"More Prayers?"

Train up a child in the way he should go;

even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

The room was dark, lit only by the fading twilight sky peeking through the curtains.  The only sounds were the box fan swirling the cool, rainy breeze through the bedroom and two voices sharing a simple prayer of gratitude with intermittent giggles.

This has become a nightly ritual for my daughter and I.  We lay in bed together contemplating our day and all the good things that have happened, and we simply say "Thank you, God."  She's only two years old, and prayer is a completely foreign concept but one eagerly embraced by her innocent soul in its early yearnings for things of the spirit.

"Want to say our prayers?"  I would ask her.  She would turn to me and put her face close to mine, ready to recount the things that brought her joy throughout the day.  "What did we do today?  What can we be thankful for?"  It always starts that way, with a question I don't expect her to answer on her own quite yet.

Today, we took my son to a doctor appointment and, as is usually the case, he suffered his own emotional traumas.  The appointment itself was short and demanded nothing physical of him but to get his blood pressure checked and to lay down to measure his height.  Nonetheless, it was an appointment full of weeping and tears on his part.  To make the day a little brighter for everyone, my husband announced that we would be heading to the zoo to spend the day in the beautiful, warm sun.  We had pizza lunches, saw the elephants, ran from bumble bees.  It was a beautiful day.

"Did Daddy take us to the zoo today?"  I asked Evie, my voice full of wonder.  "Can we say thank you to God for Daddy?"

"Thank you God'a Daddy!" she said.  Her smile, hidden behind the pacifier she still requires at bed time, was broad and lit up her eyes.

"Can we say thank you to God for all the animals he made?"

"Thank you God'a animals!"

Evelyn may not know who or what God is exactly, but she's beginning to learn that all good things come from him.  Her family and the things we do for her.  Pizza.  Camels.  Sometimes we ask for a simple blessing at the end for our family, sometimes we just tell Jesus we love him.  She knows when to say "Amen" on her own now.

We fall into giggles and songs, tickles and kisses.  When it finally gets silent and I think she's ready to wind down and fall asleep, she strokes my cheek and with an innocent grin asks me, "More prayers?"

"What are you thankful for, sweetheart?"  I ask her with a hug.  "What makes you happy?"

"My sandbox outside!"

Thank you God for sandboxes.

Uncertainty

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything

by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests

be made known to God.  And the peace of God,

which surpasses all understanding, will guard

your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7

August sat in the black molded rubber of a baby swing, his deep brown eyes searching the sky as if he intended to find the source of the breeze that moved his hair.  I stood before him, pushing him gently.  I could hear Evelyn screaming as she ran wildly over the wood chips blanketing the ground, her father chasing her slowly across the playground.  Her little legs pump like pistons, her arms move quickly back and forth urging her forward.   It was a perfect evening to burn off some energy at the park.

Gus looks at me but once, and the moment is gone as quickly as it has arrived.  I chased him as he swung away from me, kept my face close to his as I ran backward when the pendulum swung back.  I could see all five of his teeth as he smiled, our wrinkled-up eyes full of joy and laughter meeting for a second as he let out an airy giggle.  Then he resumed his stoic expression and focused on the trees behind me, or the sound of a motorcycle on the street.  He glanced casually at the figures playing tennis, and then turned his face to the ground and watched the carpet of wood chips as it seemed to move beneath him.

I imagine what the world looks like from his perspective, and I'm instantly transported to the back of a cab in an unfamiliar city on a stormy night.  It's a series of fractionated lights and shapes reflected through a maze of wind-driven, jagged lines of water, a shimmering and dazzling convoluted mess of concrete and glass.  Lightning strikes somewhere and for an instant, the world is illuminated and I can see the definitions of the skyline, but the image soon fades again from a city to a collection of buildings and signs and lamp posts.  Like a tree isn't really a tree, but a series of twigs and leaves being jostled by the unseen fingers of a soft spring breeze.

Maybe that's why he only looks at me when the lightning strikes, I think to myself.  He wants to see his mother, not a pattern of shapes.

Jon-Michael says I'm pessimistic, that I'm negative.  He stays positive.  He sees the light fading on Gus' infantile social maturity, like his issues are settling beyond the horizon just a little slower than expected and his star soon will shine.  I'm standing on the other side of the world, watching an ominous glow peeking over the horizon, showing only a fraction of its full light as it inches toward morning.  The words echo in my head, told to me by the man who evaluated my son for early intervention:  Social/emotional developmental delays, communication difficulties.  They stretch like the rays of a sun, radiating from something much bigger.

I always described Gus as sensitive, shy.  Strong and silent.  Curious.  Words that are warm and heartfelt, descriptions of a personality that has revealed itself to me every day of his life.  I'm greeted now with clinical, cold phrases meant to categorize and stereotype the boy I love, determined through a short morning session of scrutinizing his every movement.  The boy who cries my tears, who reaches for me in moments of fear or discomfort.  The boy whose arms wrap around my legs as I cook dinner, whose fingers eagerly grab from me his afternoon Colby jack cheese snack.  My son who falls asleep every night in my arms as we sing hymns and rock slowly.  With or without a label intended to define my child, he will always be the same Gus who holds my heart in his capable hands.

Yae, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of developmental delays, I shall fear no diagnosis.