You’ve wanted to quit this whole writing thing a dozen times in the last ten years. 

Phrases like “you should be further along,” or “she published a book only three years into her public writing life, and you’re on year ten” or “does this effort even matter?” haunt you as a writer. 

You will spend hours on an essay, and it will be skimmed in under a minute by most readers.

You will wrestle with a story and the right words and the near paralyzing vulnerability only to be told “this is not good” by an editor. You’ll cry a little, or a lot. Vow never to write again, wake up the next morning and work on the edits anyway.

You will make so little money, if you’re making any at all. Covering the hosting fee of your website will feel like a victory and a justification to your husband that your little hobby isn’t a total financial drain. If you can afford a coffee with your earnings you most certainly ‘gram it, because any evidence that writing brought a tangible return is satisfying. 

You will anticipate the publishing date of an essay, on the site you were so thrilled to be accepted by, for months - thinking it will bring in likes and comments and new followers and that thrill of seeing the share number go higher and higher. It will not.

And then on a normal Tuesday your work will, unbeknownst to you, be shared somewhere by someone and you will get some new followers; but on that same Tuesday you fought with your husband and felt bitterness toward your children and absolutely nothing about your real life changed. Followers won’t unload your dishwasher for you, they can’t apologize to others on your behalf, and they have their own houses to clean.

That essay on friendship you threw together in one sitting will go somewhat viral, something you never saw coming. You’ll tell yourself you are happy so many people are tagging their friends to tell them how much they love them, but you’re secretly hoping they are tagging their friends to follow your work. Pride and selfless service will war with another all the time. 

You’ll have moments of contentment, and mostly these will come as a surprise. When your closest, real life friends read your writing and text to tell you they loved it - that’s the best. When another mama tells you she feels so understood. When your friend from the internet hand writes and sends a card in the mail from across the country and makes you cry with her kindness. 

When you truly feel like you told the story about your life in Jesus, not just Jesus in your life. Inch by inch, you’re learning the difference.

“So that’s the journey of my writing,” you think to yourself. “To just keep getting out of the way. To tell a better story, a bigger one.” You know this is much easier to say than to do, that much you’ve learned in ten years. The addictiveness of being relevant will chase you - or you will chase it - and no matter how many times it comes up empty you’ll still be tempted to think, “No, this time I’ll find what I’m looking for.” 

And then, in the sacred quiet of the early morning, you’ll realize, even for a moment, you already have it. 

You have a good, good Father, a Creator who wove creating into your soul and just the obedience to sit down and try, to show up, to pray that you would know this God more after you’ve written than you did before, that’s the victory. 

Because your audience is just one. It always has been, it always will be. 

Something about the publish button will make you forget this, will tempt you time and time again with its promises of that elusive feeling you’re chasing, that thing that’s wrapped up somewhere in the mix of a desire to matter and a desire to love Jesus well and a desire to be loved by others.

But it will let you down again - that publish button - and you’ll go back to your kitchen table, back to the quiet, and there he’ll be again, your audience of one. He’s charitable and kind and consistent in a way no one else could ever possibly be. You’ll get back at your efforts to tell stories that illuminate Him, in all the hard, in all the good, in every breath. Because you’ve learned, you know, that’s the only time you’ve ever truly felt like you’re doing what you were created to do. 

//

This essay is an exercise in second person writing, inspired by a prompt from Ashlee Gadd, who shares the whole exercise in Rhythm. Sign up to get this prompt and 51 others right here!

I see the pregnancy tests on the end of an aisle out of the corner of my eye. I’m just here for eyedrops, I think to myself, just eyedrops. But as the line inches forward and social distancing gives me a few extra minutes to stand within arms’ reach of the pink boxes, curiosity - or maybe it’s premonition - gets the best of me. I throw one in my basket, behind the back of my seven year old, who will surely have a dozen justifiable questions about this little box if she sees it.

I just need to rule it out, so I can stop imagining things. Nine dollars is a small price to pay to have my sanity back.

I purchased the little box undetected, but I did not get my sanity back. 

Baby #6 will be here in February.

//

There’s a well known story about Jesus in the gospels, when he takes five loaves of bread and two fishes and miraculously multiplies this meager serving of food to feed thousands of people. The awe of this event causes the people to call him a prophet and a king, and beg him to overthrow the oppressive Roman rulers of their time. If he can make food just appear, surely he is capable of all kinds of miracles, and these people were there for it. I get that. I would be, too.

But I can’t help but sit with a small detail of this story that comes a bit earlier in the day. Jesus and his disciples had gone up on the mountain to sit down for a bit. From their vantage point, it wasn’t difficult to see the huge crowd following them. Jesus sat there unbothered. The disciples on the other hand, they saw reality. It was Passover, one of the most sacred holidays of the Jewish people, and there were thousands of them making the long trek toward their small crew to learn more about this mysterious Jesus figure. 

So when Jesus asks his disciples where they might be able to buy food on the top of a mountain, you and I can certainly understand the skepticism of their response. Are you serious, Jesus? They had to be thinking, You did notice we are not exactly near a market, yes?   

Andrew, one of the disciples, finally voices what feels obvious: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”

What are they for so many? Like, come on Jesus. You aren’t really thinking about feeding this crowd, are you? This is enough for one, maybe two people. It’s certainly not enough for what you are thinking of doing. We have to face reality here. 

At least, that’s what I would be thinking. 

So I get Andrew on this question. I really do. I’ve asked it of myself a hundred times in the last three months, since that small premonition in the line at the drug store became a stark reality. Who am I for so many? I am already giving all of myself, every minute of every day.

I don’t have enough for what you are asking us to do, Lord. 

//

I took the pregnancy test late in the afternoon, but I had already planned a fun evening with my oldest daughter that I wanted to be so present for, and because we would be gone for the night, I waited until the next morning when we got home to tell my husband. We pulled up to the house just after breakfast, and Alex already had the other kids loaded in the stroller to head down to the park. When we got there, our big three ran off to their favorite spots, and we stayed back pushing the littles in the swings. 

I had been sitting on news that I had to tell him for 18 hours. That’s the longest I have ever held this secret from him. I wanted to tell him. He’s an incredible dad, and one of the most selfless men alive. But this would be our 6th child. All of them under eight years old. We never planned on more than four. Did I mention we were already giving all of ourselves, every single day? Special needs, two busy toddlers, a curious seven-year-old with incessant (but very good) questions about life, and a four-year-old still learning to write his letters and control his anger - it takes all we have. 

The smallest, apprehensive fear of how is he really going to feel about this? caused me just the slightest bit of trepidation, but because I could not do 18 hours and one more minute of secret-keeping, I decided to jump in with no introduction.  

“Babe, I took a pregnancy test last night.”

“What?!” he responded, wide-eyed and confused, but rightfully, more concerned with the result than my motive. “Are you pregnant?”

I smiled/grimaced/braced myself and said, “I am, Babe. It was positive.” 

He laughed - laughed - which was the best thing he could have done in that moment - and then wrapped me up in a hug. Despite my anxiety, my heart knew he would react this way. The worry was more about our coming reality than my husband’s attitude toward it. We both know what a miracle this is, and it’s one we never have taken for granted. 

“Wow! Ok. Well, not sure what you’re doing here God, but…” he stopped for a second, looked down at me and said, “are you doing ok?”

“I think so. I have... complicated feelings, babe.” I got quiet for a minute, still unable to name it all, sitting with the very real tension of gratitude and overwhelm, sorting through what I thought I was allowed to feel.

“Ha!” he chuckled back. “I think you’re allowed to have complicated feelings right now.”

“Thank you for saying that,” I said through an insecure smile. I’m sure I mumbled a few other unremarkable things, but mostly I remember us being ok, just not saying much; pushing our two toddlers on the swings to the background of giggles and squeals and requests for help reaching the monkey bars from our older three.

