Home.

We pack up the van and head around town to parks and playdates, practices and donuts, with our two daughters. People comment on our blessings of girls, asking us questions about our life. We let them know the friendly, comfortable details, and it always comes up, “Well, these are our two younger daughters. We have another daughter.” You can see the slight uptick of confusion in their face, the silent stewing of questions behind their brow, so you help, “She is in a wheelchair. She is blind, she has seizures, she doesn’t speak. She likes to be at home.”

I wonder how many times I’ve had to tell myself that as I’ve watched her younger sisters make new friends at the park, “She likes to be at home.” As we drove to Disneyland and watched them light up at seeing Belle in the parade, “She likes to be at home.” As they hiked without help for the first time on our favorite hill, “She likes to be home.”

It’s special when we all get to be together, I savor every picture I get to take with me and my three girls in it. My arms feel full, like that’s how it was always supposed to be. I was not supposed to have only two beautiful girls in tow. I process the grief that our world, this disability, was not made to pacify my mother’s heart. And no matter how much I may try, Jane does not feel the angst to “have us all together” at every outing. She enjoys her peace. She enjoys her rest.

Her sisters are learning that the world is bigger than they ever dreamed. Millie wants to see “The Liberty Statue” and Haven wonders where Antarctica falls on the map. We often talk about which mountains we can, literally, climb. Jane’s life is better suited in the 5 square miles around our home.

I wonder what adventures await us. I wonder how many times I’ll have to explain, “We have another daughter.” I wonder if that will ever feel natural. To have a part feel disconnected as we venture into the world, together, but not all together.

But that really is the unspeakable, magnetism of Jane. She radiates peace. She stirs faith. She beckons all of us, “Slow down, come home. It’s safe here. It’s warm here. I’m here.”

Jane loves school and her church class, but Jane lives for home. Her patch of sunlight as she is sprawled on the living room carpet. Her sister’s voices dancing off the hallways and ceilings. The silence of a sleepy Saturday morning, with only the rumbling of the heater in the winter. She relishes in the safe confines of her bed where she cannot fall, knows her barriers, and is well acquainted with her every pillow (as it takes about 8 to make her bed safer for her). Home is where her Daddy prays and plays his rock music, and her Mommy dotes and plans and is often found dancing. It’s as if she’s known far sooner than all of us that home is the prize.

Adventures will always cause an ache. A wishing, a longing that my girl, my girls could all climb the mountains together. I wish the world could know Jane’s brown eyes, perfect lips, sweet demeanor and keen sense of humor. But Jane is home. And that’s where we all end up at the end of the day anyway. To hold one another, to decompress from the adventure. To enter into the world of safety and rejuvenation. Where my arms can be full again. Just how they’re supposed to be.