I remember that Friday in second grade when I saw the boy who didn’t have money for a snack. I marched over to his chair and poured out half my cheese curls onto a paper towel on his desk. I didn’t even put him on a payment plan or ask if he planned to get a job to support himself from now on, just gave.

I don’t think I’d be so generous with the cheese curls today.

Two decades later, I drove outside of Birmingham’s city limits–way outside of them–and picked up my new dog, a beagle puppy I named Max. I returned him less than twenty-four hours later, tearful and defeated after a night full of puppy whines and sleeplessness. I couldn’t handle it.

A few years after that, there was more crying and sleeplessness, but no return option. I still couldn’t handle it, but the baby was here to stay.

I knew how to care, back when I was seven, and the thing I remember most about it was that it hurt. It hurt a lot, and over the years–years spent “growing up”–I learned how to make it hurt less, and it involved hardening my heart, shaking my head frequently, looking past and around and through until I didn’t have to see. When I was seven, I was told I had a heart that felt things deeply; when I was twenty-seven, I steeled myself against them.

Next week I’ll be thirty-seven, and I’m working on it. I’m being worked on.

Number Two–for whom I am currently enduring a three-hour glucose test and trying not to hurl–will be arriving in a few weeks. Number One–The Kid–has already done the lion’s share of rending my heart open. I took him back to daycare this week for the first time since his surgery, and it has hurt. A lot. In a way that I can’t steel myself against, can’t look away from, just as I couldn’t when he was a newborn and cried from his crib, or when he was lying in a hospital bed wearing a halo. When I left him this morning, waving through the window as he stared back uncertainly, I promptly jumped into the car and cried the whole way to the doctor’s office. (Great. Now I’m crying again.)

We work on protecting ourselves against hurt, against pain, against the quiet moments that leave us alone with our thoughts and our hearts and make us feel too much. We medicate ourselves with our phones–I’ve felt the icy fingers of panic grip me at the thought I’ve left mine at home–with busyness, with work.

For months, at home, I’ve been able to create a universe filled with just my family, with TK and me and no outside forces like circle time or biting kids or disagreeable adults breaking into my sense of control. But this week began a new chapter, and it’s been a painful one. And it’s made me remember that being a parent means signing up for a lifetime of vulnerability, of hurting on behalf of others. Of giving away my snacks, and my heart.

This chapter began at the right time. My doctor said that it was rest or hospital, no matter how badly I wanted to clean, and I wondered if she had a hidden camera in our house. So I dropped TK off, against my will, and dealt with the aftermath by praying and picking him up two hours later. But not by steeling. That doesn’t work when you love this much, because loving this much just hurts. Period. And as I’ve come to terms with the re-intrusion of that kind of hurt, as I’ve rested on the couch through it and felt it, I’ve come to re-appreciate the heart I used to have, the heart I’m growing to have again–the one that feels deeply on behalf of someone else. I’ve come to realize that this isn’t a weakness, any more than TK’s neck or whatever Number Two brings to the table is, though the world may call it that and it may sometimes seem so, because this is how I was made. And something tells me that this particular heart of mine may have been dropped into this house of men for a purpose.

I used to think that the promise of rest–one of the many promises made to those who believe–would look different. I expected it to look like sleeping in on Saturdays, like long uninterrupted nights of quiet and no peeing, of toes in the sand and perfectly-behaved little ones. I was as right about that as I was about what love would look like, or peace, or freedom. They are, all of them, rawer and more real than that, twisty and turn-y and yet direct, wrecking balls and unplanned-for events. At their darkest moments they are bodily fluids and puffy eyes and breaking down in public and healing only after cutting. They are anything but easy. And they hurt.

They are so much more than I thought.

But love, and peace, and freedom and rest? They’re also this: they are TK loving the blocks so much that he doesn’t want to leave school; they are his sudden proclivity for pulling me to the porch swing and sitting beside me, his arm resting on the bump–the uncomfortable, blessed bump–that holds his brother; they are the four of us leaning on each other before bath time in front of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse; they are the moments when I go to pick him up and he lights up at the sight of my face. They are the year between a confession of feelings and a return of them, during which a greater love stopped my heart from steeling itself, keeping it alive as a preface to a life spent together. They are the newborn months, during which the same love kept my heart alive through exhaustion and confusion and fear so that we could all lean on each other now.

They are true rest–the rest of, instead of knowing, being carried.

The promises, not me, are what protect my heart. And I’m learning to see that the promises are always kept.

Saturday morning, and the house is quiet. I’ve got a guy sleeping on either side of me, one in the bed and one in the monitor. I don’t want to move, just want to lie here and enjoy the quiet, the sounds of rhythmic breathing.

