The sun was falling slowly to the west, lighting up the tops of the wheat and the scattered wildflowers just gently enough to paint a layer of gold around them. I will never get over the way the world looks right before the sun sets; like it is at peace, content with itself for having given its best, ready for the rest it well deserves.

We had driven to the north side of town to meet our family at the orchard, dressed in corresponding colors for the yearly pictures. “I forgot the lollipops,” I said out loud.

“We will be fine,” Alex responded. “It will be quick.” Always hopeful, that one.

Cannon fell asleep on the drive, so when we pulled up we decided to just let him rest until we were ready to go take our pictures. It is easy now to see where we started to go sideways on this endeavor, and the decision to not wake him right then was the beginning.

After a few minutes the photographer arrived, and we made our way toward the blooming sunflowers for the big group shot first. Alex unbuckled Cannon and gently picked him up, whispering in his ear that it was time for pictures. He was out of sorts right away, I could tell. He woke up in an unfamiliar place with a lot of expectations, and then we started asking him to look at a camera and say cheese, which makes the list of the ‘hardest things’ for his mind to execute.

Even if I had remembered the lollipops, I’m sure this would have gone the way it did.

We tried. I tickled him and kissed his cheeks and let him hang the full weight of his body on mine, but this boy wanted no part of family pictures in that moment. So, after a few minutes, I told the group to keep on without us, and Cannon and I headed back toward the car.

That’s when I really noticed the sunset, and the visceral peace hovering all around. Everything I saw looked, well, perfect. The blemishes that cannot hide under the midday sun disappear under the filter of dusk, reminding me that Instagram has nothing on nature. The cooler air and the softer surroundings, all of it announcing the end of its work for the day. Then I noticed my heart, and even against the weight of a struggling boy, who was exceptionally difficult to carry while walking through the dirt in wedges, it was totally at peace.

No tears. No frustration. No embarrassment. No compelling draw to explain anything to the rest of the family or the photographer. In that moment I was just a mom doing what her son needed.

I’ve come a long way from the mom who needed her son to do what I wanted.

*****

It has been just over a year since we knew Cannon was autistic. I remember this time a year ago, at the end of a long summer, texting a friend who is a bit further ahead of us on a similar journey. She responded with such sweet empathy, and told me the first year was the hardest, but that her little one was improving all the time, that he has so many incredible strengths, and that it’s not easy but it’s going to be ok.

She was exactly right.

The first year was really, really hard. I did not know what to do with my son, I did not know what to do with all the opinions on why he is autistic, and I did not have the first idea how to internalize the comments and stories of others. I had no bandwidth for any one of the books a well-intentioned friend had heard was a good read, but I’d send a “thank you so much, I’ll look in to it” response anyway. I could not have named it at the time, but I spent much of the first year unraveling. I had put together a whole narrative on both God and myself as a mom, and thread by thread it was all being pulled apart.

What I can tell you now is this: I was looking at the world and trying to make sense of God. And I was looking at my children and trying to make sense of myself as a mom. When you get those things backwards, nothing really seems to fit. But when God graciously takes apart the story you believe you are narrating and puts it back together as the only fitting Author, it makes a lot more sense.

When I started with God, with his character, his story, his purposes, and all of the realities of life in a broken world, then everything else had so much meaning. But this did not happen for me overnight. In fact, I didn’t really notice how far we have come until the sunset over the orchard reminded me that just as the world makes its way around the sun every day and not the other way around, so does God need his rightful place at the center of each of our days, and not the other way around. As John Piper so beautifully says, "The healing of the soul begins by restoring the glory of God to its flaming, all-attracting place at the center."

So much of life comes down to hope, doesn’t it? And when it comes to autism—perhaps even parenting in general—the first thing you lose when your child is not doing something they are supposed to be doing is hope. I can look back at last summer and realize that what I had always believed about life, the story I had weaved together, was written around a lifetime of accomplishments, good reputation, “blessings” and other renditions of the beautiful American Dream. The foundation of my whole narrative was hope, but hope that was in those good things. I have had to learn that hope is only as unshakable as its object. 

So a year ago, God took it all apart and re-wrote the beginning. It is still hope, but it is in Him.

And when my hope is really in Jesus, all of a sudden my heart is bursting at the seems to have real hope for Cannon, too. Not just in progress, but in the story God will tell with his precious life, and the glory a little boy who sees the world so differently could bring to Him.  

*****

Once Cannon and I made it back to the cars, I found his juice cup and sat down with him at a picnic table. Together we waited for a moment, looking out at the horizon and breathing in the peace all around us. In just a few minutes, he smiled up at me and then got down off my lap—his physical indication that he was fine now. We went and found the rest of the family, and while I don’t think we got one picture with all the cousins that night, or even one where all of us were looking, we drove away with smiles on our faces. Alex reached over and grabbed my hand, and we laughed a little bit wondering why on earth we didn’t wake him up and give him a few minutes to run around in the place before throwing a chorus of resounding “say cheese!” at him.

This is our beautiful life. Not one day of it has taken God by surprise, and not one of them will be wasted.

The other night, Cannon joined his siblings and me in a game of tag— he has never done that before. He turns when we call his name now, he asks for what he wants with words and not pictures. He sleeps all night. He hugs his siblings. In life we tend to measure progress by big things or in big moments—like family pictures. He didn’t do so well in that moment, but he has had a thousand amazing little moments before and after that one.  

So, I hope. And I’ll keep hoping. Because this progress, these everyday miracles, is in its rightful place on the periphery, like the stars and the moon lighting up our lives. They are no longer at the center. Our life, and our hope, moves around the Son.

