i am will/ and i have a dog named kevin he is so cute and tommrrw is my birthday

and I’m turning 6 and I’m watching oddbods and it is so fun and funny

and james is playing roblox on his iPad

–Will, the day before his 6th birthday, in a guest intro for the blog

• 

When I was about to start my pediatric dental residency, I decided it was time for me to get a dog.

I was horribly wrong.

The eighteen hours I had Max the beagle pup were painful for both of us. I did no prep work on how to train a dog, what toys to buy him, etc. I just knew that I was single and seemed to be staying that way, and I wanted someone to love–someone to take the edge off the loneliness I felt. So I picked up my puppy and brought him home, and the next morning at 8 am I called the breeder and said, through guttural sobs, that I was bringing him back.

Fast forward seventeen years, and a lot has changed: I live in Sydney, Australia, not Birmingham, Alabama. I’m no longer single, but married with two boys. And we just got a lab puppy named Kevin whom we are not taking back, even though he won’t stop biting everything in sight, and this morning he shat the floor and a pillow rolled over and through it and spread it around like butter on a pancake and one of my kids threw up.’

And somehow, this is actually the life I always dreamed of.

But prior to this morning’s shitstorm, prior to the two kids being pulled from my abdomen and the beach wedding, were a couple of occurrences that changed the game for me so much that I can’t seem to stop doing them:

I got help, and I changed my address.

The first, in the form of counselling/therapy, can be seen by naysayers as dwelling on the past. The second can be seen as running away. But for me, a decidedly (previously) un-brave rule-following careful and cautious planner, they are the bravest things imaginable.

Of course, I had to be pushed into both.

The circumstances of seeking therapy hinged on an ultimatum I’d issued God regarding my single status; I didn’t think he’d call my bluff. The circumstances of leaving home the first time–for New York–were pure desperation. The second–this time Australia–God, again, called my bluff. Since each of these compellings-disguised-as-choices, I’ve had the opportunity to repeat them on a smaller scale in myriad life moments: stepping away from what is comfortable and familiar, and recognising that I need help–and asking for it.

All of which has led me to a place of deeper safety, of being truly known, of walking unafraid. I’ve had the option throughout my life of scrambling to preserve a fragile but appealing narrative, or falling apart to make way for a truer one. The first half of my life I chose the former.

That no longer works for me.

Which is why I spend a lot more time now than I did then on the over- and over-ness of life: on being up close and personal with all the feelings,;with anger and grief and frustration and anxiety, and with elation and joy and victory and awe. It’s why having a dog will last longer this time around and be even more fraught, more exhausting (and much messier). It’s why there is more conflict, more forgiveness, more truth. Why friendships are deeper and rawer and get to the real stuff much sooner (or go nowhere fast).

It’s why, in between my own check-ins with a therapist, I sit in the waiting room while my son sees his; and it’s why I’m not afraid of what will come out of those sessions, be it now or when he’s my age, because making space for truth is never inconvenient or regrettable.

The other night I was lying beside him as he fell asleep. He was angry that he’d missed free time at school to go to one of those sessions, and he would. not. shut. up. about. it.

Finally, after a few moments of blessed silence, something even better:

“I just love you,” he said. “But there are things that are important to you, and things that are important to me, and when my important things don’t happen, I get upset.”

I lay there in the darkness, stunned by the boy who couldn’t speak at four but now says more than I ever imagined.

There was a time when I would have stayed in my anger; there was a time when he would have stayed in his. Now, because of a grace that is stronger than that anger or either of us, we each inch forward, over and over again.