Wrestling

I don’t think I have ever really wrestled with God when it comes to suffering. I trust Him. One of the first verses I memorized when I was in high school was,

“In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” –John 16:30

I guess I just always had an understanding that life was not always going to be perfect. There was going to be suffering in the world. I was going to suffer pain in this lifetime. I was terrified of suffering and pain in my own life, but I knew that suffering was inevitable; and once I experienced immense suffering I realized that God never left me. In fact, He revealed himself to me in ways I never imagined that He would or could. I never questioned God’s goodness even in difficult times.

However, there is an area where I truly wrestle with God…and I have since I had Zachary.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY HE WON’T BLESS ME WITH A SLEEPING BABY WHEN IT IS CLEAR THAT I NEED MY CHILD TO SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!

I know God uses circumstances to teach us more about Him and draw us closer to him. The scripture verse that keeps popping into my mind is “be still and know that I Am God.” Megan Stephens shared this verse with me in high school-clearly it has been something God has been trying to teach me for some time now.

Thing is, I don’t understand how He could expect me to be still right now when he knows there isn’t time to be still. I mean, right now I am just blaring MTV Cribs in the background to drown out the sound of Nate’s sleepless cries, and blogging to vent some frustration until he falls asleep.. Otherwise I would be disinfecting the floors in my house and doing more laundry (which for the record, laundry is a battle I will never win).

“Disinfecting? Why does that need to be a priority?” Well, it needs to be a priority because Drew has pooped in his pull-ups or underwear several times today, ripped off his pants, smeared poop on our floors-yes, floors (plural)-and tossed a used, poopy pull-up into a basket of clean laundry. I have to disinfect the floors so Nate doesn’t crawl through the crap, literally, on our floor. I also have to bleach the bathtub since I had to give Drew a bath after he took a handful of his own poo and wiped his face. Yes he did. Yes he did.

I am exhausted. Today I feel like I am becoming the mom I never wanted to be-the kind of mom that has stress and weariness written all over her face instead of joy and delight. Parenting is just hard. There is so much that is good and wonderful and fantastic about parenthood…but parenthood is also really messy at times. And today is a messy day, both figuratively and literally, and I am just tired. Tired of the mess, tired of the poop, tired of the laundry, just tired.

Replacing my nightly apple with a glass of wine tonight, because wine is made of grapes-it totally counts as a fruit,
The Joyful and oh-so-unbelievably Tired Mom