That lasts for a minute, then I grab my phone. In another minute, I’m reading the blog of a mom who just lost her boy to cancer. My tears hit the ground before my feet do, and I’m crying at intervals throughout the day: on The Husband’s shoulder, behind sunglasses in the car, over dishes at the sink. This loss is unimaginable, and yet I venture into the imagining for an instant before I shrink back from the shadows and the fear that plague this world, that leave us each without guarantee. I send a message without knowing what to say, even after I’ve said something, because there are no words. There is no sufficient answer.

Not yet.

We have walked a rough road with The Kid, but at no point have we been given that kind of prognosis, a timeline of how much life is left, and I’ve never been so thankful for the path we’ve covered, for the struggles that played out in frustration and uncertainty but, still, life. But we have walked halls with all sorts of sufferers, have sat in waiting rooms next to them, and there is a new community that you are born into–unwillingly–when that door has been opened and you are ushered through it. A community of worn faces and tired eyes, but also more than that. There is a depth to the lines in skin, to the eyes, that speaks of a capacity for both profound sadness and matchless joy, the kind of joy that comes from an unexpected trip to Disney World or the first time she hears a sound or a head held upright, moments you never knew could matter so much but in their purity, in their simplicity, are more beautiful than a thousand sunsets. The eyes of this community tell stories like that, and they are beautiful too.

But the pain. The pain of not knowing why, of the unfairness and uneven distribution, it is haunting and threatens to keep us right where we are, never knowing more or moving past it. The mysteries of diagnoses and setbacks can feel cruel and targeted and can make you forget goodness, can make you even stop believing it’s real, or that anything is more real than what hurts. There are no pat answers or Hallmark cards that drive deeper than that pain that makes you feel alone and adrift.

But there is something. There are some things.

There are the smiles that come from nowhere, the laughter in the backseat. There is the singing, the unbridled joy at being swung. There’s the night he decides he wants to be read to again and the three of you sitting there, leaning on each other in the quiet magic of the moment that makes you forget the day’s tantrums and fits, and it makes you wonder, also, if this moment can happen–if there are good mysteries, too–then what if there is something–something unexpected, something also mysterious–that is so good it can swallow up all the sad? That is deeper than the deepest loss and higher than the highest joy? That sees what the world calls “imperfect” and calls it “exactly as it should be” because we just don’t know the whole story yet?

Yesterday afternoon, TK gets up from his nap and looks beneath our bed, starts crying for something. He grabs my hand, pushes it toward the object, and I see a ball smack in the middle of the floor, beyond my reach. He cries in words I don’t understand, and my frustration with and for him reaches a peak: Why can’t we speak the same language?! I shake my head but he keeps pushing. Finally, I find a way, and with my new prop and a contorted position, I push the ball out and hand it to him. He stares at it, then tosses it aside, crying. Well f— you too, I think, but don’t say–a mild victory–and go to his room to cool off as he screams. I sit in the glider where I rocked him through sleepless nights and it’s so much easier to be angry, but that’s beginning to feel more and more like a choice. So, as the screams continue, I think. Help, I pray, my favorite request, and in the calming chaos images flood my mind of how faithless I have been in my life, how much understanding I lacked as I collected idols and made gods in my own image when grace was there the whole time, faithful through my faithlessness, waiting for me to learn its language.

I take a deep breath–nothing is fixed, I’m still me, but I’m further from the edge–and head back into the room where TK sits, holding the ball in his hand. Finally accepting what he’s been given as his, even when it didn’t look like he imagined it would. He looks up to me and says something, and though we don’t speak the same language yet, I know that one day…we will.

The nursery is coming together.

When we first moved in, the room served as an office of sorts: the big computer sat atop the desk that had been in The Husband’s New York apartment. He would file important papers in the file cabinets, and I spent the last few months of my first pregnancy writing a novel there while an apple crumble candle burned beside me.

A year ago, we made preparations for a nursery there. TH moved the computer downstairs. The room upstairs awaited its new furniture when the test was positive. Then that faded away, and the room served as storage–and a reminder of something lost.

Now it’s a nursery.

The Kid likes to venture in there to turn on the little green lamp and make drums out of diaper genie refills. I don’t think he gets it yet, that this is where his little brother will sleep (we hope), but then again, he probably gets a lot more than I give him credit for. So who knows?

When we moved here from New York, we were overwhelmed with space and slowly crept into it, spreading out with the years and filling square footage and closets. Now that the two have become three, and soon four, we’ve each contracted back into our own spaces to make room for new life. One year ago, I was hoping the spots didn’t mean what I knew they meant; now I feel the kicking, see the image on the screen, and who can know when something falling apart is actually leading to everything coming together?

