heritage Foundation.) So it happened that about a year after I watched The Niece go through the same thing, I was holding TK in my lap as the orthotic specialist placed a gangster-looking hose-thingy over his head and we placed him in the scanner. I held him still, which seems to be my primary job these days, and made a joke about robbing a bank later as the laser traversed his head. A few minutes later we left with a design sheet for his new gear.

And then, this past Sunday: The baptism Mulligan, two weeks after the originally-scheduled one. No ER visit the night before. More family in town to see it. And the crowd of us barging into the gym-turned-sanctuary, believers and non-believers alike, all to watch The Kid’s asymmetrical-yet-perfect head get doused with tap-yet-holy water. As our pastor spoke and the Yankee Dad videoed, our family of three stood in front of our community: the rag-tag, broken band of church-planted brothers who prefer to be honest about what messes we are rather than pretend to be put-together. The water came down upon TK’s head, and his thumb-slurping paused as his face filled with shock at this unexpected turn of events. “What the…?” I imagined him thinking, and his face began to crumple until I shoved his thumb back into his mouth and–you got it–held him still, TH’s arm encircling us both. I thought about the floods of grace in my own life, unscheduled and unexpected and often unwanted, my startled face crumpling with the outrage of it all, and then the peace that descends despite my best efforts to ward it off in favor of the planned. The realization that there is One who knows better, and that this is good news indeed, because it means that these are the moments–all are the moments– when I lie still and let the water wash over me, making everything new.