After a lifetime of hiding in all the wrong places from all the wrong things, I am finally hidden in the one place where I am fully found. I join my song with that of the Psalmist.

I walk into the room and I can hear his muffled breath and poorly suppressed giggling. He hides from me. This has been our ritual for longer than I can remember, he’s almost a teen, and he’s been doing this since he was just a toddler.

Our son entered this world earlier than he should have. Born into a family unable to care for his needs, he was placed into the foster system at birth. My wife and I were newly approved and our agency rang to see if we would take this little bundle into our home, “Of course,” we gushed, after all, this is what we had signed up for. Armed with our naive zeal, we bundled this gift up and drove him home. We didn’t know then just how much home would change. I wonder if we had of known, had seen the pain and grief that would come, could have discerned the anguish, or felt what we’ve had to let go of—I wonder if I would have ignored him and hidden away.

My son’s brain was irreparably damaged due to exposure to alcohol in his mother’s womb. In the place where he was being knit together, a place that is designed to hide the vulnerable from harm, he could not escape the poison his mother drank in attempt to hide from her own pain. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder means that as his body adapts to the teenage years, his brain lags far behind. He views the world through preteen eyes, but processes it like an infant. So every night, after helping him learn again how to make sure his body is clean, he runs ahead of me down the hall, spins through the doorway into his room, and waits with muffled breath and poorly suppressed giggling for me to arrive.

“I wonder if he’s under the bed,” I call loudly as I make a show of scanning the room. “No,” comes the reply. I hear another giggle.

“Is he in the wardrobe?” — “No.” More giggling.

“Oh well, I better shut the door and see if he’ll come soon.” — “Boo! I found you”

Everyone laughs.

Inside, I cry.

Every night. Every night we move through the same pattern, it doesn’t matter if it’s me or my wife. There’s something comforting about the routine, the sameness of it all, that my son has learned to hide in. He wraps himself in the embrace of routine and predictability. He hides from me, but more profoundly, he hides in me. He finds the routine safe.

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