“It’s going to be ok,” Alex pipped in. “One day at a time, that’s all we can do.”

//

I wonder what the disciples really thought after Jesus fed all those people in such an improbable manner, as they cleaned up after the crowd and had twelve baskets of food left over. 

Were they shocked, but not surprised? 

Were they shocked because they saw a miracle, something they could never manufacture on their own. They did not believe it was possible to meet the physical needs of so many people, and who could blame them - it did not look possible. Until it happened. 

But were they not surprised because it was Jesus, after all, the man they left everything to follow because they believed that in Him, they would find everything they were looking for; they would find life. This was not the first time they had seen something miraculous, they could not have been too surprised Jesus made it happen again.

I think that’s where my heart is, somewhere on that vacillating line between shocked and not surprised, if it’s possible for a heart to live in that paradox. 

//

We know now that two fish and five loaves of bread was indeed enough to feed more than five thousand people on that Passover holiday all those centuries ago. It was sufficient “for so many.” 

Will I be? 

The news of a 6th baby shocked me, because my husband got a vasectomy a year ago, I only have one fallopian tube, and we still got pregnant anyway (while I was breastfeeding!). I'm shocked that we now own a 12-passenger van, as if I'm running a summer camp or working for the HVAC repair company. Nothing practical in me says this pregnancy is possible, or that my capability is enough. 

But I'm not surprised either, because there is a sovereign God behind every detail of life, and statistics have never been in the way with him. It is Jesus, after all, who feeds the masses with only enough for two, and comes back to get us every time we wander away thinking that He just isn’t facing reality when he puts good work before us, forgetting how safe we are with him - a God of unexplainable miracles.

Who am I for so many? I don’t know the answer. But every day I think I'm not capable of raising six children, I’ll take comfort in knowing someone much greater than me says otherwise.

I hear the scuffle from the basement as I am putting laundry away. “No, Cannon! It’s my turn to pick the show!” our four-year-old, Jordi, yells in frustration as his older brother fights him for the remote. I know before I go back upstairs who will win this battle.

“Nooooo!” Jordi continues, frustration now turning into sobs and anger as his big brother refuses to give back the tv remote. I walk in the family room and he begins pleading his case with me in one breath between the sobs. “Mom, Cannon took the remote and it’s not his turn it’s my turn and he just took it and I was watching sumfing!” 

“I know Jo, let’s ask him nicely and with self-control if he will give it back.”

“Nooooo!” Self-control be damned, Jordi takes a swing at Cannon’s back, who yells a little bit but continues trying to navigate the buttons on the remote without acknowledgement of his brother’s feelings. 

Jordi’s cheeks grow redder and redder and his voice more and more upset. He and I both know what will happen if we force the remote back out of Cannon’s hand: aggressive swings and high pitched yells and a little boy who will be unable to calm back down for who knows how long. 

Finally, Jordi finds the sentence, the thing that makes him more upset than just having the channel changed in the middle of his show: “Autism boys don’t get to pick! Only boss boys get to pick. I am the boss boy! Cannon is an autism boy!”

I stand there looking at my boys, one wildly upset and the other seemingly indifferent just two feet away. It is the first time I realize Jordi knows his big brother has autism; the first time I understand that he is well-aware of the differences in his brother, and that those differences feel frustrating and at times, very unfair to a four-year-old mind. 

And it is the first time I realize I need to help Jordi figure out something I am still very unsure how to do every single day. 

“Oh JoJo, come here,” I say as I pull him into our bedroom and onto my lap. We sit there in silence for a few minutes, as I pretend my big four-year-old is more like a baby so he can snuggle up really close. His body isn’t the only thing I am holding; the heavy feeling of his sadness about his brother and mine at not knowing what to tell him next felt like more weight than his body. 

“Hey bud,” I finally break the silence. “Let’s talk about Cannon, and about why you are sad, and how we can help him learn to do better.”

Jordi sniffs a little, then nods his head. 

//

For the last four and a half years, our family has been learning how to live with autism, and for almost all of that time, I have seen the struggle through two sets of eyes: the parents, and my son’s on the spectrum. I’ve sat and held him tightly to keep him from hitting his own head on the wall. I’ve reacted in anger when he slapped me in the face for asking him to put his clothes on. I’ve researched and googled and read books and spent a lot of money on oils and supplements and vitamins and anything that promised the slightest glimmer of hope that tomorrow would be better than today. And of course, I’ve wondered how impossible it must feel for a little boy to be living with a mind that will not form the words he needs to tell me what hurts, why he is sad, what he wants to do, or what happened at school today. It’s been me and my husband, and it’s been Cannon - the three of us living in this little complex word; and because our other children were so young, I have enjoyed a few years of compartmentalizing my parenting into two categories: autism - with it’s stringent therapy schedule and special diet and separate classrooms - and “typical” children - with social rules and manners and reasonable expectations for what the day will bring.

But now, I see there are not two categories. There is just us.

Special needs is a road the whole family has to walk, but the truth is—separating the paths is easier, for my heart and for my hands, than bringing everyone on the same one. But here we are, my husband and I leading the way with a trail of Cannon’s siblings behind us, who are too young to fully understand developmental disabilities, but plenty old enough to know it makes them frustrated. And right now, I have to find the words to tell another little boy what it means for his brother to be an “autism boy”, and after more than four years of searching, I still don’t know the answer.

//

I sat there with Jordi on my lap, still reeling at the injustice of having his tv show taken from him so abruptly, and knowing full well I would never let him do that to someone else. I truly thought when the time came, I would be ready for this moment, this delicate conversation that introduces two opposing truths to the world for my kids: Cannon is a good boy, but autism is a very hard thing. 

Paradox is hard for everyone, but it can be especially disorienting for a child. 

Alas, I’m not ready for the conversation, because on any given day, I deal with that paradox differently as well: sometimes with solid faith in a good God and other times with desperate cries and genuine anger that sovereignty could allow a child to struggle so much. 

“Jo,” I whisper to him as I scratch his back and watch his sad breaths slow to a calmer cadence, “I know this is so hard sometimes, to have a brother who has different rules than you.” 

He nods again, lulled into listening with the magic of a mom’s light touch.

“And bud, I get upset too, but I also know this: Cannon loves you, and he loves jumping on the trampoline with you, and chasing you, and squirting you with the hose!”

“Yeah, Cannon loves that,” Jordi says with the slightest hint of a smile as he pictures the hose and the backyard and the laughter from the day before in his mind. “He likes to put it on my head!”

“I know, he thinks you are the most fun brother ever!”

“Mmm hmm,” Jordi responds, a satisfied smirk settling in on his face.

“So I think, Jordi, in the really hard moments when we don’t understand what Cannon is doing, or why he is doing it, we just have to work really, really hard to remember how much we love each other. Autism makes so many things hard for him that are not hard for me and you. But,” I lean my face in as close to his as I could get and heighten my pitch with a little bit of excitement, “God knew he needed a little brother exactly like you to make him laugh and to play with him, didn’t he? No one will love him better than you will, JoJo.”

Another nod and smile - not one of resolution, there will always be much to be resolved, but one of acceptance.

“We will keep learning together, Jo. And so will Cannon!”

Maybe the only answer to two opposing truths is a third one: we love each other.

And wouldn’t you know, Cannon walks in the bedroom just a moment later, holds out his hand and says, “Heee go, Jordi,” and hands him the tv remote.

“Fanks, Cannon,” Jordi responds, then walks back out to the living room to finish his show.

//

*This essay first appeared on the Coffee + Crumbs Patreon site.
If you have been encouraged by my writing here or on the C+C blog, consider becoming a patron and joining the community for as little as $1 a month.