For Cannon, on his third birthday

He came into the world so easily—one push, two pushes, then a baby boy on my chest, with a precious little face that mirrored his daddy’s from the very beginning. We wrapped him in a yellow, gray and blue blanket, the one he still spends every night with, and brought him home the day before Mother’s Day. I wish I had written more during those first few months of his life, or maybe taken more pictures. I don’t remember them like I want to, or like I remember them with his big sister. The details escape me every single time I try to recall them and for this, I feel so guilty. But I do remember that everything about him was gentle: the way he slept, his smile, his cuddle, his coos, even his yellow, gray and blue blanket.

But three years and three kids are not kind to a tired mama’s memory. And when we add the hazy details about when it all started to change, when the gentleness faded into disconnection and the coos stopped attempting to become words, it gets even hazier. It was an eighteen-month well-check, then a speech therapist, then a special school, then a specialist, and a hundred thousand moments of is this what I think it is?

It was. It is.

The tears still come, all the time I’m afraid. I would love to report that we’ve moved in to the rhythm of autism and we’ve got it, but that’s a lie. All we’ve got is Jesus, but that’s enough.

Because even through the fog that has been the last three years, and the way it got so thick and scary since the diagnosis, I do know this: when something is wrong, you have to make sense pretty quickly of a God who only does what is right. And this does not happen in a few peaceful quiet times and some tranquilly answered prayers in a journal. For me, it has been more like a street fight, questions thrown like punches and protests of my heart held out in self-defense. A broken record of Why? How? When? My fault? on repeat in my head the whole time.

It took me many months to understand I was asking the wrong questions. The only one I really needed answered was who?

The simplicity of it all still catches me off guard, because the everyday reality of life is anything but simple. I was drowning, spending all of my strength to keep my head above the water and when you’re working that hard to just fight the current you cannot hold anything else. But a new question and a new answer came in like a life preserver—it didn’t take me out of the ocean but it allowed to catch my breath, rest, and not have to fight so hard. It told me we would make it.

The answer to who was this: a perfect God, and a precious little boy.

If God had not given me Cannon, I wonder if I would have ever cared to look and learn how big He truly is? I could not even see the shoreline from where I was, yet God holds the entire ocean in the palm of his hand. This, still, is the most miraculous thing in the world to me.

The road ahead is long, and it is for a lifetime. I won’t pretend that the lessons are done being taught and that we can wrap this all up in a pretty bow and call it complete. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. After the hardest, most tear-filled year, I think we are only just starting. But if at one time I was drowning and unable to see the shore, today I have a life preserver and I do, very clearly in fact, see the shore: it’s God’s glory, his eternal purpose and redemptive plan for all of life. It’s not going to be easy to get there, but we will.

I went in to watch Cannon sleep last night; he is still so gentle in everything he does, even in his sleep. As I watched his chest rise and fall all I could think about were the words “It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise…” God’s breath, Cannon’s lungs, my praise. And then I thought about this: we are never really drowning when God is doing the breathing.

*****

I had no idea three years ago what life would look like today. And I have no idea what it will look like in another three. I know so much more and so much less at the very same time, and I am ok with that. But it’s His breath, our lungs, and for His glory. And I do know that’s enough to get us to the shore.

Cannon Lee, who would I be if it weren’t for you? Love you forever, sweet boy. We will get there together, I know it. 

Hi. We’ve met, so we can spare a more formal introduction. You’ve been hanging around our house for a little over a year, but your presence was felt so sparingly those first few months I kept thinking you would go away. You didn’t, you pulled up a chair, picked a room in the house, and made yourself comfortable. You never did ask me how I felt about you being here but maybe that’s because you knew what I would say: I don’t understand who you are, please leave. That’s what every mama would say, right?

You see autism, you are still such a mystery. Where did you come from, and why did you chose to stay here? Because as soon as I thought it was you knocking at the door, I did everything possible to make you go away. Everything. Speech. Occupational. Behavioral. Then diet. Therapies and doctors and specialists and all manner of mom blogs and books. I bought essential oils, autism! But I never turned my eyes away from the red flags; I stared at them in the face and drove that sweet nineteen month old all over town looking for ways to take them down.

You never got the hint. Social cues aren’t your strength, though, so I should have expected that.

And how you got here remains a mystery. Oh sure, a lot of people have opinions about it, a fact that gives me anxiety to no end. There are so many opinions about you! Did you know, autism, that there are people who think I invited you over? That your presence here is because I did or did not do something that actually welcomed you in? And because you prefer to stay mysterious, you won’t help us clear up this confusion by just making your reasons known. But I know I can’t keep dwelling on that, on your reasons. I have to let you off the hook. Or maybe I should say that I have to let myself off the hook. You’re here, so let’s just get back to that.

You see, when I first noticed you, you looked more like a shy little boy who was still looking for his words. You were never angry, you ate really well—as far as eating like a toddler goes well—you slept all night, and you remained so elusive that everyone around us said, “No. That’s not autism. Autistic kids do this and that and not this and not that.” I have since learned that any sentence that starts with “Autistic kids do (or do not do)…” is a slippery slope to nowhere. You’re like a fingerprint, autism: you look so different on everyone.

And I know you are going to keep changing. You like to keep people on their toes, don’t you? Some days you’re in a great mood and some days you’re in a bad mood. Some days I hardly notice you and some days I cry from sun up to sun down. But that’s also childhood, so I guess you’re not such an outlier. Not yet anyway.

