We only have about a million nicknames for our kids.

My family has always done that: growing up, hearing my full first name was a sign of being in trouble. In high school and college, The Sis and I garnered nicknames that have stuck to this day (so have all her friends, none of whom I address by their proper names. At The Sis’s rehearsal dinner, it felt so wrong to use her given name that I debated just letting all the “grown-ups” sit there confused while I called her Rash.) Even before we were dating, The Husband and I came up with nicknames for each other, and once we became full-fledged, the naming extravaganza took off.

Even on this page, I call everyone something else. Partly for some (unnecessary, probably–it’s not like we’re famous…YET) attempt at protection and privacy, partly because it’s fun to hear people ask how “TK” is doing. These substitute names have transformed into terms of endearment as people hear his, and our, story, and so there is beauty in the renaming.

When I took them to childcare at the gym yesterday, she called him by his real name. But as she went on, giddily telling me the story of how he came to her and told her–in his own way, without words–that the back of his toy car was missing and could she please help him? Her excitement was palpable, her enjoyment of his seeking her out was visible, and she told the story as the good news it was, knowing the good news he is.

Good news that comes after darkness, that often seems buried underneath difficulty, that requires abandonment of preconceptions and a release of my hands from their need to control? There’s another name for that. I’ve heard it called gospel.

There is the renaming that reveals true nature, and there are the misnomers born of lies, of dimmed perspective or willful blindness. I know we’ll encounter both with TK, with life, period, because I’ve done it when I’m the only one in the room. When I’ve turned away for one second and by the time my head whipped back, Little Brother was free-falling to the floor from the changing table. And time slows down in a way that makes you think you can intervene, you can prevent the thud and the pain, especially later when you’re replaying the whole scene in your head and calling yourself every bad name you’ve ever imagined. Thinking that now you’ve really done it, now they’re going to come after you–the Truth Police, who have been waiting for an opportunity to expose you for the fraud you are. What business does someone like you, after all, have being a mother? I’ve peered through windows at home, at work, in relationships, listened for their footsteps, these Truth Police, wondered how many people would be shocked when they found out who I really am and how many would nod secretly to each other, whispering that they’ve known all along. I’ve feared being found out for as long as I can remember.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was they who were the frauds; they whose uniforms were stolen and whose tactics lacked legitimacy. That being flawed, making mistakes, is not evidence of being a phony but invitation into deeper living, truer love, more forgiveness, abundant grace.

Different names.

Another day, and I’m hovering near the childcare doorway, prompting TK to stop taking others’ toys, wondering if I should step in, my body language revealing my anxiety, and she holds up a gentle hand. “It’s okay, Mom,” she tells me. “He’ll be just fine. He’s just like all the other kids.”

And I know this is grace she’s showing me, and that she’s right while also being wrong. Because none of our kids are just like all the other kids, but TK’s road has left this truth etched on our hearts in words that did not feel like good news when they landed: MRIs, CT scans, surgery, spectrum, therapy. Yet there he is, stealing toys just like all the other kids, and there will be moments when he will fit in seamlessly and moments when the other shoppers stare at us, when other kids whisper, when other parents judge. These moments break my heart already, the fissures already in place from my own story and his, but those fissures have good news etched in them too. Because they’ve made space, as she has, for the grace to flow into them, for the moments to have new names. This boy so full of challenges is also so full of surprises, of triumphs, of each moment being a new way of looking at the world. He sees light and patterns and lines that I never knew were there, and he brings out of people giddily-told tales and gentleness they didn’t know they had, strength they had to call on outside sources to receive. But when it showed up…oh man, did it ever.

The house is quiet now, TK in therapy downstairs and LB sleeping upstairs, and I’m looking at the list I made before our trip, the way I named my fears to send them up, to release them. To ask grace to show up in them. And now I see how they were renamed, from Fear to Blessing. From bad to good. From burden to gift. The way some may see a little boy just lifting and dropping, lifting and dropping, the bed of his toy truck, but when I sit next to him and follow his eyes, I see the light rising and lowering against the wall, all he can already see that now I can too, and how names change but truth endures.