This fiction piece was written as part of the GDC Writer’s Cohort I am participating in this year.
I have not written fiction for twenty years, but it was so fun to sit down a workout a creative muscle that as been dormant for a long time.
*****

Enoch’s Daughter

Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 
Enoch walked with God...
Genesis 5:21-24

The morning sunlight was just rising over the eastern mountains, slowly turning the desert landscape a fleeting, momentary shade of soft morning gold. This had always been her favorite part of the day, the cadence of her morning routine matched by the waning sound of crickets and soft rustles of the camp’s other early risers.

She met her mother outside the tent, each of them offering a quiet greeting to each other. “Should we gather more wood for the fire?” Nine year old Emzara whispered to her mother, aware of everyone still sleeping. 

“It is waning a bit. We should head toward the foothills today, on the east side. The western edge has already been picked over for dry wood.” With that, the two of them set off toward the sunrise, the only sound between them the rocks underneath their sandals. 

“It’s nice today,” Emzara offered a few minutes later when they were safely outside the camp.

“Mmm hmm,” her mother mumbled in return, eyes still fixed ahead. 

“Maybe after we find firewood, we can play a game with the others?” Emzara asked timidly, her childish sincerity dampened only by what she was sure her mother would say.

“We have work to do, Emzara. The men will want breakfast before they set off today, and the young animals need tending. You know the sheep were just born.”

“Yes, I do mother.” Emzara looked up at her mother, whose eyes never did come down to meet hers. She was a diligent woman, Emzara’s mother. Her family never wanted for much under her care. There was food and clothing, and occasionally she allowed them to listen to their uncles play the lyre around the fire well into the night. But she was distant from Emzara, from all of her children. Not angry, just distant. She wore her tiredness on her skin; it was always there, visible on her hands and face even when the rest of her was covered in clothes. A life of hard work had left its mark on her, and she could not pretend to match the youthful energy of her youngest daughter. 

“I will walk down along the creek, Emzara. Why don’t you head to the ridgeline? Collect as much wood as you can carry. I’ll help you on the walk back.” 

Emzara dutifully followed the direction of her mother’s hand. “Yes, mother,” she said in return, and began up the foothill, following the early light. She picked up a few sticks as she walked, the biggest ones her little arms could manage, cradling them in the nook of her left elbow. 

As she reached the horizon line, her free right hand instinctively shading her eyes from the sun, she heard a warm, familiar voice. “Bat Ayin, my daughter.” Emzara turned to her right to find her father, Enoch, kneeling on a small woven mat. “Come, come, bat. Come sit with me.”

“Abba!” Emzara put down her small collection of wood and hurried to her father, who gathered her in his arms and put his strong hand on the back of her shawl covered head. “Abba, what are you doing up here?”

“Ah, you’ve found me where I begin every morning, Emzara,” Enoch responded in his calm, confident cadence. “This is where I come to see the sun rise. Isn’t it beautiful, Emzara? And so miraculous - we have to do nothing but wait, and it comes. Every morning, it comes again.” He paused for a moment, letting his young bat take in his words. Then he added, “This is where I come to hear from ‘elohim.”

‘Elohim. Emzara thought for a moment about what her father had said. Her  childish curiosity met with emerging young adult inquisitiveness, and her ability to make sense of this ‘elohim lay somewhere in between the two. “Abba, you talk with ‘elohim a lot,” she remarked, both as a statement and a question.

“I do, Emzara. I see him in the sunrise and the mist covering the ground as I walk up here. I see him in your mother, I see him in you, bat Ayin.” He put his hand tenderly under her chin, and smiled as he looked into her deep brown eyes. Enoch’s gentleness with his daughter had always made Emzara feel safe. 

“Abba, you talk to ‘elohim. What does he say?” 

“He does not always speak with words, bat Ayin. He speaks with creation. He speaks with his provision. He speaks, but you have to listen. His voice is sometimes still and small, but it is powerful, bat Ayin. His words are...” Enoch’s voice trailed off, overtaken by his own awe at what he was trying to say. “His words are life, bat Ayin. He speaks, and it is so.”

“Abba, you have told me stories about the world ‘elohim made since I was a baby. About the day and the night, about the stars, about the plants and animals, and about our ancestors. You know ‘elohim, abba; do you love him?” Emzara asked. 

“He knows me, bat Ayin. He knows me, and I respond. One cannot help but love him if he is known by him.”

“But abba, you know him more than the others do. You talk with him, you begin your day here, on your knees, with him. You speak of him with joy, but not with ease. You have peace, abba. Is it because you love him?”

“Emzara, ‘elohim is too big to speak of with ease. There is much I know of him, but much I do not, I can not know. There are others he knows, others he has chosen, because surely we would not choose him if he did not choose us. We would choose ourselves, bat Ayin, we would want to be as powerful as him, and we cannot be. We were made to enjoy him, yet we desire to be like him.”

“You enjoy him, abba?”

“Ah, I do, bat Ayin,” Enoch said with a smile. “I do.” 

Emzara smiled back up at her abba. 

“Our ‘elohim is so many things,” Enoch continued. “But Emzara, I want you to know this: he is good. Our desire to be like him,” he paused again, carefully weighing his words, “it has caused so many things to go wrong. Our desire for the power only ‘elohim has makes us do things to each other we should never do. You remember Cain, bat Ayin?”

“I do, abba. He took his brother’s life.”

“And we don’t just do things to each other. The whole world, all that God made good now has the stain of sin. There is sickness and death and…” he stopped. “There is pain, bat Ayin. We cannot look around without seeing the pain.” 

Emzara followed her father’s lead and stared out at the sunrise, now warm and bright over the land. She knew something of a world that was not perfect. She’d been sick and weak, nursed back to health by the care of her mother who spent nights awake while Emzara burned with fever. She also knew some of what her mother and father had seen. Emzara had brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts and cousins to play with, but she knew there was loss, too. Not every sibling her mother and father had was still with them, not every cousin she threw rocks into the creek with had survived the terrible fevers Emzara had. But Emzara, I want you to know this: he is good. Her father’s words hung confidently in her heart. 

“Bat Ayin,” Enoch continued, as they both got to their feet, the increasing warmth of the day signaling it was time to return to camp. “‘Elohim told us there would be a lot of hard things because of our sin. We will fight, we will work endlessly for food and shelter, we will desire things that are not ours. But he also said there will be someone, a child of Eve, who will come to us. When he comes, he will help. He will make things right. We are never without hope, Emzara. Our ‘elohim is too good to leave us without hope.”

Enoch helped his daughter gather the wood she had found, and together they picked up a few more pieces as they walked back down the hill to find her mother. Enoch’s hand gently supported his daughter on the narrow trail down as she balanced the wood her mother had tasked her to find.

“Emzara!” her mother said sternly as she came into view with her father. “Is that all you gathered? Surely you had time to find more.” 

Enoch smiled at his wife and helped her with the wood she had picked up. “It’s ok ishshah, Emzara has been with me. We were with ‘elohim, together.” 

Enoch’s wife sighed, but underneath her aggravation was a gentle smile. She knew her husband would have been at the ridgeline, his mat was always gone from its place near the door of the tent before even she, the woman always up before the sun, woke up in the morning. “And what did you tell her about him?” she asked her husband, a knowing smile on her face, as if the answer was already between them, as if she knew her husband would have been speaking of the one thing he always spoke of: this good ‘elohim.

He returned her knowing smile and kissed his wife on the forehead, and they continued together back to camp.

It’s been three years since our little man was diagnosed with autism, though closer to four since we knew it was coming. When I look back, it feels like time has roared by, almost like it has gone on without me. Three years? It can’t possibly have been that long. Was I really there for all of it? 

