The love of brothers is sometimes something that strengthens and sometimes it makes things hard. In either case, having each other has been a great blessing. A shared blessing.  This is a short story, but it was a moment that made my heart swell.

It was just us driving away from the school today. An empty carpool, but a backseat full of boys anyway. One super tired baby sitting in wet pants. One emotionally strained second grader trying to make the most of not having his life all figured out at 7. And my middlemost, the innocence of his mind and his spirit baffles me sometimes. He doesn’t always know what to say but sometimes feels the need to fill the silence. This he may get from me. The silence begs me to fill it sometimes too. Today, he needed to fill the silence. He says to us, to the air, to the space around him in the car….”Daddy is in our hearts. He is in my heart, he is in your heart, he is in mommas heart. Right mom, right?” Yes honey, he is. The oldest says “please stop talking about that, its gonna set me back to the front of my maze. I am trying to get to my happy place, and it is just so hard.” Tears begin to fall, “oh great, I have to start over.”

My heart breaks for them both. And I don’t know how to fix it for anyone. But I know we can’t quit feeling and we can’t ask each other not to feel. Maybe we don’t have to dwell there, but its okay to bring it up. Its ok to say what the sweetest little middle most said. I am telling his older brother this as I am saying lets leave it at that dear. And the heart of a 5 year old bursts out, he turns to his brother in the seat and says…so sincerely, so boldly…”I love you, Ryder.” No strings attached, no expectations, just loving his brother who is stuck in a maze. He doesn’t even know what a maze is but he sees the pain on his brothers face as it streams down his rosy cheeks through the dirt of the day. He wants to fix it. He wants to make it better. I am with him, I want to fix it. I am a fixer. This can’t be fixed, over time it can be healed to some extent, but fixed…no. The lesson we learn from each other, and my precious middlemost…we can love each other even though we can’t fix it. And somehow our love might just make things a little less broken.