OK, I'm out

So last week I'm just getting out of the shower when I hear Dan's phone ring. He picks up (despite being "on duty" with the 3 kids) and I hear him talking in a gentle voice I haven't heard from him in a long time.

I'm listening to the tones in his voice and the responses he's giving when I realize he's talking about me. And the love and gentility with which he's responding to whoever he's talking to touches me to the core of my being.

I toweled off and dressed as slowly and quietly as I could so as to listen in as long as possible. I could not figure out who in the world he was on the phone with and what in the world this conversation was all about.

I emerged from the bathroom and mouthed "who is it?" to Dan. He tipped the phone away from his mouth and mouthed "my mother" to me. Then, I got quite choked up.

I realized that this was a big moment for me. Let me back up a bit.

A few weeks ago Dan's sister and brother-in-law came out for a visit. I corralled them into helping me with childcare for a LAB meeting. When they returned to NJ, they relayed what they had done and a little bit about the LAB group and meeting they had witnessed that evening.

On a subsequent phone call Dan's mom asked Dan a little more about the group, and Dan mentioned that we even had a website up for the group. Little did he know his mom would look it up and start reading.

Back to this week's after-shower phone call. As Dan's mom was reading, she simply felt that she had to call. She said she was crying, smiling, and just moved. She previously had no idea what all the postpartum "stuff" we were going through entailed, and she wished she had known while we were in the throes of it so they could have been praying more, helping more, being here more.

She said what we were doing by starting a group and sharing our lives on the blog was so brave, so commendable, that my writing was so good. You will never know how much these accolades mean to me unless you know about the rocky start to my in-law relationship, and how amazingly far this relationship has healed and grown thanks to God's unfathomable grace. I never thought we would be friends or that I would be able to call her "mom", but both of those have happened so organically.

I'm so relieved to know they know. And now I know that they know I know they know, I have a new arm of support that I can lean on and be authentic with--for better or for worse.