I can also recall a good number of evenings when I looked at the clock at 4:00pm, again at 4:18pm, 4:29pm, and wondered if it would ever just be bedtime, so yes, I know I was there. That long days fast years thing is the truth. 

When it comes to autism, time and I are in an awkward relationship. It wants to show up and live at the same cadence every single day; I want it to notice when something is good and slow down, then catch on when something is hard and, obviously, speed the heck up! It prefers sameness though, a lot like autism does, and refuses to bend to my desire for it to play by my circumstantial rules. This is mostly fine; time is given to all of us fairly every single day and there are not many things that are, so I won’t begrudge it.

Four years ago, even with the evidence of autism hovering around us, a staunch and hopeful defiance characterized most of my days. It’s hard for me to say if it was hopeful defiance or fear, actually - even though one should be able to tell those apart. I guess it doesn’t matter much; whatever the feeling was, it was near impossible to live with. I refused to google anything other than speech delay, superstitiously thinking if I typed a-u-t-... or any rendition of it into a search bar, it would make it true. I clung to every possible sign of engagement from my two year old, unsuccessfully believing one imitation of a syllable counter-acted two dozen failed attempts to get him to respond to his name. I constantly measured him against his peers, looking for evidence that his development was ‘normal’, begging my friends to tell me it was ‘normal’, cheering wildly when he demonstrated anything ‘normal’. Still the chasm grew with each month, and hopeful defiance simply could not stand up to fact. 

We were going to live with this thing, this word that carried more weight than I was prepared to lift. But the first step was learning not to be afraid.

A-u-t-i-s-m. 

I typed it. I bought the books about it. I cried about it, but I said it.

The funny thing is, hopeful defiance might have crumbled when it met reality, but God rebuilt it in our lives as real hope, no longer in the outcome, but in the Author of the story. No defiance necessary.

There is an old video on my phone, a dark and early January morning that I was awake with Cannon, reading his books on the ground with him. I am pointing to a mountain on the cardboard page, willing Cannon to take my enthusiasm in and speak, anything, just speak. 

“Mow-nnn-ten.” I say loud and slow, holding each syllable for his ears to process. “Mow-nnn-ten.” 

Silence hangs for a moment, then his tiny fingers point to the mountain and he manages a “Mmm-mmm-a. Mmm-mmm-a.”

“Good job!” I squeal in the background, so delighted with his effort, with the “m” sound coming from my silent boy. 

That same video I am giddily happy in brings tears to my eyes today. Tears that I wouldn’t see what was so clear in moments like that, how profound his struggle with communication truly was; tears that I couldn’t will the words to come from his mouth, that no amount of enthusiasm on my part would bring them out; and tears that he has come so far since then, gratitude that while autism still makes sentences a challenge, he doesn’t have to fight with each syllable in that same way anymore - a luxury not everyone has. It’s moments like this when I am so thankful for both time, and hope.  

Cannon is in Kindergarten today. The many, many weeks of standing at the door of the therapy room so he would not escape feel so distant as we wait at the bus stop together, no need for a tight grip on his hand or prodding to get on the bus. He waits patiently on his own. He sees the door open and runs on like he’s been doing it forever. I could not even imagine this would be possible back there in those therapy rooms; something as normal as sending your child to school on a bus were not possibilities I allowed myself to think about. But time and hope, and no small amount of hard work from all of us, and look where we are, where he is. 

I am amazed by this boy. I wish I could have just a moment in his world, to see and hear and think about things how he does. I wish he could tell me everything, that we could take a walk after school and laugh and ask questions and listen to each other. It’s not possible right now. But he also points to that same book in the video and says as clear as a sunny day, “Let’s go to the tallest mountain!” and you know, a few years ago that wasn’t possible either. 

Jesus answer to his disciples in John 9 about a man’s blindness has for years been our comfort and our rallying cry: “That the works of God might be displayed in him.” But more importantly, it’s been true. There is so much about our good God on display in this boy. I was so afraid of it all just four short years ago, so scared about navigating a life that promised nothing but unpredictability. I was dreading the time and out of hope. Today, holding both the moments we struggle and the moments we celebrate, and constantly seeing this boy surprise us, time and hope are two of my favorite things to depend on.   

I looked over my right shoulder to the clock on the wall, silently begging the passing hours to have the impact that my body was screaming out for it to have. It was just after 5:00am, a full 14 hours after the contractions became strong enough to force me to grab my husband and breathe in to his chest through each one. 

“I’m going to check you again, Katie,” the midwife said. “Try to relax. Lots of pressure now.” She wasn’t lying.

I knew what she would tell me before she even made eye contact.

Still at 6 centimeters dilated. Baby’s head is still sitting back too far to put pressure on the cervix. A chorus of you’re so close, Katie, you can do this coming from the people around me. 

In reality, six centimeters to ten is half the length of my pinky finger; really no distance at all to the naked eye. But after 14 hours, dozens of laps around the hospital, torturous labor positions intended to flip this baby boy from head up to head down, and the constant presence of one to two minute apart contractions that were doing the very job God gave them to do, that four centimeter distance felt like a hundred miles.

*****

I woke up on that Monday morning in much the same way I had woken up for the three weeks leading up to it: disappointed. My near nightly routine of a few hours of moderate contractions had stopped again, and we moved another day past my due date still very much carrying a baby. My body was the walking evidence of discomfort: the pregnant waddle, the swollen ankles and pulsing varicose veins decorating my right leg, the sore lower back that made sitting and standing a painful endeavor, the sleep interrupted to roll over or go to the bathroom or by the relentless hormones that make your mind wander for hours on end before they will let you return to rest. The last month of my fourth pregnancy was challenging in a physical and emotional way that my first three… just weren’t. And with four kids six years old and under to take care of - who wake up asking for milk and go to bed saying they need water - the minutes of the day were not exactly conducive to rest.

The day we got to the 37 weeks pregnant mark I started doing everything I could to get this baby boy moving. And I do mean everything. You cannot google a suggestion we did not try (well, except castor oil, because hard no for this mama). But I also had the mental comfort of precedence: my first baby came at 39 weeks 2 days, my second exactly at 39 weeks, and my third at 38 weeks. Surely, surely precedence mattered. This was the fourth time my body had thrown up and stretched and groaned and made room for a miracle; certainly it knew exactly what to do and with a little bit of help (read: control) from my great efforts, we would have a baby any day.

Hindsight forces me to chuckle here, as it took another 27 days for me to learn again, for the thousandth time, who the Author of Life is, and that while we are given many beautiful gifts in this life, control is not one we are mature enough to handle.

So after almost a full month of all the things, I woke up at 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant and forced a smile to my husband, who knew very well at that point that I prayed myself to sleep at night asking for a baby to come. “Let’s take the kids to the park today,” he suggested, “it’s so nice out and we all need to get some fresh air.” We loaded up the double stroller and four kids and headed a mile down the road to the park. 

Are these contractions? I wondered as I sat down on the bench to relieve the throbbing in my right leg for a few minutes. I felt some significant cramping, but for a girl who started having contractions at 30 weeks pregnant, some cramping was nothing to be too excited about. I watched as our three year old ran through the splash pad with all his clothes on, totally free and happy and thrilled to be alive at a time that such human wonders like splash pads exist. I watched our five year old climb and slide and climb and slide again, having found the perfect balance of fun and challenge to keep him happy. I saw our six year old making new friends like she always does, her never met a stranger personality thriving more and more all the time. And I looked at our little foster girl as Alex pushed her on the baby swing, so full of joy as her little feet kicked as fast as they could - the body language of excitement speaking loud and clear. Then I felt more cramping, and as I watched my crew with sheer gratitude, I longed and prayed that our final recruit could join soon. And very soon. 

