Journeying.

So I'm starting to think God has a pretty good sense of humour - He must, otherwise how do I explain me saying my child is good 90% of the time, only to have it reverse and it's more like 0.0009% of the time?? Or maybe He's just doing His best to keep me humble... Isn't there a verse somewhere that goes, "He who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall"? Well, that's me right there.

Seriously, the last few weeks have utterly drained me. I don't know where I got the idea that at some point it was supposed to get better, but surely someone must have said that to me at some point, right? Otherwise it wouldn't be stuck in my head like a taunting refrain. You're such a failure that your kids aren't any better now than they were years ago. 

Used up. Spent. Broken. That is me right now. I have come to the conclusion that I can't do it. And although I know I sound like a broken record, it's true: I can't do it. I have never felt my human frailty more than in this process of being a mom. I have been pushed to my very limits and I have nothing left to give.

If I was kind, and never yelled. If I never said the wrong thing or said things I regret. If I could only be a better person, a better mom. If only I could love them unconditionally, all the time. I just want to be the perfect mom for them, and I can't.

Heavenly Father, this sandpaper that you're using to refine me really hurts sometimes. The shaping and molding you are doing to make me more like You is really, really hard. 

It's been said that marriage wasn't created for our happiness, but for our holiness. I'm beginning to believe that kids are for the same purpose. At the end of a lot of my days, I just sit in my big, comfy chair and I cry. In many ways, I feel less overwhelmed as a mom; we've found a groove and it works. But still I feel so small. I feel so helpless and weak and unable. It's like the more the years pass, the more I feel the extreme weight of my responsibility, and the heavier it gets, the more fragile I feel.

This. This is why He says, "Come to Me all you who labour and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest."

You have kept count of my tossings; 

put my tears in your bottle.

Are they not in your book?

This I know, that God is for me.

Psalm 56:8, 9b