And still, you have changed everything for us, because you are on our minds all the time! I see a cute picture of my friends and their kids, and I am jealous that you make it so hard for my little guy to look at the camera. We go to friends’ homes for dinner and I cannot relax and enjoy a conversation because the moment you are out of sight I am worried you left the house with my child. The vacations and the parks and the places that you might enjoy but you might also very well turn in to an epic disaster. The therapies we drive to every day. The way you make me so nervous to check my mail and find another bill that I only do it once a week now. The way that friends ask, “how are you?” and I am certain they want to know something, anything besides, “Well, I’m still trying to figure out how to host this long-term guest named autism,” but I don’t have much else to say. The questions—oh the questions will kill me if I let them. The fact that you are so set on your choose-your-own-adventure ways that we will never be one step ahead of you, but making decisions as we see yours. That bugs me about you, autism, just so you know.

And then there is this: the fact that I just do not know if you were part of my sweet boy from the beginning, or if you, like an illness or disease, came later, separately. Is my little man autistic? Or does he have autism? People have cancer, they are not cancer. But I am not sure about you, not yet anyway. I guess we will have to keep getting to know one another.

And let’s just talk for a minute about that precious boy, because he is one of the greatest joys of my life. His smile will melt you, and if you’re lucky enough to get a great big pucker, well, you’re lucky. And he can run! Like, three miles ain’t no thing for this two and half year old. And he loves, loves, love to play hide and seek, and the belly laughs that come from him when we do are truly the sweetest sound in the world. And he snuggles. He snuggles better than anyone, folding up his legs and tucking in his arms and finding a place for his head right in the nook between my neck and chest. My little boy is part of my heart, and he always will be.

Autism, it is no secret that I didn’t want you around, and that I have now spent a year trying to learn—and many times failing in the most visible ways—how to accept your presence. But I am writing you this letter because I have decided not to be mad at you anymore. Because you are just, well, you’re just who you are. Being mad, feeling pity for myself, looking at my little boy as if he got robbed of a good life, those things are not grounded in any sort of hope and you, autism, you do not get to steal our hope. It's not in you anyway. And I am also leaving this near-constant state of being offended behind. You have welcomed yourself in to so many people’s lives, and everyone knows someone—or knows someone who knows someone—that has spent a lot of time with you. And because of the combination of your prevalence and utter mysteriousness, people always have a story, a book recommendation, an article, an experience, a reason. But they all mean well; they are just trying to help us find a matching finger print. And what would I prefer? That everyone say nothing? No. Of course not. You are the big white elephant in the room and you know me, I prefer to talk about elephants. You are just the only one that has ever made me cry so much as I do.

But it’s a new year and a new day and, my favorite of all, there are new mercies for all of us. Even you, autism. So, since you are here, let’s really get to know one another. I promise to be kind as we do. For purposes I may not know until heaven, God allowed our path to cross with yours. And while I do not trust myself with the weighty responsibilities of taking care of you, I do trust Him.

I trust Him.

So, let’s start fresh.

Hi, autism, my name is Katie. I’m a hard worker and a learner and I love my little boy more than I could possibly tell you. And I also believe this: God is good, all the time. You may have made my job a bit more complicated, but you did not change how much I love it. So I think you picked the right mom to get to know.

Love,
Katie

Sunday morning brought with it the most beautiful gift: sleeping children. I was awake just before 5:00am and ninety minutes later my home was still quiet, still dimly lit, still a peaceful space for my heart to lean in and listen. Which was exactly what I needed to do.

*****

Cannon has two appointments this week. Six if you count speech and occupational therapy, but those just feel like our rhythm now, hardly worth noting as appointments. But this week has been on my mind for a month. Whenever I know there will be clipboards and professionals and more of the same kind of paperwork for mama, the trepidation slowly seeps in to my heart like the fog of an early winter evening. In our rational minds we know the fog just didn’t show up, it came slowly and steadily, only growing in density at the slow pace that fog rolls in. But why does it feel like it just showed up, like it was clear and crisp one minute and the next we can’t see? Feelings can be tricky like that.

Still, I’m not entering in to this appointment as I have in the past. Six months ago I walked in to a room full of observers and I had my arsenal of disclaimers and qualifiers and sometimes but not always explanations for every delay, every flag, every disinterest. My heart was not ready for the thoughts of others then, because this was just a speech delay, just a boy growing in his own way on his own time. And now it is more than that, but my heart can finally handle it. It didn’t get easier, we haven’t had a breakthrough, and tomorrow is still as uncertain as ever.

But I think what happened is that I finally learned how to pray.

*****

In the still of my morning, I started looking back in my journal. I didn’t plan to; I kept thinking someone would be wrestling their covers off the beds upstairs and groggy calls for mama would soon follow. But it stayed quiet. I will never stop being thankful for the days when I don’t have to chase quiet, when it just shows up at my door like a surprise gift wrapped in brown craft paper and raffia.

But the journal. It was one I started almost exactly a year ago, fully pregnant with my third baby and unaware in every way of what my heart would be navigating in the months ahead. I turned the pages along with the months, revisiting prayers and hopes and lessons of the year behind me and the words revealed a slow, steady growth of anxiety— evidence of the fog settling in. My memory tells me life was clear and crisp one moment and then incredibly difficult to navigate the next; but the record of my own thoughts reminds me that wasn’t the case, that it did come slow, riddled with patches of sunlight before coming upon a space so thick we had to just stop and wait it out. Memory can be tricky like that, too, I think.

The look back on our journey, on how we found ourselves here in this place with three different pediatric specialists in my phone contacts, was both humbling and hopeful. It was humbling because I see that I had only one way out of this in my mind, and that was for it to simply not be true. I could not see the future in any way other than I always had: healthy, happy, and— dare I say— easy? And it was hopeful because I can say today with the most honest, truthful motives in my heart that I may not see a way out of this, but I see only good coming from it.   