Lord, let these be the beginning. Please, let these be the beginning.

Another mile walk home and four hours later, it was clear that God said yes. 

*****

We checked in to the hospital around 6:30pm. I was 3cm dilated and 70% effaced with strong contractions two minutes apart. When the admitting nurse, Hannah, felt the baby’s position, she said, “You are definitely in labor, but it will progress much faster if the baby flips. Why don’t we send you home for a few hours and you can get on your hands and knees and hopefully help him to do that.” 

With a defiance I do not normally have, I looked over at Alex, then to our doula, Sarah, almost as if I was gathering a bit of courage from them, then looked at Hannah right in the eyes and said, “No. I’m sorry, I cannot go home. I have four little ones at home who do not need to see me struggling through these contractions. And I have already been on my hands and knees three hours a day for a month. And I am 40 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I am not leaving here without a baby.” 

Shortly after our midwife, Cyndi, walked in. Everything's better when the midwife gets there. She looked at the contractions on the monitor and immediately said to the triage staff, “Why doesn’t she have a room yet? She is in labor with her fourth baby - you really want to send her home like this?” Just before 9:00pm, we settled in to our corner room - me, Alex, Sarah and Cyndi, and within the hour joined by Kelly, my prayer warrior sister. And even though I had a natural birth with Jordi just 3.5 years ago, the next nine hours were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

The mission of both my doula and midwife became flipping the baby. Cyndi knew that once his head was down, he would be out in minutes. And if he didn’t flip, I could deliver him “sunny-side-up” too, but it would be harder and longer. Thus Operation Free Baby Blackburn began with sandbags. Two of them, actually, wedged between my belly and the bed as I lay as far over on my left side as I could. It was incredibly uncomfortable, but that was the whole point: get baby uncomfortable enough to roll over, too. This position helped increase the intensity of my contractions, but the baby did not budge.

Next up was the bath, but that was too relaxing and started to slow my contractions down. I was 5cm dilated by then, and I could not think about anything else besides having this baby as fast as we could, so we made the decision at midnight to break my water. As expected, the contractions ramped up quickly, and for the next five hours I was holding on to control for dear life and through the unspeakable torture of labor positions (and subsequent yelling, apparently mine, but I will deny it) intended to flip the baby - I will not give the visual here, and those who saw have sworn to take it to their grave. But I only held on that long because of the people in the room with me: my husband, my doula, my midwife and my friend - all coaching and supporting and rubbing my back and my head, physically holding me up at times, all encouraging and positive and all of them willing to pull an all-nighter to see this baby through. 

But 5:00am came, and you know what happened: Still at 6 centimeters dilated. Baby’s head is still sitting back too far to put pressure on the cervix. A chorus of you’re so close, Katie, you can do this coming from the people around me. But I couldn’t think of anything but the pain, and the hundred miles my heart and mind, and mostly my body, felt from my baby.

*****

I think moments like this, when we just cannot see the finish line, are some of the hardest in life - at least the ones that require the most faith, even if you have to borrow it from others, and I certainly did. I like to live life with the end goal in mind, and I certainly like to see and be assured of an outcome that I can live with. 

You would think after six and a half years of parenting, I would know that motherhood is not all that conducive to predictable outcomes. 

Still, I wanted Beckett’s birth to be natural, a show of strength and perseverance for both of us. I wanted to see this through, but I couldn’t. 10 weeks of contractions. A month of I think I’m in labor moments. Four little ones at home whose mama had become so limited in carrying and holding and snuggling them. And finally, 14 hours of contractions plus five of truly the most intense physical pain I have ever been through, and I could not keep going. A hundred more miles was just too far. I cried out that I needed something - an epidural, a c-section, something to help, something to stop this pain, and I wasn’t even all that picky about it. It’s funny now to think about this moment, how I couldn’t see anything but needing a way out of where I was, how I had no idea that a hundred miles was really not a hundred miles at all. 

We were just around the corner from where we wanted to be.

Somehow, my team talked me into the bath again. It had brought some slow down to the contractions earlier in the night, and the hope was that it would help me regain control of my breathing and crying (which was actually screaming). I cannot overstate the level of delirium setting in at this point. My arms and hands were shaking uncontrollably whenever I tried to hold my own body up - partly from the hormonal rush and partly from the total exhaustion of a sleepless night (which, I don’t exactly have a track record of - I almost wish I could have looked back on my college days and thought, “ah, no problem, we’ve done this a million times but alas, Katie Blackburn has been going to bed around 9:00pm for two decades and was woefully unprepared for the rigors of an all-nighter). Still, I got in the bath with my husband behind me rubbing and pushing on my back, and who - when he saw how far down I was falling into the water with each contraction, just went ahead and sat down fully clothed, cell phone and wallet in his pocket and all. He’s such a good man. 

I stayed in the bath for about 30 minutes - no relief, no slowing down, nothing but my tears. At my request, my doula left the room to tell the nurse I wanted an epidural. The loudest thought in the world was I cannot do this one more minute and I would not hear anything else from anyone. When I got back to the bed the midwife asked, “Katie, I think I should just check you one more time, can I?” 

“NO!” I firmly said back, as the anesthesiologist was wheeling his cart in to the room. “He hasn’t flipped, I haven’t felt anything. I’m still at 6, I know it. I can’t do this, I’m so tired. Please give me the epidural.” She took her gloves off, threw them in the garbage and said, “ok, hun.”

Maybe it was the knowledge that the sweet pain relief I thought was coming in the form of an epidural was minutes away - I could see it just feet from my bed. Maybe it was the warm water of the bath. Maybe it was the torture positions. I think it was mostly likely the desperate prayers of the people around me - but on the very next contraction, I felt my baby boy. 

“Something is coming!” I yelled in a panic, mostly because in my delirium I still wanted the epidural. Something? There was really only one option, but I went with “something” in the moment. Cyndi immediately grabbed another pair of gloves and this time said above my protests, “Katie, I have to check you!” I cried, I begged her not to, begged time to stop so I could just get the pain relief, but we really were so close - even though I hadn’t believed it. 

“Katie, you are complete and your baby is right here. You have to push!”

“I can’t!”

“You have to!” came from four people in unison. And out of the corner of my eye I saw the anesthesiologist wheel his cart right back out of the room as three more Labor & Delivery nurses rushed in. Alex grabbed my head and said, “You can do this, Katie. Take a breath and tell me you can do this.”

“I can. I can do this.”

With truly every bit of strength I could find, I pushed and felt his head, then his torso, and then, I felt almost weightless. Beckett’s little body came out in under a minute, his head turned down just in time, and the sweetest relief in the world washed over both of us as they put him directly on my chest at 6:31am. The distance between 6 and 10 centimeters closed just as fast as Beckett could turn over. 

That moment, y’all. I don’t even have words, just gratitude. 

*****

The past year has been a walk through big and unexpected and wonderful things for our family. I’ve been confident and I’ve lacked faith. I’ve felt great and I’ve had days when I could hardly get out of bed. I’ve been self-sufficient and I’ve needed more help than ever. But mostly, I’ve been so humbled by how little I know, and grown more and more thankful for a God that knows all things, and who holds all things together - including Beckett Alexander. And Harper Kristin, Cannon Lee, Jordi Daniel, and a little nine-month old girl who has found her way deep into our hearts - what amazing grace that assurance is. Motherhood has taught me so much in the short six and half years I have had the profound privilege of raising children, but I have the feeling the lessons are only beginning.

