Flattened for Glory

It's Friday night and I'm shell shocked.

I sit in the recliner, curled up in a ball, a little on the cold side but too flattened to get up and grab a sweater or adjust the thermostat.

This motherhood and child caring business, it has me shnockered.

Not shnockered, as in, inebriated.

(That's generally frowned upon in my line of work.)

Shnockered, as in, exasperatingly tired.

Is this what these years are? Moment after moment of knowing you should be cherishing every... single... little... moment, while secretly wishing for some peace and sleep?

Miss Peaches just said to her brother, "Get up. Let's danth! Let's keep workin' on the sthong that we were doin'!" It was adorable. I love her voice. I love their sweet playtime. Yet I want to buy myself a plane ticket for somewhere unknown (and warm, and sunny) and not come back for days.

Weeks, maybe.

I could never. I would never. I'd be away from them for two whole days and come running back, arms open wide, hopefully tan, yelling, "Mama loves her babies! I'll never leave you again!"

It seems I have a flair for the dramatic this evening.

It's just... We're in the trench of working hard and working long, testing the limits of both patience and endurance, and I'm a little worse for the wear. I'll just be honest and say that the, "I'm a terrible mother," thought has run through my mind on more than one occasion this week.

And don't get me started on the, "I'm a terrible wife," schpiel. Not there's much of a marriage relationship to speak of these days. When you don't see each other, or have time or energy to talk on the phone, it's hard to maintain.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not concerned with keeping up appearances this evening.

I think of my dad, his lost temper, his frayed nerves and the havoc it wreaked on his soul, and I know... This temper-losing... It serves no one well.

So I try to stay quiet. But that really serves no one well either, the stuffing down of emotions.

The thing is, good deeds and intentional mothering and self-sacrifice and working to feed your family are well and good until they tip the scales to being completely consuming, and then the unraveling begins. God knows this struggle and he gives us the answer -- the command to rest -- and we know the importance of it, yet we resist and claim we have no choice but to ride this merry-go-round, round and round we go because we have no choice.

But do we? Do we have choices to make?

We like to think we don't, but we do.

And they involve nothing of changing the circumstances, but changing our heart for where we're at.

With weak eyes I look at that statement and the words ripple in my mind: Change your heart for where you're at.

I resist because instead I want to run, run from the circumstances and the uneasy work put before me, run from the weight of it all. But that is not the path He has laid out for me, and I know it. I know it deeply. I know He is asking me to stand. To continue to stand. To stand strong in my place in this family, as a wife and a mother, and be strong and courageous for Him, right here, where I am at.

Be strong and courageous here where I'm at... In the toilet scrubbing, plate scraping, self-sacrificing place where I am at.

In this place where I receive no glory, He is asking me to glorify Him.

It's a big one to swallow. I think I'd better sleep on it.