This wasn’t the halo I had in mind.

A few days ago, I posted a picture of The Kid at our neighborhood playground: beams of light falling all around him as he gazed into the distance at something only he could see. “Has anyone seen my halo?” I captioned it.

On Tuesday, we walked with him through a sedation and CT scan and across the medical complex to the neurosurgeon’s office. Every doctor we’ve seen so far is just doing his best, but scratched heads and hmms and “Well, we could try”s are just not enough when it’s your child on the table.

I thought about it as The Husband and I stood beside the CT machine, my eyes filling with their daily allotment of tears to see The Kid knocked out on the table. The scanner began its circular motion, capturing images of the spine TK was given, and the whir of its lightning-speed work served as background music for a montage flashing before my eyes, all the scans and X-rays and imaging and waiting rooms and therapy, all this desperate searching for answers, to arrive here, again, just not knowing for sure.

We search in the whir of machines for answers that arrive only through the beat of a heart.

The neurosurgeon came up with a plan on the spot: put TK on another table, open his neck muscles again, shave off the part of his vertebra that’s tilted up where it shouldn’t be, and then–I caught my breath–screw a device called a halo into his skull that will stabilize and retrain his neck over eight weeks.

Shut up, Beyonce. I’m trying to think.

Implications were tossed around: the effects on his balance and walking, the suspension of day care, the sedation to remove the halo. The parental questions raged inside my head: what will happen when I take him to Target? What if he falls? Is anyone else drawing comparisons to Dr. Frankenstein’s work, because this is not what I had in mind for my child.

TH gave me the side-eye in the car: did I think I’d be able to stay sane as a stay-at-home mom for eight weeks? We laughed, and I burst into tears.

I hate that he has to go through all this.

I felt them, the waves of pity for TK and all he’s endured and will endure, with a few thrown in for myself, in all honesty. The tears fell, my breathing ragged, TH’s hand on mine, and then–a break in the storm.

It’s okay to be sad, but you don’t have to stay there.

The difference between empathy and pity was becoming clearer, and I began to see how grace relieves us each from the overwhelming burden of victimhood–how it keeps that from becoming all we are. Hear me when I say this: I believe we have a divinity that bears our sadness with us and that no tear is shed in the singular. But the beauty of redemption means that the sadness I feel, am accompanied in feeling, will never have to be a final resting place. Will never have to be more than a temporary campsite, because to build permanent lodging there would be to deny the story that is being told, the beauty that we are meant for. Staying sad would mean turning a blind eye to the much more that is happening beyond sterile rooms and black-and-white images. There is more than we can see as of yet. And even now, there are gifts falling like rain all around us.

To wit:

Several have reached out and offered access to their connections in the world of pediatric neurosurgery. Doctors across the country are looking at TK’s spine right now. This gift of kindness blows me away. Every comment and “like” and text and message reminds me of the deep love that surrounds TH and TK and me and convinces me of its source. And yesterday, I talked on the phone to a friend whose child faces her own set of challenges. “You’re in a lonely place,” she said. And we are–we haven’t found any other examples of TK’s particular issue.

But it doesn’t feel lonely.

We are inundated with your prayers and concern and thoughts and rain dances and I just can’t get over how well TK is loved.

One thing my friend encouraged was to constantly narrate life for TK, since he’s still not speaking professionally yet, and as we drove around yesterday I uttered every observation that entered my head. I hate talking almost as much as I hate meeting new people, and I hoped that TK would not remember some of the inane statements that came out of my mouth. “It will give him context when he does speak,” she had said, and I kept talking to him. “Hey, look at those trees,” I threw toward the backseat. “Red and yellow–looks like they’re on fire!” I rolled my eyes, then heard what I had said.

This story we’re living fits into a greater one. It gives context for the narration I type here, and one day TK will know the context for everything he has endured. This is the promise that grace bestows, and it doesn’t come cheaply or easily. A vision that much greater than mine recalibrates me, reconfigures the path beneath and ahead of me, and that transformation is nothing short of painful. The distance between what I envisioned and what he has planned is serious ground to cover. Are we ready for what lies beyond the sad?

“The process will be long and in parts very painful,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “but that is what we are in for. Nothing less.”

I look in the backseat, out the window, past the pain, and finally see that I have no idea of all that TK is meant for–and this grace has the makings of glory. I look until the only answer I see becomes the only one I need: I AM. Trees on fire, burning bushes everywhere.