I will never, ever forget what an amazing support my husband was through every minute of Beckett’s birth. I will always remember the calming presence of my doula, the confidence of my midwife and the way Kelly came over and rubbed my hair when I was out of steam without even being asked. And when I look at my sweet Beckett, for his entire life I will never forget that he came in to the world when I was at my very weakest, when the distance was just too far for me to make it - and that’s when the miracle happened. Beckett is living proof that God’s power is most perfect when we have nothing to offer, and I think that might be exactly what I am supposed to remember.

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at my home church about remembering the gospel. We walked through all the reasons it is so easy to forget who we are in Christ – which is the most important thing about us – and how our lives and culture so easily bend toward distractions, most of which we welcome in as soon as we turn on our phones; others we have less control over but still have to interpret through the lens of scripture and not culture. We camped out for a bit on the Greek word perrisuema, whichmeans “that which is left over or remains.” It comes from Luke 6:45, where Jesus tells us “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil, for out of the ‘perrisuema’ [or overflow] of the heart his mouth speaks.”

 It’s a simple interpretation really: out of that which is left over and remains in our heart, we speak.

And act. And parent. And loveour neighbors and community. Consciously or not, our lives are going to be a reflection of what we are putting in to our hearts and minds. This is a truth that has smacked me in the face more than once as I have reflected on both my daily habits and my lifehabits – the long term, consistent ways I learn and listen. And that includes whoI learn from. So during a day when I have filled my heart with news headlines, contentious comments sections, fear-based click-bait, stories interpreted only through my own confirmation bias, pictures or posts or updates from others that ultimately served only to make me jealous or wrongly opinionated, what is my perriseuma? What is left over? What spills out of me? It only makes sense that contention, fear, more confirmation bias, jealousy, and wrong opinions of others would overflow. 

I have parented from those feelings, and it always ends up with me needing to apologize. (Anyone else ever realize they were irritated with their children not because of anything they did, but because of something you saw on social media that bothered you? Asking for a friend). 

I have tried to live in community from those places, but I have my eyes on myself and not on others, thus comparing and compartmentalizing each of our life circumstances as if they are in competition for most compassion or most celebration.

I have attempted to love my husband well from those places, and usually he gets the cold shoulder and cynicism when he should be getting my respect. 

I have tried to write and create from those places, and then I strive too hard for relevance when I should be striving for glory – God’s, not mine. 

When that which is left over spills out of me, it hasn’t always been good.  

So what is the answer? I’m not one for formulas, and I also don’t want to be known for who or what I preach notto read – much ink has been spilled on that subject already. But because I believe that we need to guard our overflow – what we put in to our hearts and our minds – more than ever these days, I will say that I believe deeply in at least two things.

First, you cannot give too much time to reading your Bible. Cannot. The riches of scripture are unending, and in a lifetime we will never exhaust our search for them. I want to tell you all the historical and scientific reasons you can trust your Bible. I want to tell you about all the people who lost their lives in the pursuit of preserving the Bible for future generations. I want to tell you that we are the luckiest and most privileged generation of Christians in history to have the access and resources that we do. I want to remind you that God’s word is alive and active, sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing to the division of joint and marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. But mostly, I just want to tell you that God’s word has been the surest anchor of my life, and that I am not the same person I was 15, 10 even 5 years ago because of it. My life is exponentially harder than it was when I started really reading scripture as a 19-year-old, but God is exponentially bigger. Meeting more of Him in His word has been the only thing equipping me for the brokenness of life, for this space between redemption and restoration we live in. If you are going to give your limited time to anything, to reading or listening to any resources, begin with the only perfect one available.   

And second, immersing yourself in truth makes it far easier to discern when something is a few notches to the left or right on that truth. Our pastor always reminds us that if you’re using a compass to get to a destination, a few degrees off when you’re only going half a mile probably won’t keep you from your final destination. But if you are going 100 miles, you’ll end up in the wrong city. If you’re going 1000 miles, you’ll be in the wrong state. If you’re traveling over a lifetime, you may not be anywhere near where you need to be. 

I remember this feeling so clearly in college. I was reading a very popular book at the time, one that many friends in the college ministry I attended were going through. And while some of it was entertaining and there were enough scripture references in it to make the message feel edifying, I could absolutely not shake that something was off. I would never have been able to name it (though 13 years later and knowing this author now I could), but I closed that book and thought, “yeah, not for me.” This was Holy Spirit discernment that I didn’t even know I needed, and it came because God had ignited a love for his word in that same season and because I was there, in truth so often, I understood that the messages in each didn’t feel compatible. 

Today, we hear a lot of “speak your truth,” “you are the captain of your life,” and even “you are enough” messages. Self-help or self-love books are wildly popular and we are jumping in to their messages with two feet. While I believe the motives in each of those have noble purposes, “self-anything” is not the message of scripture. The Bible tells the story of a human raced so flawed by sin that we are blind. We treat each other terribly. We put ourselves first in all circumstances, beginning with our hearts and ending in our actions. We are not enough, and with just a few minutes of honest introspection we know we are not enough. 

When my autistic son is having another moment of total confusion, when we can’t find the exact toy he has his mind on or the church lobby is too crowded or we are headed to the grocery store when he thought we were headed to his grandparents’ house; when I have no idea how to help him, how to assure him of our love, how to keep him from panic, or how on earth I am going to pull his strong body where we need to go while he’s falling to the ground and there are three other children I need to have my eyes on, I know I am not enough for this work.

When an unexpected phone call brought a four-day-old baby girl to our already busy home, and a positive pregnancy test three weeks later brought our “done at three” ideas to a screeching halt and threw me into anxiety and fear, I knew I was not enough to carry it all.  

When I snap at my children for spilling their milk and respond to their unintentional mistake by treating it like a pre-meditated crime, I see how conditional my love can be, and I know I am not enough to model the unconditional love of their heavenly Father.

When I withhold my celebration and happiness for others because I am too busy being jealous of it or wanting it for myself, I know I do not possess enough humility to love others the way I want to be loved in return. 

Daily my life shows me how much I am not enough. The messages that tell me “yes you are, you can do this, you can control your destiny!” are confusing at best and damaging at worst. The message that tells me I need a rescuer, and that I have one in Jesus, that all of life is all for him – that in the midst of autistic meltdowns and parenting failures and jealous moments and the way I have to continually correct my perspective that shows me the world through the myopic lens of my life – the message that looks at my “not enough” in the face and offers a substitute, that is the message I need. That is the truth I want to overflow from me. On our own, we will not ever be enough. With the new heart that Jesus died so that we might have, we have his sufficiency, we have his enough. 

It matters so much which lane we live in, and which message we fill our lives with: my enough or His enough. 

I was 14 days late when I really started to consider the possibility, 18 when it went from possibility to legitimate anxiety, and 21 when I finally went to the dollar store for the test – I always get them at the dollar store. I was with my three-year-old when I threw the little pink and white box in to the cart, along with a few other things we did not need because I don’t know, somehow it feels less awkward for me to buy six random items than to just plop a pregnancy test on the counter and smile at the checker.   

When we got home, I put the shopping bag on the counter and tried to think about other things: the three-week old foster baby in our home, the three other children who were already being such troopers in the midst of a huge and sudden change, and the husband who was pretty darn certain he was done wanting children at three. 

It could all be stress. And newborn sleep. And I haven’t been eating much. It could just all be stress. 

But still, 21 days late? I went to bed that night and prayed for my period. 

The next morning, my prayer still unanswered, Alex headed off to a day-long men’s conference at our church and the four littles and I resumed our typical fall Saturday morning routine. Right around lunchtime, with two of the four down for a nap, I opened the pink and white box. I knew that 22 days late was a lot, but I was still convinced it was my body adjusting to all the things we had just said ‘yes’ to with exactly 60 seconds to make a decision. 