TK’s last music class was yesterday, and he chose to spend it hanging out by the cubbies where my purse sat and held the promise of a sandwich for him that he later ate in the ophthalmologist’s waiting room. After that, he fell apart in my lap as we sat in the clinical chair together, drops and light in his eyes and tears from them, and then it was over and everything was fine. The peepers got a clean bill of health, and we held hands and walked to the parking deck, where an hour before I had dropped my ticket between the driver’s seat and console and barely kept from snarling at my bad luck. At how I had to move the chair backward and forward until I could hike my belly over the seat and fish out the piece of paper, wondering why stuff like this always happens to me, and then it was in my hands and I realized I hadn’t sworn once. Hadn’t yelled either. And though comparing yourself to the downtrodden of the world over a five-minute inconvenience isn’t noble, there is grace in the process. In the fact that moments later, I remembered what I had read about the opportunities to choose between bitterness and gratitude and that there would be more chances to choose the latter. That this is grace. That the fact I’m seeing it now not as condemnation, but as invitation, is another way things fall apart so that they can come together.

In the evenings, before bath time, we turn on Mickey and TK leans against me while we do his exercises, and five minutes in my back aches and my neck is tight and as he loosens, I constrict, and it’s all so worth it. I stay for a while after, as his weight rests against his brother and the tiny legs inside register his presence–and this is grace. The staying and seeing.

Last night, we finished dinner and put on bathing suits, gathered our gear. TK was in the stroller and the lot of us were halfway down the driveway before the sky opened up and the rain pelted down. And once again, what would have felt like condemnation became an invitation. We unbuckled him. “Let’s let him play in it.” His grin glowed through the gray as he stomped through puddles and got soaked, and the purity of the moment overwhelmed me: his joy transforming foiled plans into something better.

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different…”      C.S. Lewis

Months after the nightly awakenings, the cries in the dark and the unpredictable midnight hours, months that were silent and peaceful, and–it always seems to happen this way–I had just thought to myself that he had been sleeping perfectly for a while. (As if that’s a thing; check it off the list.) That our nights had been uninterrupted, placid, predictable. Just in time for #2 to blow them up.

But the other night, he cried out. The monitor by my head lit up with its accusatory shades of red, its bleating breaking my sleep into Before and After. I looked. I waited. I stayed calm. For about two minutes. 

I seethed.

These lessons we learn, they sometimes come so hard that we think we’re done. We’ve mastered that section of the syllabus and received our certificate. You’d think, after weeks of the halo, after muscle spasms and tantrums, after medicine-induced vomiting episodes, that a little think like a nighttime wakeup would be nothing. I wish it were nothing. I wish a lot of things about myself that just aren’t true yet.

I went into his room and patted his back. He turned to me and grinned, the little turd. He wanted to play. I stayed a few more minutes, then returned to our room where The Husband, whose superpowers are Kindness and Sleeping Through It All, lay motionless. I wanted to punch him in the head.

The crying didn’t stop. TH woke up. I shut down. This may be the worst part, when I refuse to acknowledge we’re on the same team and just go silent. Or maybe the worst part was next, when I screamed “SHUT THE F$&K UP!” into my pillow.

I don’t tell you that because I think it’s funny or cute. I tell you that because I’m ashamed and I hate it and because I know there are some of you out there who have felt the same way after doing the same thing, and it’s important to remember we’re not alone in how we struggle. In the things about ourselves we wish we could make disappear.

I don’t do well off-schedule, to put it mildly. Enter grace.

We’re headed toward another Newborn Season, and we’re both afraid. But I know what I’ll get from TH’s end, and I have much less to fear. That makes me want to crumple up and cry, the fact that I can be met with such grace and not give it in return. But isn’t that the story of my life? And isn’t the point that there is more?

Sometimes all it takes is a mid-day break, an hour on the couch with the ladies of Litchfield, and I can meet the end of nap time with an air of freedom and the joy that comes from interacting with my two-year-old boy rather than avoiding crazy women bearing shivs. Sometimes that’s enough of a dose of perspective to set me straight. And some days–rare and memorable ones–I’m fooled into thinking I don’t need anything, because the temperature is ten degrees cooler and everyone’s mood is lighter and bliss is rampant, moments of glory nearly blinding even in mundanity.

But some days it takes getting leveled by the night before, crawling hands and knees back to the truth, broken and tearful. The truth, which during a nighttime blitzkrieg can be so easily overshadowed, distorted by darkness and my own persistent flaws.

Sometimes it takes falling and getting picked back up before I can see straight.

These moments, these times when I get leveled, I hear so clearly the lies: You’ll never change. This is just the way you are. You’re going to alienate them. And what makes the lies so loud, so scary, is that element of truth to them. Because I’ll never change–completely. This is the way I am–now. And I will alienate them, sometimes. Those truths tear me up. Then I remember what I came here for: the truth that is more.

The truth that I will never be perfect, but I will change. Slowly, surely, maybe seemingly imperceptibly. But I can look back now and see I’m not where I was, and this is something. And though these particular flaws are the ones I am given to, I am not given over to them. And as for alienating…well. Isn’t that what forgiveness is for? Isn’t forgiveness just grace stretched out over time, over a marriage, over eighteen years and then the rest of life? Grace for the nights and the mornings after.

To believe anything else is to buy stock in hopelessness, and faith tells me this is an unwise investment. So I believe–in more.

