Happy Birthday, My Oldest Boy!

Dear Andres-Jose,

Six years is a lifetime for you, but it's been the blink of an eye for me.

I can't begin to tell you how much I wanted you.  How much I prayed for you before you ever entered our lives.

We waited seven long years to meet you, to hold you, to know you.  And after nearly as much time with you, you're still revealing new and wonderful insights to who you are every day.

When your Papa stood behind me in the operating room 6 years ago today, my hand in his, our hearts pounding with trepidation and urgency as they rushed to save your life, I never believed I would have a son.  The thundering heartbeat that made us sob when we heard it on the dop-tone for the first time when you were just 13 weeks old was during labor faltering.  

Even when the doctors said your Papa could announce your gender, and he wept as he said "we have a son!" I couldn't believe it.  Until the doctors assessed you and comforted my fears, until I held your warm, tiny body, did I believe again that your heart was fierce and strong.  All my prayers were answered in that moment.  You were healthy.  You were a boy, my boy, that I had prayed for long ago when I was a little girl on the farm.  You are an answered prayer.

Not much in these six years has gone as we had planned.  But you have been strong all along.

We've suffered a six-car-pile-up, as Papa says, and endured great loss in the tragedy.  You were so young, and we were like zombies, walking around in a haze, eyes glossy and unseeing.  Yet you thrived despite the darkness.  Like a small green shoot popping up through ashes, you grew, and are still growing, and maturing into a creature of magnificent beauty and goodness.

We tried to do the "normal" thing.  We tried to give you a wealth of experiences from which you could gain confidence, skill, and maturity, like other parents around us.  There was karate.  There was soccer.   There were preschool Christmas events.  All of these things seemed good, and logical, and correct.  But yet your little feet never felt comfortable in those shoes.  Too tight.  Too restrictive.  You needed to wiggle your toes!  And the normal expectations dwindled when we realized we were unfair to you, and replaced these expectations with challenges to meet the same goals but by taking different paths.  You are dynamic and faceted, and the road must meet you there in that place to {help us} help you own your gifts and become the man God calls you to be.

You have always loved superheroes.

First it was Superman, and you wore that red cape everywhere.  How beautiful, and boyish, what a thing to miss those days.  You must have worn it a whole year, to church, daycare, the grocery store.  It was an extension of you, and now that I look back, I think it was an extension and statement of your mighty spirit.

I love your creative mind.  It's a beautiful, wonderful thing to behold.  You have vast kingdoms and cities and entire solar systems unfolding throughout your imagination, many of them populated by characters, heroes and villains, spawned from your favorite books or movies, but redesigned in your singular style, and always accompanied with their own theme songs, which you of course composed.  Your attention to detail, your capacity to draw, paint, cut, create, compress, expand, recreate, retell and remember everything astounds me.   You correct us constantly, catching me with a lazy brain, or fumbling with a memory.  You were right about Darth Vader, after all my research online, the top button on his chest is green, not blue, to prove me wrong.  You've a sharp mind behind those sharp eyes, absorbing everything you see with quiet, calculating frankness.  We adults don't know you're filing the details away, processing far more than we're aware.  I know God has big plans for you, great good things in store, blessings beyond our quaint dreams.  I pray that you listen carefully, lean into his voice.  It won't be easy, but He won't let your foot slip.

This spring you created your own comic book character, a ninja you named Red Hendra, and even the world of villainous foes whom Red Hendra conquers. 

Your rendering of Red Hendra, dabbing alizarin crimson on his mysterious red mask.

Old fabric remnant, a shark Megaladon, some dinos, and you.  That's hours of play surviving the roughest waters ever known to man!

You drew your own map of the sea and the island on this day, and we made boats from wine corks and old coffee filters.  Hours of fun...hours.

You are an amazing older sibling, and I'm so glad God gave you a brother.  You're his best friend.
I pray it stays that way.

The past six years have been harder than I thought they would be when I held you small and new for the first time, gazing into your deep Aztec eyes for the mystery of who'd you become.  But the time spent with you in the world, learning who you really are, is also more wonderful then I ever could have imagined.  So I gladly and humbly stand corrected again, sweet boy.

I pray that you own your uniqueness, don't let the world crush you with conformity.  Cling to the you as God designed you because He'll bless you for it.  I'm proud of you, dearest.  You see, in the process of learning your special bend and trying to parent you accordingly, you taught me to own mine.  You remain my greatest teacher, sweetheart.  Let's be different together.  Let's be weird and indie and artsy together.  Square pegs in a round-hole world.  Let's encourage each other to fox trot when the world wants us to goose-step.

I wish you a blessed year filled with new and exciting experiences, as you embark into kindergarten via homeschool, and meet new people who will love you because you're an awesome little man, gain new knowledge, and continue to grow like a tree that is planted firmly beside the river, whose roots go deep and whose leaves don't wither.  I pray that all you do prospers.  Always.

Now, sweet boy, my Thunder Heart, my own little Superman, let's dance.

Donning wellies and my old silk scarf red cape you're ready to rescue those oppressed by the forces of evil.