I spent many months only praying for what I wanted, what I thought I absolutely could not do without. And this summer when I finally found myself at the end of the hope I was trying to manufacture on my own—the hope found in professional opinions and therapies and diets— that’s when the real hope, the hope in Jesus that does not disappoint, finally became tangible. It was certainly a street fight of a journey. It involved more than one instance of me letting my brokenness out on someone or something else and there were certainly tears. So many tears.

But this week, I’m not walking in to another appointment carrying my dreams in a broken cistern and I’m not armed with anything the world has offered me. But I am bringing hope, real hope. Because I understand now it never left us. I will hold my little boy’s hand, crouch down to put my face next to his and try to get him to say hello to the doctor; but then I’ll smile for him when he doesn’t. I’ll guide him to a table I’m certain he won’t want to sit at, and I’ll encourage him to complete tasks he will probably turn his face away from. I will cheerily ask him to demonstrate the few words and signs he does have, and then I’ll turn to the doctor and explain that he can communicate his wants at home, he really can. I will hold Cannon close when his body wants to run. And I won’t cry this time. Well, maybe I will. I’m still his mama, after all, and I reserve the right to cry any time.

And perhaps it won’t happen at all like this. Maybe Cannon will say hi, and sit at the table, and listen to instructions and smile with that most precious smile in the world. I don’t know how it will play out, but I do know that God has reserved the right to do at any time whatever might bring Him the most glory.

*****

I’m no expert on prayer. A beginner, really, even though I’ve been doing it most of my life. But I know what God tells us about prayer: that we should do it in any circumstance, with persistence, often, and that when we don’t honestly know what to say, “Your will be done, Lord,” is more than good enough.

So that’s what I’m saying this time. Saying it and really meaning it. Your will be done, Lord.

For much of my life, I have been pretty good with formulas. Following a prescriptive set of instructions has generally turned out well for me: work really hard, make the team; study a few hours, pass the class, you know the pattern. But God has recently given me a gift— a life-changing gift— something that not only turns the formulas on their head but completely shakes up all of the things I used to cling to for confidence. The gift is this: a beautiful, vulnerable, completely real awareness of my insufficiency.

Growing up in the church, I knew all about the vine and the branches metaphor, and I’m sure I responded to the part where Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing” with something like, “Sure, sure, Jesus. Love that verse and I’ll grab its truth every now and then when I’m really praying for some big blessing to rain down on me. But surely you don’t mean nothing. Look at how hard I’ve worked at life. I [mostly] avoided sexual sin and drinking and drugs and diligently prayed for a husband and a family. I mean, I’ve been a pretty good girl, don’t I deserve some credit? I go half way with hard work, you meet me halfway with a blessing, isn’t this how faith works?”

No.

(I think that could be called something more like karma, or the white privilege side of the American Christian Dream, but it’s definitely not called following Christ).

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

If I’m being really honest, for thirty-one years of my life I have harbored just the slightest bit of an I deserve a good life mentality and combined it with the words Yeah, but I did... Only now that circumstances are so far out of my control do I see the story of faith I have been living is not the story of faith modeled in scripture. Faith in my life has been the fifty-fifty kind of faith, at least a little bit dependent on how awesome I can be. But faith in scripture doesn’t really have that precedent, because scripture makes it real clear that we are, in fact, not that awesome.

Faith in scripture looks like standing at the edge of the sea knowing there is no way you’re getting across it unless God makes a path—and then he does. It’s marching around the fortified walls of a city knowing there is no way you’re getting in unless God breaks them down—and then he does. It’s mourning at the grave of the most important person in your life, knowing there is no way you’ll have hope again unless God walks out from that grave and says, “Woman, why are you weeping?—and then he does.

Scripture is crystal clear about who the Author of our faith is. (It’s Jesus). It’s brutally honest about who assigns the work of our lives and who equips us to do that work (It’s Jesus). And there are zero mixed messages about who justifies us (It’s Jesus). Yet somewhere along the line, I talked myself into believing it was mostly me and a little bit Jesus. And then I got married (stop one on the humble train), became a mom (stop 2), and am raising children that stretch my arms like a Gumby doll in opposite directions (a very good confirmation that I am never getting off this train). The mostly me theory has fallen apart in every way. I would never have said this out loud before; you would only hear me say the good girl answer that I could take no credit for my success and I give all the glory to God. Oh, but I was always taking some credit. Just ask my heart.

One of the many blessings God continues to reveal to me about raising a child with special needs is that needing Him each day is truly far more life-giving than relying on myself. Before Cannon’s struggles became apparent, I held on to the illusion that all of this depended a whole heck of a lot on me. But as the challenging journey ahead came more clearly into view, I learned—and am still learning—that the only thing that depends on me is my response: to give Cannon and my whole family my very best, diligently learning and trying and exploring options, praying for wisdom and discernment, and then resting— knowing that the outcome is the Lord’s, and fighting to believe that he will work that outcome for his glory. And our good. 

But that outcome will always be in spite of me, not because of me.

And what I know with a new kind of faith now is this: without the hope of Jesus on the throne, I will fall apart. I will treat a certain therapy or doctor or special diet as our savior and be devastated when those things prove to be what they are: imperfect and fallen. I will find a way to blame others for not pursuing me when a phone full of text messages sits unanswered, because pity has a way of blinding you to blessings. I will take a season of challenge and turn it into a season of contempt, because while challenges are fertile ground for the glory of God, they are equally fertile ground for entitlement. I will slip into thinking this world is home, because one of the great battles for our faith lies in the moments we think earth can be turned into Heaven if this one thing could just happen for us.