And the next day, I apologize. I take The Kid to music class, and the sixth time seems to be the charm because he sings back to the teacher, gives her a high five, then dances and beats the drum and I’m leveled again, but in the best way. Tearful for the happiest reasons. That night, he eats apples–his first fruit in months. The things I never imagined would be revolutionary, are. And so we all change, one breath at a time, growing as though we’re led by a hand that knows the way.

And to think, we almost missed it.

At The Mom and Dad’s, where we spent July 4th this year, the fireworks were scheduled to go off at 8:15 pm CST. Since we normally operate on EST (with a hefty dose of AST, Anal Standard Time, thanks to rigid scheduling by yours truly), I doubted The Kid would stay awake for the festivities. I pictured a sleeping child in the monitor and a close-to-sleeping me on the couch when the explosions began.

But 8 pm rolled around, and TK was wide awake, tearing around my parents’ house with no sign of slowing down. So we went.

The Sis and Bro-in-Law brought The Niece, her red curls flying around the lawn where neighborhood families were gathered on blankets and a DJ spun weirdly inappropriate tunes (Cupid Shuffle, anyone? Happy birthday, America!). The night grew darker and the mosquitoes more abundant and I wondered if we had made a mistake, since clearly the Explosion Committee was not abiding by AST. I slapped away bugs and prayed away contractions while The Husband chased TK around the grass. Finally, the moment arrived. I held my breath–would TK freak out at the loud pops? Were we bestowing upon him a month’s worth of nightmares? Would I give premature birth on this golf course?

The first lights flashed in the night sky, and their pops accompanied them. TK’s head snapped up and the suspense built. Then…utter glee. His face lit up, his smile widened, and he looked from TH to me as if to say, “Y’all? YOU GUYS. DID YOU SEE THAT?!”

His exuberance grew with each explosion, each burst of light and color: he squealed, he jumped, he ran, he pumped the air with his fist then attempted to reach out his hand to grab the glory in front of his face. I felt that all-too-rare kind of joy that happens to parents, the kind unadulterated by anxiety, uncompromised by fear. Something heavy lifted from my soul and I sank into the moment, tears mixing with laughter.

So much of parenthood is work. Every instruction carries a lesson, every act of discipline a greater point, every sacrifice a goal. Soon after TK was born, The Mom articulated the joy of being a grandparent: the fact that, as a parent, you have to constantly teach; but as a grandparent, you can just enjoy. I carry that charge of teaching–of growing him into a person bent on more than just happiness–as a burden all too often, and when you add to it the ever-present anxiety over his health and safety in a world filled with evil, it can all feel like too much. An anchor weighing me down, making me forget to look up at what, who, ultimately holds all of us. Every push of the swing is coupled with a concern that he could fall out, even as he laughs from his perch, blissfully unaware of the perils surrounding him. I have to be aware, as a parent, all the time–but the worry is another animal, one that breeds control and fear, and all too easily the joy is sucked right out of the present moment.

Then there is this:

The fireworks continued, and I recalled watching them a few years ago from the deck of a boat on the Hudson River, the Statue of Liberty their backdrop. There was more wine that night, later hours, and seemingly more freedom. I looked down at TK, at the excitement on his face, and considered how my idea of freedom has changed in the last couple of years. I always thought it came from within me–as if I could just will myself to be free. Yet somehow, through the dark days of newborn survival and nights in the hospital, through surgical interventions and words not yet spoken, through a tilted head and a hand tugging on my finger, I’ve found freedom in all the things that would have looked like enslavers to the girl on that boat. There is a form of servanthood, called love I think, that breaks the chains that bind me to myself as an ultimate authority and allows me to see beauty from different angles, limitless perspectives: in trenches, at sunrises I would have missed, in the weight of a tiny body pressed into mine in a hospital bed. Somehow, it’s the weight of it all that is my freedom.

I mean, here there were, multicolored explosions erupting behind me, and I’m staring at a two-year-old’s face.

To think we almost missed it? No. Anne Lamott writes that “grace bats last.” Not me.

We never miss the things we’re meant for.

TH and I share a fleeting glance and smile–we will talk about this night for days, years to come. I look back down, where there is no Hudson River, no Statue of Liberty, and the fireworks continue behind me as I watch my new view, the face that lights up my night.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy.     –G.K. Chesterton

It used to be on a fire escape in the city, with a glass of wine on the windowsill. Or in a silent room (my favorite kind), buried underneath a blanket with a book. Or in bed on Saturday with half the morning gone before thoughts of starting the day even begin to be entertained.

Fitting, then, that The Kid announced his arrival on a Saturday morning: a trip to the bathroom, the frantic communication and packing of bags, the last time we would ever really sleep in.

Peace and quiet looks different these days.

I think I’ve mislabeled a lot of it as boredom. It’s what The Husband and I talk about since I’ve been staying home with The Kid, that this parenthood thing, it’s not hard–not like rocket science, or grad school, or benching 250. It’s hard in the day-to-dayness of it, the endless repetitions, the…simplicity.

