Not My Will

Prologue

I wish you could have known my son, Will.

In fact, when I set out to tell this story, I thought it would be mostly about Will. Perhaps if I could tell you about him, you would have loved him too, and you would have celebrated him with us, and you would have been changed by him, like we were.

I wanted to tell you stories about an “old soul” who grasped faith better as a child than I do after five-plus decades.

Like the time we went to Sunday-after-church-dinner-with-friends at a local restaurant—Will was only three or four years old—and most of us sat together, as one would expect on such an occasion, but Will parked himself alone at a nearby table.

“Will,” Shelly called to him, “you know you can sit over here with us, right?”

“I’m OK over here.”

“But we don’t want you to be all by yourself.”

“Mom, I am never alone. God is always with me.”

What kind of kid says that kind of thing? My son. Or, perhaps more accurately than “my son,” the child entrusted to us for a time, so that we might know him and love him and be changed by him.

But as I began to write, I found myself falling desperately short in my attempt to tell Will’s story. I can only recount events as viewed from my own perspective, which necessarily means that I can really only tell my story, as it intersects with Will’s.

You should know, too, that my memory is not to be trusted; my hindsight is far worse than 20/20. I needed help in reconstructing events, and I seem to have lost the distinction between the internal and the external: Which things did I work out in only my mind? How many things passed between my God and me, but were never spoken aloud?

Having sufficiently warned you about my hindsight cataracts, let me tell you a story…