And in the end, the mostly me mindset will leave me with, well, just me. In the real, raw moments of life, times I want to mourn or times I want to celebrate, I’m pretty terrible company for myself.

But when it’s all Jesus, y’all, the hope abounds. Anything good turns into a chance for genuine praise, and anything hard turns into a chance for genuine faith. When it’s all Jesus, I see every little thing as an opportunity for the gospel to be shared more, known more, and lived more. When it’s all Jesus, I know that I don’t take one breath outside of what is a gift from him, and my posture of gratitude changes completely. The work of my hands, the words from my mouth, everything I do becomes that response to what he has done for me.

I cannot heal my son, tend well to my marriage, craft words worth reading, love my friends, understand scripture, work for justice, or do anything apart from the provision of God. I can pray for those things, and certainly give them all the effort I have. But I never want to forget that, in the end, my best is merely offering a colored pencil drawing of the earth to the Father who actually created it.

Apart from me, you can do nothing. Words that I used to qualify are now the most freeing, hopeful promise of my life. Jesus is our confidence, and his sufficiency never changes even though our circumstances always do. And isn’t that the best news you’ve ever heard?

Y’all know I’m a sucker for a good story. I love a beginning that engages me; a middle that is suspenseful, painful, hopeful and all the things that real life is; and an ending that is meaningful—not necessarily happy, as there can be plenty of meaning found in places one might never call happy—but closure that I can live with in light of who the characters really are and the kind of future I can imagine for them.

I think everyone loves a good story. In many ways, our lives are a played out narrative of what we believe about ourselves and the world we live in.

This story, our story, is a story about reckoning.

Reckoning is a strange thing. To learn something, discover something, accept something, it divides your life into two distinct pieces: before the reckoning, and after the reckoning. Last week our family, in many ways, reckoned with something we had suspected, maybe even feared, for many months. Our little guy, two years old and full of goodness in every way, was put in a really big category that he’ll spend his life, one way or another, defined by.

The honest truth is that I am relieved. For many months we have been waiting, watching, treating this precious boy more like a research project than a child, and it’s been exhausting. When you are wondering if you are looking at a developmental delay versus a developmental disorder, everything, everything goes in to a score column for one or the other. Every good day, every smile with good eye contact, every time he looks up when you call his name, every new word, all of it putting points into the he’ll be fine category. And then the humming, the awful sound of his head against a door, the babbles coming from his mouth trying to form words but just can’t, the vocabulary lost, the recent weeks of regression, all of it tallying in the column that we don't want to look at. And yet, we have to.

We don’t have a specific label, or an official diagnosis, or a doctor or therapist telling us what our sweet boy will and will not be able to do as he grows. None of those things feel important right now, and I don’t know if or when they will. What we do have is a collection of discussions with a lot of people and professionals who care about this boy, using the words we have been holding at a distance and gently encouraging us to lean in to them. We have learned in the last few months that social communicative disorders are categorized as a spectrum because, well, that is truly what they look like when each precious soul fighting one is lined up. We’ve got a smart, sweet little man who has a ton of strengths and some significant struggles, and we are working through each one as they emerge. But we have so much more to learn. So much. We’ve ordered the books and scheduled the meetings and learned that when God tells us to ask him each day for what we need to get through just that day, we have to truly believe in enough for that day.

But let’s get back to the story about reckoning, because that’s the really good part.

When we realized that God was going to be asking something very hard of us as parents (and he asks hard things of everyone), we had to get real clear about who we believe He is. CJ Mahaney once said that, “You need your best theology in your darkest hours.” And that was certainly true for us. But if there is anything I can say without a doubt God has been teaching my husband and me over the last year it is that his character is unfathomable, holy, and good. He has been preparing us for this in ways we could not have imagined even six months ago. We never questioned if God loved us, or if he loved our little boy, because we know the cross answers that without a doubt. We also know that there is nothing God allows that he cannot use for his glory, even the special needs of children—maybe especially the special needs of children. And we haven’t had to wrestle at all with “why” because we know “Who” and believe in the story He has been writing since he separated the dark from the light. He has been so good to us to lift our eyes off of our circumstances and let them land on Him, on the one who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us.

One needs only to spend a short time in scripture to know that it is a story of redeemed suffering. Joseph, Abraham, Job, Jeremiah, the bleeding woman, Jesus, Paul, and hundreds of others held together by their hope of future glory. No matter what brings suffering on, all of it is covered by the blood of Jesus; every single moment of longing for heaven was answered on the cross, and we get to cling to Him as we wait for the glory that is to be revealed to us—what a privilege.

And while reckoning does bring about a certain amount of, let’s call it comfortable acceptance, it certainly doesn’t make this easy. In fact, I am still a hot mess as I write this. There are a handful of people who have had to quite literally wipe tears from eyes in the last two weeks, and I've been keeping a whole crew of friends at an arm's length because I'm not sure what to say. My husband and I sat in the office in our home the other night and asked questions of one another that no parent wants to think about; questions about the future, questions about school and adolescence and all the what ifs that will kill you if you let them take over. We are not confident in much; but we are confident that we cannot do this apart from total dependence on God. We simply do not know what comes next, only what comes today. But since tomorrow has enough worries of its own, we’re doing our best to camp here and remember the daily bread.

I wrote before about the peace I have that this story has a perfect start, and will have a perfect ending. I still believe that to my bones. Right now we are in that middle, living the suspenseful, painful, and hopeful moments that real life is; waiting for an ending that is meaningful—not necessarily happy in this world, as there can be plenty of meaning found in places one would never call happy—but the closure we long for in light of who God is and the kind of future he has prepared for us.