It’s boring, is what I’m saying.

You can Pinterest your creative snacks all you want, but I’ll have to openly call you a liar if you demand that pushing a swing three hundred times in the summer heat never gets old.

Monotony can appear to be a thief of excitement, which can lead it to appear to be a thief, sometimes, of joy. But I’m learning the lie in this appearance, one trip to the hammock at a time. One waiting room, one PT session, one speech therapy visit, one diaper at a time. I’m learning that I can be the greatest thief of joy. I’m learning the balance between calling a spade a spade and finding the beauty in the dullest-seeming of moments.

It’s a hard lesson, but not rocket-science-hard. More like one-I-have-to-learn-over-and-over hard. How convenient that I have a tiny teacher who’s perfect for the job.

There are hours when I sit in on a neck-stretching session and imagine lying on a beach instead. Or moments when a nightly glass of wine is interrupted by a fit of toddler sleeplessness. Or trips out of town when an afternoon in the water turns into an afternoon in a hotel room. Playing Disney videos and stacking blocks instead of erecting a flag in the sand that will alert someone to bring me a drink.

And it’s all very selfish, of course, to think this way, because people who become parents are supposed to, overnight, stop wanting the things they used to and start wanting the things a toddler wants. Nilla Wafers, crappy TV, crack-of-dawn wake-up calls. The unfortunate part is that selfishness was the thing I was best at, and being asked to give it up on a daily basis can tend to be a battle.

A lot has been written lately about giving kids the gift of boredom–less camp-filled and more dirt-filled summers–and I’m all in for that. But I don’t want to miss the gift that boredom can be for us, as parents, as adults. I don’t want to miss the grin that is blinding only because I wasn’t expecting it while I was swinging him and wishing for my phone. I don’t want to miss the quick high-five he gives his therapist because I was inwardly groaning about how, with a forty-dollar copay, this is one expensive hour of baby-sitting that I have to be present for. I don’t want to miss the way he says his one word, apple, differently now while we’re eating because I can’t hear the interview on the Today show. I don’t want to miss his reaction to our voices over the monitor–shock and a quick-as-lightning return to prone position–and the opportunity to laugh about it with TH because Game of Thrones is, like, so good this week.

I don’t want to miss the gifts that come not in wind, earthquakes, or fire (beaches, bars, sleeping in) but in whispers.

Earlier this week, I lay in a darkened room next to a screen that had just been filled with pictures of our #2 touching his toe to his elbow. While I waited for the doctor, I felt boredom sneak in: my cell phone was out of battery, TK was at home, and I was alone with my thoughts in the cool quiet. The solitude felt strange, since it’s so rare these days–it’s easy to joke that once you’re married and/or a parent, you’ll never be alone again. Then I felt the kicking inside and realized I wasn’t alone. And I felt the love that comes with the kicking, the swinging, the endless repetition, the fact that there is a source of all the gifts, right there with me in the middle of the moment–and I realized I never had been.

“The useless days will add up to something [because] these things are your becoming.”     —Cheryl Strayed

Dear Me,

Since I wasn’t provided an address, I’m not sure which version of myself I’m writing to: the Montgomery version, growing up awkwardly and insecurely and pretending to be what you thought people wanted; the Birmingham version, losing the sense of self you had created and watching the debris of that identity litter your path; or the New York version, beginning to get a hold on what life could really be, what grace really is, and who you really are.

Regardless, you are all about to get a huge wake-up call.

At various points in your life, you’ve thought you were done in by The Hardest Thing Anyone Has Ever Experienced: not getting asked to the dance, graduating with a degree but not a fiancé, leaving the only home you’ve ever known, receiving your first tax statement from the city and state of New York. You didn’t know it at the time because you were too busy trying to correct these events, naming them aberrations and frantically pulling out a red pen, but being broken was not, is not, the worst that can happen. In fact, I can promise you there’s beauty in it beyond what you can imagine–because in that brokenness lies a becoming.

But there’s nothing that will make you what you’re meant to be quite like what lies ahead.

You will marry on a beach after a rainy day clears and rainbows fill the sky, and better yet–you’ll marry the man you were meant to, the one you were made for. And it will all feel like a dream, especially when the test turns positive and you find out you’re going to become parents.

That’s when things get a little rough.

You will expect the difficulty to lie in getting pregnant, like so many you know are experiencing. Once you clear that hurdle (the first time around, at least), you’ll expect more beaches and rainbows. But grace will arrive in more challenging ways: 3 am cries, bouts of seeming insanity, temper tantrums that shock and scare you (and are mostly yours), tense discussions and a fear that you’re not cut out for this. That you suck at it, actually, and what a mistake to make–a gamble with lives. You will be afraid. You’ll be overcome with a love so powerful it threatens to undo you, and in fact does: it will undo your carefully-laid plans and predictable schedule (when will you ever finish learning that lesson?!), will undo any sense of poise or control you’ve based in your own having-it-togetherness. It will be a river with a current beyond what you’ve ever known, and as it rushes before you, the urge to jump in will compete with the urge to run away.

