When Grace is Six-Foot-Four with a Tongue Ring

The week has wound its way down. Is it really Friday night, or is someone messing with my head? All I know is that it was Sunday and I was stuck in the terminal at O'Hare for about seven hours and now the house is still, the sun's low, and I feel like I blinked just twice.

There's a new groove being cut into my soul and it looks like teenagers and it feels like bone-deep exhaustion, the kind where you miss night altogether, you fall into bed and it's already tomorrow and you're just so happy to be there, to slide into nothing for a while, but instead, your eyes burn up at a black ceiling and you don't know what else to do, so you pray.

Calvin, Haven, Ruby, Silas

And with every day that closes, the going seems more inevitable. And with every stretch of sun across a streaked July sky, the staying seems more soul-settling than it did before.

Ruby, Robert, Silas, Calvin, Fernando

My life, it's growing wilder all the time. I can feel the selfishness peel away, but trust me, I've still got plenty in my grip. I can feel the low-boil of love for kids who might not know how to love me back, but it's all good, because I've had practice.

Sometimes things seem to make a bit of sense, I could swear I hear the pieces fitting tight against each other. But not all the time. I'm the girl who works a reason like a days-long sudoku. I'm scribbling and erasing just to do it all again. In the end, even if my reasons fit neatly into the little boxes, I'm sure they won't add up. And what I'm learning, amidst the boy giggles and the girl cries and the grown-up appetites and the piles of laundry is that it's best to just hand it on over and live while I wonder. Because none of this is up to me and all of it - all of it - is a gift.