And as we wait, we get to raise the absolute sweetest boy on earth. I mentioned that in one way or another he will be defined by this struggle, and he will, but we are praying boldly that he defies it in the process.  I hope you all get to meet him one day; he’ll melt your heart.

“In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.” Isaiah 26:8

We started speech therapy with our middle son when he was 18 months old, back in January of this year. One of the things our therapist taught us was to incorporate a start-stop language repetition to the routines and play that we already do with Cannon. For example, when we would swing him around- something he loves to do- we would pick him up, and with a predictable cadence say, “ready, set…” then wait for eye contact from him and finish with, “go!” It was a practice we began daily, and for the last seven months we have been swinging, repeating, meeting his eyes, almost willing the words to finish that sentence to come out of his mouth.

And then last week, out of the clear blue summer sky, Cannon climbed on my back, grabbed my neck, and completely unprompted by me said, “Set, DAA!”

Seven months of working on this phrase, of any part of it to come out of his sweet mouth. Hundreds and hundreds of spins and swings and slides and two persistent parents so badly wanting to hear the word “go” finish our sentence. And then one day, he just said it. “ Set, daa!” And now this little man walks around saying this at any opportunity— jumping off the couch, pretending to drive in the front seat, playing hide and seek: “Set, daa! Set, daa!” It’s so, so beautiful.

I have to confess though, that after seven months and all that spinning, I started to wonder if I would ever hear it. We brought out our very best enthusiasm and anticipation every single time we would pick him up to practice, and in all these months our enthusiasm could not pull the words out of him. “Ready, set…” then leaning in closely with my own mouth open as if to mimic the word he needed to tell me what to do next… and then silence. Hundreds of moments of silence; the loudest sound in the world sometimes.

It’s a little bit funny to me that God would choose a moment for Cannon to grasp set go when I was not prompting it from him at all. No enthusiastic play on my part, no fanfare, no looking down at his big green eyes willing the words from him. He just got in position and was ready when he was ready. A little ordinary miracle on a Wednesday afternoon.

Every one of us is thinking daily about the world we live in, about the fear and the anxiety and the politics and the maddening headlines. In fact, some of us are thinking so much about all that is wrong that we can’t celebrate what is right, all of the ordinary miracles around us. I’ve certainly been in this place, tallying in the “bad” category almost daily and forgetting to mark in the “good” category, too. It is no wonder the heaviness in my heart has been so present when so much of what I’ve been doing is scorekeeping for evil.

But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. We weren’t designed by Perfection Himself to merely survive our lives by avoiding as much bad as we can, nor is our call to begrudge and complain about any and everything that doesn’t fit our preferences or meet our needs. We were meant to celebrate the joy that He gives us right here in the midst of the bad; we were meant for glory, and that often shines brightest in the dark, if we will let it. The Christ follower has an incredibly important responsibility: to hold in our hearts the paradox that is the miracle of every breath and the unspeakable pain of a sinful world. It’s so, so hard. I fail at it every single day. And then… “Set, daa!” Oh, yes, something has been building the whole time I only heard silence.     

And something is building now.

One of the greatest sins of the Israelites was that they kept forgetting how much God had showed up for them. The seas were parted, but in the waiting that followed, they forgot. The manna came from heaven, but in the resistance at Jericho, they forgot. And really, we are the same. Tragically, the same. We watch the news and cry “where are you, Lord?” forgetting that he is in the very breath it took to call out to him. Somewhere along the line, the fear in our hearts has drowned out our ability to see the ordinary miracles. Paul Tripp says, “[Amnesia] is the worst kind of blindness. It’s the physical ability to see without the spiritual ability to really see what you’ve seen. It’s the capacity to look at wonders, things specifically designed to move you and produce in you breathless amazement, and not be moved by them anymore. It’s the sad state of yawning in the face of glory.” It’s being so devastated by the headlines we forget to celebrate a little boy who found a new word.

God is always building something. Maybe we will see the answer in seven months or seven years or maybe not until we view history from our eternal vantage point. But something is happening, because God still has us here. I have this picture of God in heaven and Jesus at his right. The Savior of the world is poised and ready to come back for us, aching in the pain of sin and seeing each tear falling from our eyes. And there is God, feeling the same ache, waiting until the perfect, predestined moment to send this Savior back for his people. He’s watching, waiting, saying to his son, “Ready, set…”

We are just waiting for God’s “go”—waiting and trusting, clinging to the evidence of his goodness in all the beautiful, ordinary things.

We are sitting pretty in the middle of the very best time of the year around these parts: summer. When you live in a four-season destination, the seasons themselves become verbs, universally understood and described by locals according to the activities we can and cannot do based on the weather. And right now, everyone summers: sprinklers, lakes, popsicles, baby sunscreen, red cheeks, s’mores, and 9:45pm sunsets. It’s all just dreamy. Ten months out of the year we more or less live our lives around school and work schedules. But summer in the Pacific Northwest rolls around and all of a sudden we work around our summer. The early, quiet, peaceful rhythm of the mornings makes the days feel welcome and full of potential; and the long-lasting sunsets have this beautiful way of helping me savor the day. When I really sit with all the goodness that fills this time of the year, it is impossible not to measure my gratitude in fresh ways.

