I remember the first year of dental school (the parts I haven’t blocked out, at least): mornings spent in a classroom and afternoons in a lab. What you might not know about your local dentist is that (s)he had to train in all sorts of ways that sound crazy now, take in all kinds of information that now seem irrelevant. For example, many of those lab afternoons were spent constructing teeth out of blue wax, ostensibly to learn dental anatomy. To me, it just felt like punishment.

We carried our lab supplies in tackle boxes that year, and you knew it was a rough day headed for a rough night when a student headed to the car with that tackle box in hand. I was often that student, because the finer points of tooth-waxing seemed to elude me (like many skills that didn’t involve reading facts in a book and regurgitating them on a test). At the end of the lab period, I would queue up behind the other kids in the line for oil to pour into our little flame lamps, which would provide the fuel needed to burn the wick that heated the instruments that melted the wax that became a tooth (or, in my case, something vaguely resembling one). I and my tackle box would then head toward the car and an evening spent at the kitchen table in my apartment, toiling over teeth.

Little Brother was due yesterday–a scheduled C-section–but instead he is a week old, and lying in his rock ‘n play feet from me, farting occasionally, while I type with still-numb fingers and a ballooning heart. Last Tuesday night, I stood up in our bedroom then doubled over as my water broke and reinforcements arrived so that The Husband and I could head to the hospital while The Kid slept unaware. LB was delivered a few hours later, at 1 am that morning, in a departure from plan–the scheduled plan, at least. Since then, life has consisted of stolen moments of sleep and food, emotional highs and lows, utter exhaustion and searing love. TK has slowly warmed up to LB, approaching him in the rocker and reaching out a hand to pat him gently before running away, laughing. And I think, as my family takes shape, these seeming random thoughts about oil and teeth and how this is so not a season of storing things up in lamps for ourselves, but living on the moment-by-moment provision of manna from heaven, bread from the sky, gifts from friends and prayers from the faithful. There’s no receiving line, no tackle box, no way to get a pre-packaged portion that is enough of what we need for the month or week or night. This is day to day grace.

There is grace in watching TK slowly, beautifully understand that this baby is here to stay; in watching him sign on gently to the fact and grow into it, seeming to understand beyond what we expected (as usual) what to do, where his place is. There is a joy in watching him not wither like I feared, but thrive in his new role. Next to LB, he appears bigger than ever, and the love I was so anxious about sharing has multiplied over them and TH. The time, it has to be split, but my heart has stretched, grows right along with each of them, as we all settle into our places in this (we hope–TUBES, YOU STAY TIED!) final family configuration, this gift of being four-sided and tired and stumbling but whole. TK arranges his blocks beside me, not stacking them like the OT recommended, and before indulging in worry I am given the gift of sight: he has grouped them according to the pictures on them, and now as always I love him more than ever as he–now as always–sees things others don’t, recognizes patterns and lives out gifts that were designed into him, and worrying gives way to the freedom that exhaustion and grace bring. He is becoming exactly who he was meant to be, and the comparatively (so far) healthy journey we’ve had with LB–yes, even this early–distills into brilliance their unique paths and reminds me of all that TK has overcome, all that has played into him being him, and makes it even more beautiful.

Yes, he’s becoming who he was meant to be–has always been becoming–and so are we, so am I. Because that becoming is a diet fed daily, not stored-up plans and filled-up calendars but drops of bread on tongue in minute-by-minute faithfulness, walking one foot in front of the other regardless of the amount of light at that particular time of day (or night). There’s a peace now that I didn’t let in when TK was born, because I was not then where I am now, who I am, and somehow (spoiler alert: REDEMPTION) that is okay. I’m still me, still rough-edged and impatient, but beneath and around it all is a growing sense of sight regarding all that can’t be seen. Which translates to slightly more of all the stuff that wasn’t there before: mainly an overarching freedom in surrender to the gifts of grace in whatever package they arrive.

Don’t get me wrong: I can still claw and blow up and melt down. But I can also be stilled, can rest, can just be. Day by day.

Yesterday morning, TK stood beside me as I sat on the couch, arranging blocks then moving to his current favorite book, and the final configuration was this: LB in front of us, then me and TK and TH on the couch. My Bible lay on one side of me and It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny on the other, and I felt an obligation to both, and here is what I can tell you about grace in the moment, about bread from heaven: a voice spoke gently into my heart and told me to read the bunny book. That sometimes children’s books, tiny hands held and bodies leaned into, are purer moments of worship than anything I could construct myself. And so I exhaled, I read the book over and over and over, and the four of us sat there, becoming, in the growing light of morning and grace.