He wasn’t that different from the other children. I mean, not–not really.

Four years.

Four years ago, I hadn’t heard of biomedical therapy. Hadn’t heard of ABA therapy or hippotherapy or music therapy. I hadn’t researched GAPS or GFCF diets, hadn’t sifted through papers on vaccinations and neuroanatomy and autism prognoses. I hadn’t watched the single gray hair here and there invite its friends over en masse. I didn’t know what it really meant to be tired. I didn’t snag leftover fake chicken nuggets off a shitty plastic tray and consider that an entree. I didn’t struggle over finding the right childcare–not just a warm body, but a trustworthy and kind person. I didn’t wake up at 3 am and do my best work of remembering things that need to be done.

Four years ago, I hadn’t seen his smile.

Four years ago, I was fresh off modified bed rest after a two-night stay on the high-risk maternity ward due to preterm contractions. I just wanted him to be born already. I neatly drew comparisons between waiting for him and the advent season itself, waiting for another boy to arrive. I felt uncomfortable and irritable. I had no idea what lay ahead.

Four years ago, I woke up to a bit of blood and headed to the hospital with The Husband. I cutely updated my Facebook status from a bed, scared but game. Let’s do this. I had no idea what I was about to do. What was about to be asked of me. Who I was about to become.

Four years ago, he arrived early–almost four weeks early–tricking us because the road ahead would be marked by delays. When they pulled him from me, the first delay occurred. I waited for his cry, craned my neck around from the table while fighting off nausea. Where was he? When would I hear him?

He cried, and my life was immediately split into before and after.

Four years later, I still wait to hear more from him. But that word, more? It’s happening all around us.

Four years later, he has a speech evaluation after two and a half years of therapy, and when I hear the message the therapist has left, I let out a two-and-a-half year sob, a fraught breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I turn from the brothers playing on the floor and lean over the counter, the tears spilling on its surface. Slightly ahead of his age in receptive language. All the evaluations, all the denials and insistence, all the advocating and believing, and now, finally, someone sees him. Hears him like we do. Someone knows him–someone with a degree in this, with letters after his name and the ability to write an authoritative report. And this is not everything, but it ain’t nothing either. And as I listen to the message again and again, as I repeat it for others, as I continue to cry every time I think about it–my brilliant boy with the papers now to prove it–I can’t stop saying thank you. Thank you to the author of more, to grace that has carried us to this part of the story and will keep carrying us past it to the next. Thank you to that grace working through whines and grunts and every other way of “asking” that has alternately driven me crazy and made me proud but has always done this: given him answers and context that have helped us get here. I have gotten to be a part of doing that for him, and though my capacity for ingratitude has followed and floored me, in this moment I am overwhelmed by the endless room that grace has made for gratitude. Oh, how we have waited. And in the waiting, grace has deepened our love and enlarged our hearts and changed our vision. Has made us, us.

Four years later, I get the email from the neurosurgeon in California, that the latest MRI looks good: that it appears he is growing in the right direction and this is allowing constant improvement, two years after surgery. We have not been waiting on nothing, I see now, as tiny movements have occurred, cells dividing and muscles lengthening and without our knowing, all of this happening in every moment: the easy ones, the hard ones, the doubtful ones. His growing the way he’s meant to, toward healing.

Four years later, I wait by a stable for an hour as he rides, and every now and then I gag because this is so not my scene. I’ve had that problem, labeling “Not for Me” those things I was headed for, mired in, meant for, proven made for. And it strikes me, as I dodge more horse excrement, that I never would have known beyond theory what grace sent him into, what filth grace chose to be born into, had I not become a regular at Not My Scene. Had I not been led by the hand here despite my protests. Had I not seen and smelled the mud and muck up close. Grace showing up here? Grace choosing this. For me. For you. Stables becoming our scene.

Four years ago I celebrated Christmas with what I thought was a childlike excitement. I was wrong. I had forgotten what that really looks like, and he is showing me: running into the house after school and straight to the tree, having to turn on the lights first thing, echoing Santa’s “ho ho ho” and loving him, turning to me all grin and giddiness when we see that bowl full of jelly on an ornament or decoration or in a front yard. He is teaching me excitement in the waiting, and I consider that maybe I’ve been the one who is delayed.

Four years ago, I expected a baby. Four years later, and every day in between, I’ve received a gift.

Now where have I heard that story before?