It just cannot be possible, can it? I opened the app that I do all of my monthly tracking on, and I counted everything for the 22nd time. Nope, not possible. I’m going to pee on this little stick and then be exposed for the crazy person I am. There is no way this thing is positive. 

***** 

The truth is, I have always wanted a fourth baby. I was fine with three, and felt full and busy with three, and I loved life with three. But I never truly felt the “I’m done” feeling, even if I thought we were. I had spent much of the last year assuming I would just always wonder what it would have been like to have four kids, and that that feeling was ok. I know a lot of women who are done and will always wonder what one more child would have been like. I also know a lot of women who have never been given the blessing of a positive pregnancy test, or still have empty arms after many. Honestly, I can’t think of a more seemingly “unfair” system than pregnancy, and adding to our family is not ever something I have taken for granted.

But even with my desire for a fourth child, I knew we were not ready for one. Entering the foster care system, especially in the manner that we did, saying yes to a constant shuffle of social workers, visits, court dates, and paperwork confirmed that in one way. My actual reaction when the test was positive confirmed it in another.

I panicked. 

I couldn’t feel happiness or sadness for weeks, just shock. And then I couldn’t feel anything but nausea for another ten weeks, and that didn’t help matters. But mostly, I felt fear. 

Fear that my marriage would be pulled too far.

Fear that my children would be stretched too thin in their own little capacities. 

Fear that I would do something, eat something, take something, be around something that would cause autism in another one of our children.

Fear that our life had crossed from busy to unmanageable, unaffordable… all the “un” words one does not want to describe her life at all.

There is a popular song on Christian radio these days that repeats the line “fear is a liar” in the chorus. As much as I’d like to, I don’t think I agree with that. Fear can indicate something very valid to be concerned about, and it is not necessarily lying to you that proceeding with great caution is a good idea.

But while fear may not be a liar, it is rather bossy, and it fogs up your life so much that you can’t see through it to move forward. 

That’s where I lived for three months, being bossed around by fear – feelings that could have been turned around and taught me about the great care and stewardship we would need to move into this new season with, but instead they stopped me completely. I laid on our couch much of the day, sick and exhausted and pretty much the hardest person to live with, all because I couldn’t find God – I wasn’t even looking for Him – through the hazy fear that laid there with me.

The fog didn’t clear for me until I started to confess it. And started looking for truth again.

*****

We sat around our friend’s living room with our community group, and as we usually do, spent some time catching up with one another. It was the first time I had been at group since we picked up our foster baby and found out we were expecting – almost three months after both of those things had taken place. When it was my turn to share, I started out on the surface, laughing about going from three to four and possibly five kids, about how I would not be going anywhere for the next two years and the amount of laundry I already cannot stay on top of. And the more I spoke, the more the group laughed with me and nodded their heads as I shared, the deeper I went. One feeling, one sentence, one confession at a time. Finally, the two things that had truly been consuming my mind came out of my mouth, and they had little to do with laundry. 

“I am afraid of everything, you guys. Afraid of having another child with special needs. Afraid that our foster baby will have to go back to a situation that might be a tiny bit better but still is impossibly hard to let her go to. And mostly, I am afraid that if any of these things do happen, I’m not going to be able to believe that God is still good.”

It was the last sentence that broke the damn of tears that had been building for months. 

I wonder if fear really has two components: living with the anxiety and what-if scenarios of the thing we fear, and then trying to make sense of God, of what we believe to be true about Him, if that thing does happen. 

I looked down at the sweatshirts sleeves pulled over my hands and now covered in wiped tears and mascara, and I didn’t even have time to say another thing before tissues were in my hand and eight other people were around me and Alex with their hands on our shoulders, praying honest, earnest, sincere prayers for us. The kind of prayers I hadn’t been able to pray for months; the words of truth fear would not let me remember.

God, You are knitting this baby together in Katie’s womb… Psalm 139:13

You placed this little baby girl in this family, at this exact time, knowing exactly what they would be given right after you did… Psalm 139:16

You gave Alex and Katie one another years ago knowing full well what you would equip them to live, even knowing how unequipped they would feel… Philippians 2:13

You know Cannon’s heart and mind perfectly, you have beautiful purposes for his life, and know his parents’ heart for him... John 9:3

You know Harper and Jordi and can perfectly guide their understanding of the family they have who loves them so… Psalm 119:34

And God, You alone are good… Psalm 73:1

I realized as the tears continued to fall down my cheeks that my thoughts had spent all this time replacing “You” with “I” in that prayer. That’s when fear is the thickest and most impossible to see through, when you think everything depends on you. 

***** 

Today, I am 24 weeks pregnant with our third baby boy, an already wild man in my tummy – the final recruit in what we joke is Harper’s crew of soldiers. And we still get to steward, for now, the life of the sweetest baby girl on earth – one who sleeps through the night and spends the entire day smiling and wanting to be near the other kids. 

And I can’t believe we are here. 

It has not been easy to leave fear behind, and it still creeps in often. But our world is not nearly as foggy anymore. My husband fights hard to be an incredible leader for our family, our friends show up to clean our house, and our community still prays urgent, earnest prayers on our behalf. And every day, many times a day, we look at one another and remind ourselves that there is a God, I am not Him. 

Last spring, I gave two talks at a local Women’s Ministry event about speaking gospel language to our children. I truly poured my heart in to the preparation of these talks, made my husband listen to me rehearse them 38 times, and went up to that stage covered in the prayers of others and feeling ready to share. I used my 45-minute time slot to paint a picture of God’s goodness to us in the story of scripture, and gave examples from my own life how my husband and I explain this story to our children. 

As I walked the lobby of the church in between sessions, I looked around at all the women and truly felt like I had said what God asked me to say. When I was back at my table, a woman came from across the room and found me sitting there. “Are you the gal who just shared in that last session?” she asked.

“Yes, I am!” I responded with enthusiasm, honestly ready for her to say how much she enjoyed my talk and took away from it. Instead, she held her hand out and handed me a small piece of paper.

“You mentioned you have a son with autism,” she said with the most matter-of-fact, straight face. “Call this doctor, she can reverse all that, you know. She’s really good with clearing out the brain.”

I respectfully accepted her scribbled note, thanked her, and did my best to control the insecurity sweeping over me. I had another talk to give in 30 minutes, losing my composure was really not an option. So I sat there for a moment, looked down at the words “brain doctor”, and wondered if I was doing anything right at all – in the talk I was giving, but even more so, as a mom.

The mostly well-intentioned suggestions of others are really nothing new. We have been doing this to one another since the beginning of human history; I have without a doubt offered my unmerited thoughts at the worst possible time. When you are on the outside of a situation, it’s easy to think that you are outside of it because of something you know or something you have done, and you want to impart that wisdom to someone who is “in it.” 

A few years ago, when I was the ever-so-wise parent of a basically perfect, healthy, and easy 8-month old daughter, one whom was conceived on accident, I did something incredibly hurtful. I asked a sweet woman, one I did not know very well, who was three and half years in to her infertility struggle if she had tried a certain method to get pregnant. I meant it sincerely; I knew of a few friends who had some success with this particular method. She silently nodded at me, but I could tell there was a change in her countenance. Her kind husband swept in and graciously answered the question; I respect his politeness and protection of his wife more today than I could possibly have then. But over the months that followed, I noticed this person stop interacting with me at all on social media, and I couldn’t understand why. I was sincerely trying to offer something I heard had helped, had it offended her that much?

At the risk of speaking for someone else’s feelings, I can only guess a few years later that not only did my words offend her, they went much deeper. She had a wound I could not possibly empathize with, and I poked at it, aggravating it and sending the pain radiating through her body again; like hitting a bad bruise in the same spot over and over. She had to have wanted to allow the tears welling up behind her eyes to flood out as she yelled at me, “Do you honestly think we haven’t tried that? I have wanted a baby my entire life, we have tried everything!”

