As my kids get older, I feel less and less like I can write about them. As they become more and more their own small people, their stories less mine to tell. When they were wee little ones, I could tell all because it was all about me, too. Now it is not.

This is all a preface to me writing about Luke and his journey into psychotherapy again. We left the last psychologist, as we weren’t getting any real help or answers. But as we left, we very strongly asked Dr. P to give us his assessment of the situation, and he put a name to Luke’s behavior that was very hard for me to hear. It made me cry, although it isn’t such a bad diagnosis, truth be told.

And now we are just beginning to see someone new, and this psychologist, Dr. B., doesn’t seem to think that Dr. P’s diagnosis is correct. There have been other words floating around. And these words, these possible diagnoses—these disorders, as some might call them—have been weighing heavily upon me.

And then something happened. I don’t know what, exactly--maybe it was sitting with these words and realizing that they are just words. Maybe it is that I am beginning to understand that a diagnosis is always subjective. Perhaps it is that I am beginning to realize that a diagnosis is simply a lens through which certain behaviors can be better understood and managed.

What happened was this: I was sitting at dinner listening to some crazy story from my creative, passionate, unique Luke, and it was as though something inside me shifted, and I all at once became thankful for everything that he is, for all of him, the whole package. And it is to my shame that I must admit that I could not say this before.

It was as if the world tilted just a little bit, or my eyes focused just a little more. There was some small change, some shift of molecules or atoms or parts of some kind, and my world is now a little bit different. A little bit better.