Man, you wouldn’t believe the most amazing things that can come from…some terrible nights.

I spent my thirty-first birthday on a lovely toilet in Positano, Italy.

I woke up that morning with a pain in my stomach, and by the time the four of us hit the beach, I knew things were headed downhill. I was the victim of a twenty-four hour stomach virus, and of course the twenty-four hours affected were the ones spanning my birthday. This year, I woke up on my thirty-seventh birthday mouth-breathing through a throat on fire, the victim of a cold virus that The Kid picked up his first week back in day care. I spent the day filling Kleenex and fielding contractions.

The next day, however, was great. It just goes that way sometimes.

And now, four years (to the day) into marriage and almost three into parenthood, I consider all the expectations I carried into each venture. How clueless I was about what it really takes to build a life with someone–to truly love someone. It’s beginning to make sense why I’m not given the whole picture up front, why the days and years ahead so often remain shrouded in mystery and unfold moment by moment instead of all at once. This kind of grace must be lived out in the seconds, in the slow revolutions and rhythms of each day, to remain what they are meant to be: gifts.

I think about what got us here. How, that same summer six years ago and a few weeks before Italy, I was standing on the porch of a bar named Sharky’s in the Outer Banks with my family, waiting for the pounding rain to abate so we could run back to the house, and my phone rang with a call from The Husband, who was then just A Friend, and a part of me knew that because he was on the line, the chaotic joy of this moment was now complete. It would take five months for me to tell him, a year and a half for us to both get there, and what would have happened if I had known, standing in the rain on the phone, that in two years we’d be married on a beach ourselves? What would my heart have missed in the meantime–the year and a half of trust-building friendship, of knowing a faithfulness greater than my own demands?

And then, of course, there is TK.

When I go into Little Brother’s room now to pray for him, I sit on the glider where I prayed for TK. I know what humbled really means as I sit there, and it’s not the way we typically mean it, as if we’ve been put in our place; rather, everything has been put in its place. This shuffling of plans and priorities by a Greater Love has undone and re-ordered the terrain of my heart, and I can utter my prayers while knowing the true reality of who he will be remains shrouded in mystery beyond what I ask for, and this feels less like a threat than it used to and more like an oath. Like entering into a holy contract full of messy moments and mistakes that are covered by forgiveness and held by redemption. The prayers are less specific this time around–I listen more, demand less, and wait for the gift to unfold.

None of that would have happened without the mystery, the gift, that is TK. The moments spent on those damn developmental charts, on the internet mentally scoring questionnaires, adding up numbers to try and define him in moments of fear as words with scary implications bounced around my head. Wondering about what speech delay implies about intelligence, aloofness about autism, jumping to a Worst Case Scenario as if to protect myself from what might come. Meanwhile, he puts puzzles together on the floor beside me, redirects me to where our car is actually parked in the deck because I forgot and he remembered, and has taken to running up to me every time we’re reunited–whether after school or dinner–and hugging my legs fiercely, placing his head on the bump that is his brother, looking up at me and grinning. And I realize that there are myriad things that will define this boy, but a chart is sure as hell not one of them.

Diagnoses and definitions abound in this searching-for-certainty world, and sometimes the greatest offense can be remaining an individual; following the beat of your own drum and a faith that defies control but offers so much more in its stead.

I’ve placed a mental asterisk beside so many things: *once TK speaks; *once our family is complete; *once the surgery is over; *once everything is easier. As if life begins when the asterisk disappears–but the asterisk is mystery, and is life. And one day, it will lift, only to be replaced by another, so while I wait for viruses to pass and give thanks that they will, I also know that there is only one certainty that swallows everything else up, and it’s hard to trust that when sons are dying at home and abroad and hate is more of a treasured commodity than love and asterisks remain. But believing it–believing in the something more that awaits, even as the rain pours, it feels like an oath, made to me and by me–like entering into a holy contract.