Spoiler alert: you jump in.

Good move.

You will spend nights, as a family, in a hospital room. You will spend days in waiting rooms. You will search for answers that are not forthcoming and, when they are, are either wrong or just not enough. You will be called to a level of faith deeper even than New York subways–a level you never would have chosen or known had you not jumped in. You will communicate with a tiny version of yourself that doesn’t speak back yet tells you exactly what he wants–and it’s usually different from what you want, in any given moment. You, the former professional student, will watch as your child refuses to sit still and, instead, engages in a level of exploration that, relatively speaking, took you twenty-eight years to risk. You will battle your desire for him to blend into the crowd even as you remember that such a talent kept you in your own version of silence, of prison, for nearly three decades. You will find that freedom, which you used to know in walking a city street by yourself, can also mean being pulled by a tiny hand against your own will as a mountain of laundry awaits your attention.

You will find that the coexistence of freedom and love is a trickier feat than any other mystery, but it is one worth living.

You’ll find that what makes parenthood, and motherhood, so hard is also what makes it beautiful: the fact that none of it makes sense until, like beads of water coalescing on a window, one day all the different pieces will start to come together and you’ll see that there is a narrative here, a story taking place that is bigger than you yet impossible without you. Grace. You will turn from a lifelong pursuit of perfection and begin to distrust and even disdain it–and this will be a gift. Grace. You will realize how little you really know–much less than you think you do now–and will be the better for it, because you will have to rely on something, someone more than yourself. Grace. You will feel a hand on your back in that hospital bed and turn to see the face with a smile beyond what you ever asked for or deserved. Grace. You will look down in the gym on Sunday and see the spot of paint on his shorts, the “stain” that happened when he was painting the nursery, and it won’t be a stain–it will be a work of art rivaling anything you ever saw in the Met. And you’ll hold his hand, feel his arm around you. Grace. 

You will feel the kick of tiny feet from within that took a year to bring to life, and remember how that life came in the middle of a dark season that you all emerged from together. That kick will fill you with excitement and not a little bit of fear: fear that you will repeat past mistakes, that you will be not enough again. And you will remember that you never were, and that’s the point. Because everything you’ve ever been afraid of, intimidated because of, broken by–they have brought you where you are. They have brought you home. And that’s where you live now.

See you when you get here.

When The Mom told me that The Niece was staying with her and The Dad over Father’s Day weekend, I had to call The Sis and give her a telephonic high-five for that bit of strategy, especially considering the fact that The Husband and I spent both Mother’s and Father’s Days in hotels this year (landing us in the finals for either the Worst or Smartest Parents Award; regardless, it was nice to see familiar faces among the competition). But I had to make sure I had heard one detail correctly.

“Is she really going camping with Dad?” I asked, which The Sis both confirmed and clarified: there was a neighborhood cookout/movie viewing on a lawn where people would be setting up tents and spending the night, though The Dad and Niece would likely return to my parents’ house after the credits rolled on Frozen.

“Well, that’s pretty cool,” I said. “Funny, I don’t recall him ever doing that with us.”

It was a joke of a dig, and one that I would repeat to The Dad, but there was truth in it. The Sis and I have both enjoyed watching our parents become grandparents, but The Dad has been especially entertaining to observe. I grew up wondering why my father had to travel all week long while others’ dads stayed put; why I could hear him snicker during dance recitals as other dads manned the camcorders (even as I now replicate his laugh as The Niece distractedly flails her arms onstage to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”). Now I know that I wouldn’t be the person I am without the man who helped raise me: that my sense of humor and intellect (what there is of them) and, indeed, my writing were all shaped by the relationships at play in our home; by our dialogue and friction, by expectations unmet and readjusted, by shadowy misunderstanding that grew into ever-more-lighted awareness.

Through it all, I see redemption. And whether it’s in taking The Niece “camping” or disappearing mid-meal to later reappear in the window of our restaurant pushing The Kid in a shopping cart, I see that love refuses to be defined by narrow terms or corralled into neat categories.

I come downstairs in the morning and see that The Husband unloaded the dishwasher the night before even though he was saddled with a presentation that had to be ready by today. And as I notice this, I hear (do NOT tell him I told you) his voice carrying down the stairs, singing TK into submission on the changing table. I think about the differences between us, how biology shows that our brains literally process information differently, that this means there is a reason behind what he hears (or doesn’t) when I speak, that even biology will not allow us a similarity that might prevent conflict–but that these allowances and compromises and forgivenesses are gifts we give each other, and that if we demanded sameness (as I did for the first few years of marriage; until last week, I think) we would be returning those gifts to sender, along with the redemption and growth they entail.

One might begin to suspect that there’s a design to all this chaos.