And along with the change of pace, there is this new sense of possibility. The schedule-free weeks could be a time of rest, or a dedicated season of goal achieving; summer seems to offer whatever our souls need the most, doesn’t it? For me, the long-days are a mix of both: I read more, I write more, I see my people more in the summer. And yet, for the last two nights, I’ve poured myself a glass of Trader Joe’s sparkling limeade and taken a sunset bath after the kids are in bed. (I know, getting crazy around here!) I can count on one hand the amount of baths I have taken in the previous nine months. But once that blissful quiet of the post-bedtime hustle sets in over our home, and I look outside and see that the sun is still giving me permission to take in the day, I feel like I have to do something to honor it. So I do. We are in a really cool play all day, savor all evening cadence, and I like it.

This year, the gift of summer is refining me in so many ways. We have all adjusted well to my little guy’s therapy schedules, and we are learning, with the Lord’s help, to pan out on our perspective a bit more than we had been. It is certainly a day-to-day process, but progress is much more easily seen from start to finish, so we have to learn to hold both. Cannon is not saying more words than he was yesterday; but he is engaging with tasks and people 100 times more fully than he was two months ago. It’s always a battle for my faith, because I want to come home from each therapy session and say “He said two new words today!” But it is so much more encouraging to say, “He’s not in the same place he was when we started. He’s growing.” God continues to teach me more about Himself and his glory through my son than he ever has through anything else, and that’s not something I say lightly. It’s just true. And see? There’s that hustle then savor pattern showing up again right here, on this journey, too.

I’ve also been writing. A lot. I’m dreaming of a book and I’m actually walking in to that dream as best I know how to. I think most writers dream of the book they will one day write; I certainly have been my entire life. And yet, my efforts have always been stifled by the reality that anything I can say, someone else can say better. That, and I spent five years trying to force pretty words from my brain onto paper and I never got farther than a potential title. I once watched an interview with author Amber Haines, and she said of the book writing process, “Wait for the fire.” And right here, in the midst of motherhood that feels like it is drowning me some days, the embers are staying warm enough to slowly, but surely, grow. It has been the best thing for my heart to listen to Jesus every morning and feel my way towards him in words. And that’s what the book is shaping up to be about: Him, and the knowledge that he is unchanging and unspeakably beautiful even when life feels the opposite. This is the truth I am learning right now, so it’s the lesson I’m writing. (I must add that publishing and writing feel like two very different things to me. It’s all safe and controllable over here in the writing: me and my words, and a few sets of trusted eyes on them. It’s all vulnerable and unpredictable over there in the publishing, where thousands of writers offer their very best efforts every day, only to be told it’s not good enough. So, I don’t know what that looks like. I think I want to try, but when you write about Jesus you’re pretty much forced to measure success as a greater view of Him, and I already have that. So I guess I can say that this writing has been worth it, no matter where it ever goes.)

With two months of the best of the year still ahead of us, we are all looking forward to more of that summer list of sprinklers, lakes, popsicles, baby sunscreen, red cheeks, s’mores, and 9:45pm sunsets. And friends, lots and lots of friends. I’ve never been more inspired by and grateful for the people around me. Friends that are faithfully navigating hard marriages, thinking about returning to school, pursuing their own writing goals, raising precious babies and teaching them about Jesus, opening their homes and family to foster children; you name it, and I have people in my life doing it. It’s the best, seeing the body of Christ on display, doing the unique and beautiful things he has given each of us to do, learn, persevere through, pray for, and believe in.

Wishing you marshmallows, campfires, friends to ask good questions around them with, and the sweet cadence that only the summer can bring.

All good storytelling must come with a good beginning. It’s the hook, the grabber, the attention-getter that really gives us the stamina to stay in the story. It’s true when you read them; I think it is even truer when you live them.

*****

This story didn’t start six months ago, when we knew our sweet boy should be saying more, babbling more, mimicking more. It didn’t start on Christmas, when his zone out episodes were so pronounced they prompted a doctor appointment and an EEG as soon as possible. And the story didn’t start last week, when five ladies with clipboards watched his every move, noting where he failed and where he succeeded; when they asked me to fill out paperwork quantifying everything he does into never, sometimes, always categories. And the story didn’t even start when they told me there were “significant deficiencies present,” that a lot of therapy would begin immediately, but also that, “we don’t want to overwhelm you, so we won’t say more, for now.”

This story starts with our perfect God. Immeasurable. Incalculable. Incomprehensible. Every story starts with Him. And He is writing each one with the aim of pointing to his glory. Every single one. Even the ones I probably would have written differently; even my little boy’s story.

That doesn’t mean this is easy. In fact, watching my child struggle, hearing what people think, learning a new language and what it all means for our family, and fighting back the urge to explain to everyone who is around that my quiet two-year old is the sweetest two year old on the planet! is actually the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I want to grab the ladies with the clipboards and tell them all the things he is so, so good at; how swings and slides and Dora make him the happiest boy on earth. I want to tell them that he’s fast, that he has his daddy’s running calves and I think he’ll probably set a state record in the mile someday. I want everyone to see him grab my face and give me a kiss, how he purses his lips and puckers up like he means it. I want everyone to watch him snuggle with me, because he loves to pull his knees up, tuck his arms in, and get cozy on my chest; the same position he spent the first few weeks of his life in. But I can’t get them to look up from their box checking, from the story they are writing about him. I know, it’s their job and we all need this, he needs this. But I cannot say this is easy.

It’s not easy when my little guy pinches and bites because he can’t yet say “no” or “mine” or any other toddler phrase to indicate he’s not ok. It’s terribly hard to explain to other mamas I barely know that he doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body; he is just learning how to behave with what he has in his tool box. My heart is screaming that I’m trying every hour of the day to help him fill that toolbox, I am! He’s a good boy; I’m trying to be a good mom, really! But that’s not what anyone wants to hear, not as they comfort their own child and examine the bite mark mine left. So I just apologize again and again, worrying too much about what they think. No, this part, the middle of the story, is not easy. Most good stories have some hard.

