The Kid is not speaking yet. Not actual words anyway, because apparently “ooh” doesn’t count. Depending upon whom you ask, this is cause for anything from mild concern to major alarm. But I, a natural and genetically enhanced worrier, am not worried. See, I know a thing or two about late-blooming myself.

When I was growing up, sweet little girls were all the rage. If I wanted to be approved of, talked up, noticed, it would have to be as a sweet girl. I targeted this as the utmost compliment to attain. Which was a problem for me, because an inner turmoil raged between the part of me that wanted to be sweet and the part of me that knew I wasn’t. I felt I was something less, but really? There was more going on than just sweet.

The responses that came naturally to everyone else–the socially acceptable words and actions–seemed fake to me. I could spot a cliche a mile away, could tell when someone was hiding behind politeness. And because my first instinct–to offset the artificial with some realness, to attempt banter rather than small talk, to allow my words the edge they seemed to want to carry–was greeted with wary eyes and misunderstanding smirks the few times I ventured there, I began to hide my real nature underneath quietness. If I couldn’t be sweet, I would just be…there. Quiet and submissive and under the radar.

And so, over the years and underneath the facade, I grew angry.

When I finally felt safe enough to come out of my shell, I came out swinging. My wit donned a meanness that was really just self-defense, but it fell sharp regardless. People tolerated me but didn’t feel safe around me. And I didn’t understand why I vacillated between these two extremes: taciturn and insulting, close-mouthed and uber-sarcastic.

Some of you, at this point, are all “what the hell?” Or heck, probably. Because this is not a familiar language to you. But some of you, you know that undercurrent of anger I’m talking about–the price you pay to keep things hidden. The fear that someone will figure you out for who you really are and stone-cold reject you when they see the ugly truth. For me, it took two years of counseling and a half-decade in New York’s bootcamp of grace to realize that sweet is just not something I will ever be and that there is such beauty in that. In letting go of preconceived ideas about who I should be, in finding out the person I was actually designed to be. In shelving the pretending game.

New York City and grace are hella exfoliants.

I’ll never be the girl whose Pinterest page is the envy of everyone; the girl whose blog references only Bible verses and Christian needlepoint phrases; the girl whose chin is always up and whose grin is always plastered on. My God is just way too big for me to get away with that shit.

No, you will find me as the girl who is struggling not to rage while sitting in traffic. For whom, some days, the closest thing to worship is not complaining about everything. Who loves Jesus, but drinks a little. Who overshares–especially about the ugly parts–on her blog. Who finds the gospel in TV shows and movies and bars where people don’t even realize they’re talking about it, but they are because it is every story ever told and will not fit inside your church’s coffeehouse.

I am the broken, the struggling, the sharp-edged and mistake-making. And for so long, all I did was run from that and wonder why I was so tired. Now I embrace it even as I wait and watch for grace to smooth the edges down just enough, take the uber out of the sarcastic but leave the wit, and suffuse me with not sweetness, but occasionally–if I’m really open to it, especially in the torn places–maybe a little warmth.

So when I say I don’t worry about TK, you can believe I’m not pretending. Oh, I’m sure I’ll worry about plenty, but I know that grace is the balm for that. It always is, for those hidden places where defensiveness and fear would have me lash out or hide or say it doesn’t matter when it does. Because it does matter that TK talks–but when it happens is not so important to me as what he’s going to be saying. And I know that he comes from a father who is full of both kindness and wit and a mother who is…getting there. I know that grace has used some of its most gorgeous wrecking balls–a city, a husband, a son–to take what I was and use it to make me who I’m becoming. Shattered dreams traded for better ones. My narrative embedded in a greater one, the greatest one, spanning history right alongside my thirty-five years.

When TK talks, it will be with the voice he was given in the time that is right. And if we do what we were made to, he will speak the language of grace fluently.