Our pastor talked this week about a music festival he attended a few days prior with his teenage daughter. I turned to TH, slack-jawed, and mouthed it just as his voice confirmed it through the microphone: “Bonnaroo.” I was equal parts shocked and impressed. Later, my friend called, the one with whom on paper I might appear to have so little in common other than the gender to which we’re both attracted. I was weakened by pregnancy hormones and he by alcohol, and our emotions overtook the conversation as he spoke of his prayers on behalf of TK and called me his sister, and I hung up thinking about how, if a rule-abiding Sunday-School-infused hypocrite can be transformed into the grace-loving sister of a gay Cajun-turned-Manhattanite, then there really is more at work in this world than we know of.

And yesterday, for his third music class, TK clung to me upon entering the room, threatening toddler tears, and by the end was turning to me with a huge grin. These moments after conflict, after hardship and misunderstanding, these are the sun through the clouds and the gifts for which we were made. The sacrifices we make for each other, the allowances to be who we are–they’re not compromises of character or signs of weakness. And they wouldn’t happen without the differences: rough edges and broken pieces and even there-by-design opposites that allow grace to take center stage and redemption to have the last laugh.

I would like to officially apologize to every parent I have ever judged. Particularly those parents who, while their child writhed in my exam chair, turned to me and offered explanations of the behavior on display in terms of what that child had “been through” as I gritted my teeth and silently rejected that story in favor of the one I preferred–lack of discipline–because my version made it easier to judge the parent…and ensure I never faced the same situation myself.

Fast forward a few years.

When I was a few months pregnant with The Kid, I started visiting his room daily to pray for him. (And occasionally read a parenting book while rocking in his glider and nodding off.) I prayed about The Standards: health, safety, sleep, general well-being. I did not pray for his neck, or for the kicking he would perform on his changing table, or for my own reaction when he would take the hairspray from my bathroom drawer and relocate it to a spot hidden from view. (In fairness to myself and out of respect to the distance that grace has taken me, I would like to point out that on this particular occasion of frustration I left TK’s line of sight and went into my closet before I released my well-honed, put-upon, guttural moan and follow-up stomping. I can’t imagine where he gets his temper.)

I didn’t pray–or think–about most of the things that have kept me up at night, rendered me a sweaty mess, or brought me to tears. The music classes, the X-ray rooms, the temper tantrums. In the Difficult Moments, I’ve been tempted to grit my teeth and just endure what feels like an onslaught of unfairness, a declaration of war upon me and my sanity. The halo experience was one thing: we saw it coming, took time to research and prepare, sought out help, and prayed. A lot. But when a music class pulls the rug out from under my Wednesday and leaves me reeling over What This Means for His Future and how my approval-seeking is SO far from dead…well, then. Accounts must be reassessed.

I’ve spent much of my life running from such battlefields, from situations that force me to confront my own weaknesses, my own fatal flaws. I pursued only the things I was “good at,” only the people who made me feel safe or confirmed the identity I had chosen. But taking on the terrain of marriage and parenthood leaves one without as easy a road to desertion, and in these lifelong relationships where Leaving is Not an Option, I find myself running into my own insufficiency on a daily basis.

And somehow, this is a gift.

I got up early this morning. Made my coffee, had my Come to Jesus time. “Fix me” is the prayer I really want to utter (that, or “Fix Him/Her”), and just be done with it. Let grace perform a quick tune-up and send me out of the garage and into the world, brand new. But these parts of ourselves that we don’t want to face–we’ve gotten so good at hiding them that it takes years to pull back the layers–years and vows and dirty laundry and temper tantrums and life. And when I started thinking about what really upset me last week–the fear of how other people would see me–I realized that grace does not let up on fear. That grace declares war on fear, and that’s why some days feel like a battlefield. Because I’m not meant to leave this war unchanged.

Something changed then, when I understood that the same shadows haunt me now that always have; when I knew that love will not release me from its grip and is determined to free me from every lie I’ve ever believed. And the work that love does, its unrelenting pursuit–I began to view it all a little differently. The battlefield began to be dotted by oases until the whole thing looked more like a garden. The moments of frustration and temper and weakness–they took on a sepia-toned element of opportunity, of invitation to More. And the divisions that I’ve placed between Good and Bad and Easy and Difficult begin to dissolve. It’s not war, then peace. It’s both. It’s everything at the same time.

So we showed up for class, me and my sweaty armpits and TK and his…uniqueness, and the way I chose to deal with it? There’s just no other way to put it but to tell you that I decided to stop giving a shit. Or at least to give fewer shits, because these are baby steps and Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that, and the more I focused on TK and less on how other people were reacting to us, the more I noticed how much in common we really had with everyone there. The other kid who wouldn’t sit down. The mom speaking to her toddler sternly in the corner. The battlefield of a dozen toddlers and their parents turning into more of a scene from a local bar, and I had to laugh and squeeze TK a little tighter. Then he started crying for no reason, but we got through that too.