At least, that’s how I felt when the stranger handed me the brain doctor’s information.  

And the moments people suggest I follow someone on social media who has cured his or her child’s autism; they only charge $349.99 for their online course! And the times people have asked if I have read about broccoli sprout powder/chlorella/cilantro/frankincense oil/holding therapy. Or the comments like, “God doesn’t want your son to suffer; healing is possible.” 

Being a special needs mom, and having our particular journey include a diagnosis that is mysterious, unpredictable, and so incredibly varied, has brought the questions and suggestions to a level I was completely unprepared for. And over time, the sum of the suggestions takes its toll and every bit of me wants to go to battle to defend my parenting. I want to show the notebook where I have written down everything my son has put in his mouth for the last two years, completely free of gluten and dairy and food dyes. I want to produce the receipts from the specialist because insurance covered none of that, along with the list supplements and of course I tried that essential oil! I want people to see it, all of it.

Because what I hear with each suggestion is this: I am not trying hard enough. I’m not a good mom. 

What my old friend must have heard me say years ago: You are not trying hard enough. You’ll never be a good mom. 

Few things will pierce a gal like the thought that others secretly think she is failing at the one thing she wants to do well. 

The slope to self-justification is a slippery one. And it is all consuming. I can get obsessed with proving my efforts, answering every suggestion, making sure I am understood and my son is accepted, exhausting myself and losing all joy in the process.

Or, I can I heed the words a very wise friend offered to me years ago: “God is your defender, Katie. He’s the only audience that matters.”

Everything – really, every single thing in our lives – changes with an audience of one; and a perfect, sinless, all-powerful and all-knowing audience at that. When I think about the awe that will drip from every part of me when I stand before God at the end of this life, there is nothing in me that cares one bit about defending myself to people. I don’t say that flippantly; there is no “I could care less what you think about me” sentiment here at all, because if it isn’t obvious by now, I care deeply, probably far too much, what people think of me. But stopping to think about what the God who holds the oceans in his hands thinks of me, and thinks of my children, the weight of that grace erases all the justifying I could ever present on my own.  

He thinks so highly of us that he gave up his life. 

In the end, I am only going to answer to Jesus. In the meantime, I am going to steward each day to the best of my ability but I am also going to trust His sovereignty, knowing that He alone has the power and right to give and take away. I don’t pretend to believe I will never make a hurtful comment again, and I fully expect receiving plenty more in my lifetime. We are imperfect people, and the nuances of individual hardship make the words we might offer a very tricky thing to get right. But while I will fail a thousand times to remember this, I am going to keep going back to my Defender; because when I do, more than I want people to see the list of things I am doing to prove I’m a good mom, or a good Christian, or a good anything, I want people to see all that God is doing to capture a heart that would be stone without him, and all the miraculous things we have learned through a journey we would not have chosen but now cannot imagine our lives without. 

I remember every single first visit. The pediatric neurologist. The waiting room at St. Luke’s. The long hallways at the Early Intervention school. The small rooms at ABA therapy. I can tell you that the neurologist’s office was painfully quiet and smelled like antiseptic, and the waiting room at St. Luke’s had amazing acoustics – I could hear everything the providers were telling other parents, which in this context probably makes them terrible acoustics. The long hallways at the Early Intervention school were filled with children and a mixture of laughter and tears, depending on so many things. And the small rooms at ABA therapy were suffocating, too small for a two-year old who spent the entire first month trying to escape them. 

I remember these places so well, because every time we stepped foot in one of them for the first time, I remember feeling afraid. These are places where the hurting go: the disabled, the sick, the unexplainable. The struggling children and the angry or denying or devastated parents, we all gather in those places, but not one of us chose to be there. Reluctance makes for an awkward ambience at any gathering, and “waiting room parents” know that feeling well. 

I don’t want this life. That’s honestly what I thought for so many months. And I didn’t. I didn’t want to see so much hurting – some of it far, far more than we were experiencing. I didn’t like the mysterious sounds coming from children I didn’t know. I didn’t like seeing the tiny wheelchairs and walkers and weighted vests and helmets, each of them designed to help, but looking so incredibly ominous in such miniature proportions. And when the therapist working with the little boy who shared a therapy room with Cannon would spend five, ten, fifteen minutes patiently trying to get that precious one-year-old to physically pick up a cheerio with his own fingers, it was all I could do not to cry out loud. 

From where I was at that point, my heart and mind resisted the thought that this world would become our normal; that we would spend so much time every day in the hallways and the waiting rooms and the small offices, where the kids make strange noises and the visible struggles of everyone around you are so profound. So I resisted; with all my might I resisted. When you’re afraid, fear forces you to resist.

But God. (It always comes back to those two words, doesn’t it?) He is far too kind to leave us where we are. He cares too much about His name and His glory in the world to leave his followers in a perpetual state of resistance. So, He moves us forward, one fear, one embarrassment, one moment of surviving a runaway attempt or a meltdown or a really bad day at a time. 

The days go by. Then the months. We showed up again and again and learned when to push and when to rest. And at some point, resistance has given way to embrace. Not always, and not perfectly – I wrote just a few months ago about the days I still wish it was different, and I think I will always have those days. Still, even if it is not perfect, it is certain. It didn’t happen overnight, but I began walking those hallways and meeting the eyes of other parents in the waiting rooms and I didn’t feel the ‘I don’t want this life’ feelings anymore, but something different entirely. I felt certain of God, and certain of His Sovereignty, and certain of His ability to heal or take away, to give progress or allow a back step, but to sustain our days no matter what. It was as if God pried my clenched fists open, whispering, “Katie, you have no idea the profound gifts that await you on this journey,” as He did.

And He was right. He’s always right. 

Cannon’s autism is mysterious and difficult in so many ways, and I would be naïve to think that all of our hardest moments are behind is. He still has trouble with brand new things and we still live a lot of days on our toes ready for the worst at any time. To the outside observer, it may be hard to see anything other than a little boy who doesn’t talk much. But just like we are not the parents who walked those once scary hallways two years ago, he is not the little boy who hated them two years ago. He’s incredible: finding his bravery a little more all the time, embracing his siblings, having sleepovers with his sister and laughing in the bathtub with them rather than getting out as soon as they hop in. On a July weekend with friends two years ago he would not go near the water if others were in it, and Alex and I took turns following our little wanderer around because we didn’t know what else to possibly do. This week he swam in the pool for over an hour surrounded by kids, getting out only to grab Alex or me by the hand and bring us toward the pool, signaling that we were to get in the water so he could jump to us. 

If you want to know whether or not I believe in miracles, I do.

*****

The summertime always makes me nostalgic about our journey, because it was the summer two years ago that wrecked me. I’ve been up and down, hopeful and completely out of hope. I’ve felt like a million dollars on good days and cried my eyes out on others. I’ve grabbed my husband around the neck and squealed with delight, “can you believe these kids are ours?”, and I’ve fought with him irrationally about how we should handle something the very next day. My emotions could be described in a lot of ways, but reliable is not one of them. There has never been a season of life when I’ve understood my need for a God who doesn’t change like the last two years, when I have done nothing but change – and still do. But one thing I know today that I didn’t know two years ago: you won’t stay where you are. You’ll get stronger, and braver. You’ll have more peace than anxiety. You’ll be able to talk without crying – really, you will. And then you’ll still cry a lot because the reminders that life will not be easy for your little one are everywhere, and it’s perfectly ok to do that. But the fear will abate, and the hard work founded on faith in a big God will take over. And you’ll look at your life that can feel so different from everyone around you, but you’ll get humble and realize we all have the same trajectory: get smaller, let God get bigger. 

And then, you'll keep showing up.