But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship. –C.S. Lewis

Invisibilia is, the website states, “a glimpse into a world you can’t see.” It “explores the intangible forces that shape human behavior.” I’ve listened to the podcast a bit, most recently the episode about fear, natch–it’s sort of a topic in which I excel. And it begs the question: how much is going on without our knowing?

Something’s happening with The Kid.

In a very (un)scientific manner, we threw everything at the wall to see what would stick: more speech therapy, discrete video modeling, listening therapy, ABA therapy. Even diet changes and nutritional supplements, for the love, and I used to be the one rolling my eyes violently at people who thought such nonsense would make a difference in behavior. Cut to me reading emails from a friend who cares, checking out the embedded videos, jumping onto Amazon, and sneakily dumping powder into TK’s water then silently cheering as he drinks it down.

Oh, and prayer. There’s been a lot of that.

So you take all these things and you mix them together: you drive to the appointments and you turn on the video and you put on the headphones and you listen at the top of the stairs to the discrete trials punctuated by his stubborn wails and eventual progress and you breathe. You breathe in and out the day-to-dayness of it and you wait.

You get used to waiting. So used to it that it might take a trip overseas and the better part of a week away before you get your new eyes. And that’s when you go from waiting to seeing.

Seeing that he’s changing. That he’s coming back to us.

It’s a return that makes me realize, profoundly, how much his absence impacted me: how much I longed for the eye contact and the affection and the joy, the presence, that had seemed to fade away. How much the absence of it had left a part of me withered, empty, hurting. How many parents have to experience that daily, without knowing if it will ever get better. It opened up my heart to a hurting world, and it opened it up to him.

And like a tide, he’s creeping back up, coming back in. He’s putting his head on my shoulder, demanding to be chased, babbling incessantly, laughing uproariously, exchanging communication every way he can. He loves his brother. He puts puzzles together faster than I can, knows things we’ve never taught him, and waits for our applause. Then joins in. There’s a lot of applause around here. A glut of celebration.

And yesterday, he somehow found Luther Vandross’s song “Dance with My Father” (which I hate, sorry Lu) on iTunes and kept playing it and Little Brother took a too-short nap and I wanted to scream or run into the bathroom with a bottle of champers or both and so I breathed. And while I did, TK grabbed the PEC that is a picture of me and brought it to me.

I want you.

Sometimes things take forever to change. And sometimes everything changes in an instant.

I held him for awhile.

I feel how these tiny changes and big ones shift us along the path planned for us, how they get us where we’re going, and how they wake me up to the life I’m meant to live. My own changes–the movement from law to gospel, from lists to narrative, from rules to mercy–they are happening so slowly, it often seems. But they are happening.

The thought strikes me that, if I were to see the beauty that grace is making out of all this, if I could read the story the whole way through, I would never stop wanting exactly what I have at each moment. I would never stop saying thank you. Which leads to the next thought: that when you start living this way–when you start believing that it all matters, that nothing is wasted, that redemption is in every moment–when you just start believing–that nothing is invisible, really.