So I am reminding myself daily that every great story does not start with the hard, but with the Perfect. When the story starts with Perfect, we get a different story altogether; one that is never so hard that redemption can’t be woven through each chapter.  

I do not know what is ahead for my little guy. I know there will be challenges, and I expect more weeks of near-constant tears on my end. I know there will also be victories, that he will learn a new word and we will cheer him on like he won a gold medal. I anticipate a good week, then a bad week, then a madder-than-hell week and a bursting with gratitude week. I imagine a lot of repentance, and at times, a desperate longing for home… not this one. Aren’t we all longing for our real home, though?

But what I do know is that this story will end the same way it started: with our Perfect God. And I don’t want to miss one second of the glory that my little boy’s life might give to Him. Not one second. Who am I to wish away anything that would make much of Jesus? Isn’t that is what we are here for in the first place?

So no, the story doesn’t start with challenge, or diagnoses, or developmental delays and missed milestones. It doesn’t start with tears or feelings of failure. It doesn’t start with unknown or wondering or hoping and praying that all the therapy results in making up these deficiencies. It will include all of those things, and we will have to learn how to live each and every one of them. But they will all help us get to the ending, the Perfect ending.

The uncertainty of this story is both impossibly hard and going to be fine, and it is both of those things at the same time. I don’t know what will happen, but I know that the worst thing that could happen would be missing Jesus in all of it. The paradoxes of walking with a perfect Savior in a far from perfect world are many; there is a very real tension of wanting so many things for our children but wanting one thing for them above everything. But this story, this may be exactly how God is getting us to that one thing, to Him. To Perfect.

For each one of us, all of our lives are bookended with Perfection; a single sentence in the big story between Eden and a New Earth. And I can’t think of one thing that would make the in-between more worth living fully, for His glory, than knowing that.  

*A note from Katie: I prayed for three days before publishing this essay; it's a big deal to tell the world that your child, someone you love more than life, is struggling. But I've never known how to do anything in my writing but be honest, and when you stare at a good, good God for that long, every story that makes you cling to Him seems worth telling. We have no shame or stigma associated with Cannon's journey or the therapy he will continue doing; he is a happy, healthy, joy-to-parent little boy. And we just want God to get the glory for the perfect gift he has given us in our family.

Three years, three babies. Sometimes I cannot believe that myself.

I have been pregnant or nursing since March of 2012, and I can say with confidence that I was totally done having babies four months and two weeks ago. Done and done. I was too sick in the first trimester, and my varicose veins were too puffy in the third. I was exhausted and irritable, sleep was elusive, toddlers were needy, and I just knew that being pregnant again was off the table.

But, Jordi.

This third baby of mine is as sweet as they come, and he has been since the day he was born. In fact, I hardly remember life without him.

(I hardly remember anything these days, but that is a whole other thing.)

I think for every mama, there is “before and after” with every baby. I was one person before Harper, and another after. And I was one kind of mother as a mom to one baby and a different one when Cannon joined us. And now there are three, and I have never had to dig to such deep places of resolve in my life.

Three babies has meant a lot of things to me, the first and most obvious is learning to cope with the absence of sleep (amen, mamas?). I’m guessing the amount of times all three children have slept consecutively more than six hours since Jordi was born would be around five. Five nights in four months where no one in the house woke up for six straight hours. Sometimes I sure miss my college days.

And besides learning to operate with limited shut-eye, three babies has meant a minivan, and the most attractive display of me crawling over, through, and around seats to buckle the three-year-old in the back. It has meant a lot of time at home, because taking a chance that the big carts will be unavailable at the grocery is just too uncertain. It has meant we eat a lot of Panera and even more quesadillas, because the odds of all three children not needing something for thirty solid minutes between 3:30 and 5:00pm are slim to none.

Three babies has meant I do a lot of things I “never” thought I would as a mom: you want a third fruit snack? Fine. You’ve had your diaper on all day? Well it was only pee so you’re ok. Cannon has a sharp object in his hand? Well, I’m nursing a fussy baby so ‘hey three-year-old, will you just grab it from him and carefully bring it to mommy?’ (Kidding on that last one. It wasn’t that sharp of an object.)

Three kids has felt like a lot more than two kids. No more man-to-man defense. Sometimes more than one babysitter necessary.

But, Jordi.

Every time I pick this boy up I am reminded of joy: no small thing in our world these days. Jordi teaches me again about the unmerited blessing that a baby truly is, and of the sweet praise I want to sing to Jesus for each moment I have to be a mama. His chubby cheeks are gloriously kissable. He wakes up with a smile on his face, and loves to be tickled underneath his double chin. And when I sing to him, he purses his lips with the softest, sweetest coo, almost like he knows that melody is just for him in that moment and he’s telling me how much he loves it.

This fleeting season of motherhood is one in which I am stretched thin in different ways by each child. It’s hard sometimes, because anxiety and fear and the worry that I am failing are unwelcome friends of mine. But the good far outweighs the hard. I just love this job. I can’t do it alone, but Jesus is teaching me every day that I can do it with him. And my third baby, he has been everything I needed and more to truly learn that.

Maybe we are done having kids. I’ll answer that next year. Or maybe I won’t. I cannot imagine only having three, and I cannot imagine having four—so there’s that for clarity. But I know this for sure: my hands are full but my heart is fuller.

And I don’t even care that I’m ending on a cliché.