Back To It

For the first time in several months, I'm sitting here wrestling with written words. It feels good and familiar. This blog has been quiet for a while, which has represented a first for me... a season of intentionally not writing. There's simply been too much to say. But now it's time to pick up the pen again.

Nothing big or dramatic has changed... It's been gentler than that, like the way a fog slowly lifts or a flower unfolds. Like when quivering knees begin to hold steady again, and quaking hearts find again their courage.

So it has been.

- - -

My social calendar has been largely empty for the past several months, but my days at home have been busy. My hands have been full, my lap crowded, my face often free of makeup and my body often tired. I don't know that I've ever been happier. I don't know that I've ever been more weary.

Mommy brain is real - but it's no wonder, when our minds reel so quickly back and forth between varying states of flabbergasted, peaceful, resolved, unsure, delighted, and discouraged. I forget where I put my glasses, while they're on my face. I've had to rinse face wash from my hair. I find myself singing "Baby Shark" and "The Potty Song" in public places. I forget to put my own shoes on before exiting the house, but my diaper bag has never been more organized, thank you very much.

In the past several months, emotions of all weights, shapes, and sizes have hourly bombarded and longed to be given first attention - and they haven't even all been mine. Two little girls, with all their pink and spunk and sparkle have driven me to my knees daily. And that's just the "mommy" part of my life.

I'm also a wife. I'm first a wife... and how quickly that reality can get overshadowed. It requires a daily reconfiguring, a sometimes comical effort... that quick coat of mascara and lipgloss, to possibly distract him from the dark circles under my eyes. The attempt to flirt over the flying macaroni and the screaming baby at the table. It is hard. It is worth it.

My husband. My daughters. My daughters. My husband. Every day, on repeat. It's common knowledge that as a stay-at-home-mom there are no breaks, unless you stage them somehow or receive them as gifts. Everybody understands on some level that this might be hard - when you're face to face with your kids all day long, day after day, it can certainly add up. But honestly? Being around myself all day long has been the thing that's so often broken my heart.

Without interruption and on full messy display in front of the ones I love most in this world, I've seen how much I still need the very Savior I'm trying to daily explain and express to my daughters.

It's humbling to recognize that you just lost your temper because there are smiley face stickers freshly adorning the hardwood floors. It's humbling when you recognize your impatience, when your little girl takes longer than anticipated to find that special shirt she wants to wear that hour. It's humbling to recognize your sense of entitlement, when the baby wakes up for the third time that night. Nobody wants to admit they are a sinner... but I am. It's been good for me to freshly see it. It's been hard to freshly see it.

It continues.

It's not like I had some illusion that I was perfect - far from it. But something about the rawness of this particular season of life, beginning to raise two littles, has left my heart bewildered and (consequently) desperate... perhaps more than it had been before. And for that, I'm grateful.

A toddler with big emotions is a perfect backdrop for God to display my own big emotions against. An unaccountably wide-awake baby at 3:00 a.m. is the perfect opportunity for God to showcase the way He is always there for me when I need Him. Spilled baby food? A perfect opportunity to shine light on Lauren's apparent fastidiousness about carpet cleanliness. A child running a fever on the first night in months you've planned to go out on a date? Sigh.

The Lord's love is perfect and His discipline is merciful, which means He shows us ourselves and our sin even when we can't on our own or don't want to - and the past several months have been FULL of some new opportunities to see myself as He does, and begin making some adjustments. There is joy to this process! He doesn't condemn, nor does He require that I do so of myself. He delights in us when we seek His face, and I am experiencing that firsthand.

Praise God that He doesn't leave us as we are, but rather seeks to perfect our faith... and He often does it right in front of those we love most. Inside our sticker-adorned homes, at our dinner tables amidst the flying macaroni, in between seventh outfit changes, during the night watches with the baby breathing softly against our chest.

The perfecting of our faith... Even after all this time, I'm still having a hard time expressing it right. But it certainly felt good to write again.