There was a moment this morning, after the coffee was finished and I ventured upstairs, when I opened his door and he grinned at me. He walked over and grabbed The I Love You Book, his favorite right now, and started to sit on the floor. Then he stopped himself, placed it on my lap, and let me pull him up. And we read it through three times, with his onesie-clad body curled into my swelling belly, and I barely thought about how I had to get breakfast ready and brush his teeth. In the same chair where I prayed for only the things I could envision, love gave me a moment I never could have imagined. Being a wife and mother, a human being, makes me need redemption in every moment–and holds me in its grip, providing it just as often.

Mid-afternoon Saturday, branches of our family convened in an auditorium to watch The Niece, age three, perform in her first dance recital. We sat in our row of nine, The Kid wedged between me and The Husband as we stuffed crackers into his mouth and willed him to last through a few numbers. The Niece was scheduled onstage for the second and second-to-last songs, and she–along with the rest of the young girls–did not disappoint. iPhones and iPads hovered in the air over the audience to catch it all: tiny feet and arms flailing around in vague imitations of their just-offstage teacher; bun-clad, hair-sprayed heads bobbing left to right, each girl watching her neighbor for confirmation; one girl skidding halfway across the stage to the gasp! of the audience before matter-of-factly jumping back up and joining her circle of peers.

It was a beautiful mess.

Then this morning, I took TK to the first session of a summer music class. This is part of my assimilation plan, getting him back into society after a few months away. Not a big fan of society myself, and all-too-aware of TK’s aversion to sitting still and participating in groupthink, I was slightly dreading the event.

Well. It lived up to my expectations.

In the span of forty-five minutes, I attempted to corral TK into my lap about fifty times; he wandered the room constantly, weaving in and out of other parent-kid pairs; he tried to take off his pants once; he pulled his shirt over his head twice; he pushed the teacher away from the CD player once in an effort to break into the cabinet; he stole one kid’s dancing scarf; and he cried twice (once when I made him sit still for fifteen seconds and later, when I put away his instrument). He participated in about two of a dozen songs (by participate I mean he either zoned out long enough to sit down and appear interested or rocked back and forth on his behind in rhythm to the music), a decent ratio if I’m being realistic, but overshadowed by the Grand Finale: his screams piercing my eardrums as I carried him to the car under one arm like a sack of potatoes while hissing, “Stop it. Stop it NOW,” in his ear.

Not a good look for us.

Once we had cooled down, thanks to air conditioning and time, I turned to my boy in the backseat. I was walking that razor edge between laughing and crying that usually ends with tearful, maniacal-sounding emissions. I wondered for the thousandth time how a recovering rule-follower like me ended up with the child who refuses to participate in circle time, who follows the beat of his own drummer when I’ve taken the trouble to purchase the socially-approved drum set and sign him up for professional lessons.

I thought about how much more comfortable I was in the judgment seat back when I would look at people like me and assess their shortcomings without knowing anything about their story. More comfortable–but it was a delusion. Now, smack dab in the center of reality, I come home from a music class with one of the boys I love most in the world and just want to bury my head in a bottle of wine.

I ask myself what is just of his personality and what should be weeded out; how to balance giving him the freedom to be who he is with helping him become the person he’s meant to be. I’m sure these are questions all parents ask themselves: in their beds during sleepless nights, over dinner tables with their spouses, after conferences with teachers, once the MRI has come back, in tired and tearful moments of loneliness over a steering wheel. I just never knew how much emotional weight the questions would carry with them–how the moments of exhausted frustration would blend with the running current of wild love to create a combustion of throat-thickening despair and tortured ambivalence.

Then gain, maybe I’m overreacting. It was just a damn music class.

One of TK’s latest favorite activities, besides disrupting music classes, is stopping at each step on the way down our staircase and turning around, examining it, and sitting down to enjoy the view. This either (a) gives me time to check my email; or (b) drives me completely insane. The length of time it takes me to ascend or descend a stairway has grown by a factor of toddler to the infinity. And then we’ll go outside to partake in another of his favorite activities, swinging in the hammock. I push him–his majesty prefers to enjoy the space alone, thank you–and watch the breeze ruffle his hair as a smile plays about his lips. These repetitive, early movements–ballet tumbles, grabbing fingers, stopping on stairways–I want to hurry past them to the moments of mastery and ease, the time of do-it-yourself while Mom enjoys a cold one on the deck. And as I peeled out of the music school parking lot today, the whys that had been plaguing me seconds before transformed into…if not answers, then something other than questions. Ideas about the beauty of being in transit, of not having arrived, about the scenery along the way. But deeper than the cliched phrases of needlepointed pillows, there was the consideration that these moments with him that I struggle between wanting to allow and correct–they are also meant to shape me. Maybe I was ousted from the judgment seat to do some of my best work, which is not really work at all, but living. And watching.

And waiting for the mystery to unfold while pushing a boy in a hammock as the breeze ruffles both our hair.