ask relentlessly

Dear Jack and June,I would begin this with an apology - it has been so long since I've written - but I think, somehow, that you understand. You were with me, both of you. I know that you must have felt in your own way the pace of the fall, before you arrived and our family widened.Together, we studied and defended a dissertation proposal. We graded papers and wrestled. We read Daniel Tiger books and we sang loud the first 8 tracks of Hamilton. I want to tell you something, because our lives are busy and sometimes I have been busy, carrying you alongside me into the busyness. We spend time - you with toys you're determined to eat and me with words and emails and philosophy abstracts and attempts to write creatively.Today I had a moment when I realized that it is hard to want so many different things in a life. To be a parent and a spouse and a philosopher and a writer, to create and to build, to take long showers (a luxury, a luxury!) and go out on dates and to play in the backyard and to have loud dance parties to the Hamilton songs you know so well.But, my loves, I want you to know, that even in the midst of asking for what many will tell you is too much, I remembered something important about this family, this family that was waiting for you all along -we ask relentlessly.We ask God for big things. We ask for wild dreams, for places to be our fullest selves, for the courage to walk outside of our fears and expectations of who we are, moving always towards what lies ahead. We keep going even when we can't quite see the road.I want you to know this from the beginning, for even when it is hard and seems impossible - whether it's balancing playing the flute and taking ballet or playing soccer and basketball or painting or calculus or French or your first job and your first love. Do not be afraid to tell God about the more that you want - the thing slightly outside the realm of what you are accustomed to thinking possible or easy or manageable. Tell God these things, shout them in the car or whisper them on walks.He is not surprised at how big of a life you want.This part of belief is not often talked about - believing in more than we think possible. And there are disappointments along the way, there are dreams to which the answer is no, or not now, or not this way... but I promise you, even those answers are good because you have gathered up your courage to go ask God. You have shown up in the throne room. You have demanded the kind of relationship that God is always looking to have with us: the one-on-one, no-holds-barred, fighting-to-believe-hard-things one.I write this because I want you to be unafraid of asking for a big life. For a life fuller than the one you think you deserve or you think you can bear. Jesus would like to bear it with you, to meet you in it, to make a bold question the reason for a deeper relationship.You have taught me that I can ask this. Your bold entrances into my life, your life-changing-ness, your joy, your willingness to ask a lot of me and the love that is being built between all of us as we grow into the family that we are.I am asking God for a big life. I am asking God for a bold life. I pray that you will someday ask this too.Love,mom