Every good and perfect gift is from above…

Dear James,

Do you know how loved you are?

I ask you this every day, and since you’re not speaking yet I answer it for you. I name the God who made you, and your dad, and me.

Lately, I’ve had to add a few more to that list.

Because if the first year of your life was about us finding our way around each other and making plans, then this year has been about finding our way around your story and watching those plans fall apart so harder, better ones can take their place.

And so many people know who you are now. I can’t type it without tears, knowing how loved and held you are.

I read it before you were born, looked up the meaning of the name we had already chosen, and saw the word supplanter. And I thought, “How appropriate, for he will be taking the place of sleep.” That you did–but there was more.

There’s always more.

The trajectory of my life, and the secret of its meaning, lies in the rubble of What Was that had to give way to What Is. Your story–the What Is that we are living now–has supplanted the What Was that I imagined for you, for these first two years. I have a boy with a head tilted to the left, a boy whose words are still on the inside, a boy who has seen the interior of countless waiting rooms and medical centers and who has been poked and prodded, who has had hands wrung over him and brains picked because of him.

When you were still growing within me, I announced your impending arrival on Facebook AS PEOPLE DO and made a collage of the congratulatory comments. And now, with spinal surgery and rehab on the horizon, I’m gathering again–all the thoughts and prayers and encouragement sent from the people who have heard your story–and this collage? What a work of art it will be.

What a work of art you are.

You, my constant reminder of grace: unpredictable, wild, raw, ever-present. You transform mundane moments on the floor into glorious glimpses into the heavens. My tears and laughter, purified by loving you, have never been more real, more true.

And though there are moments I never would have chosen–sleepless nights, IV needles, wonky vertebrae–I would not give any of it back. Because without any of it, you wouldn’t be you. And I wouldn’t be me, it turns out. The two greatest gifts I’ve ever been given, the most important roles I will ever play, are being your dad’s wife and your mom. And though I fail in both capacities daily, there is an undercurrent of grace sustaining all of us and unfurling this beautiful life we are living together. This beautiful, messy, difficult, easy, little-bit-of-everything life.

What was intended to tear you apart, God intends it to set you apart. 

There are stories you will hear as you get older, tales we will read to you in your room among the helmet and the neck braces gracing your stuffed animals, and you’ll know names like Harry and Neville and Sam and Frodo, David and Moses and Joseph and countless others who seemed the unlikeliest of heroes: scarred, weak, afraid, flawed, stuttering, left-for-dead. And you’ll know them in a way many don’t, feel a kinship that runs deep, because you know what it means to be scarred, to wear wounds that aren’t easily hidden. You’ll wonder why they feel so familiar to you, these stories, and why these heroes feel like friends.

And your dad and I will tell you our favorite story: the one that spans a Saturday morning headed to the hospital, all the way to this moment in your room. All the cries and laughter and uncertainty and questions and operations and devices, the moments of falling and walking and quiet and speaking and grinning. A story still being told. This is your story, and ours, and every moment of it speaks redemption. Every second of it is grace.

Happy birthday, my gift, my joy, my tiny hero. You are so loved.