I follow a group on Facebook called Scissortail Silk, and I really love the posts. They always make me feel better about myself and my role as a working mom. It encourages me, and the posts always seem to have perfect timing.
Life has been particularly challenging lately with sick kids, a baby that doesn't sleep consistently, spring fever, and simply the monotony of working full time and having 3 kids. Adam and I make a good team, but having 3 little kids so close in age has made for some stressful and challenging days. Life right now is mostly "divide and conquer" for Adam and I. Making time and "being in the moment" are not always easy.
I often don't have time to sit down and look at Facebook until the very end of my day, and by then I'm falling asleep and totally exhausted. (I can't tell you how many nights I have fallen asleep with my phone in-hand as I attempt to unwind and read.) Here's last night's post on Scissortail Silk, and I just couldn't let it pass by without documenting it somewhere...
"Friend, I know how overwhelmed your heart sometimes feels, and I know how down-to-the-bone tired—yes, completely exhausted—you are most days. I know what it feels like to spend hour after hour holding or rocking or feeding a fussy baby, a sick baby, or a baby who just refuses to close his precious little eyes.
I know how small hands that shake us in the night to tell us about a bad dream or cries that send us running into door frames and across Lego minefields can make for a long day. I know how restless nights can make today feel like an extension of yesterday. And yesterday an extension of the day before. And how all of your days seem to run together. I know what it feels like to be standing in a place where tomorrow looks like more of the same, with no end in sight. I get it.
Momma, I totally get it. Maybe you woke up ready for today to be different. Happy attitudes, extra patience, and NO YELLING! And maybe by 8:15 a.m. you realized that it was going to be another day full of cranky babies, demanding toddlers, and guilt from losing your temper when you could have just taken a deep breath and calmly repeated your request to your five-year-old…for the hundredth time.
Maybe breakfast, or lunch or dinner, is still out on the counter, and you can‘t stop to clean it up because you have to find another pair of Buzz Lightyear undies since all of those online articles on how to potty train your kid in thirty-six hours were a bunch of bunk. Maybe you‘re out of diapers, and the milk has gone bad, and the bill you paid a week ago got lost in the mail. Maybe you‘re about to run to the grocery store with hungry kids, while wearing a sweatshirt over last night‘s pajamas. Maybe you‘re on your third ear infection this month, or it feels like you have visited the doctor‘s office so often that you should have your own reserved parking spot.
Maybe everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and nothing seems fixable—you don‘t know how you‘ll make it, but you keep going because there are no other options and if you come undone—then everything and everyone else will come unraveled with you.
Sweet friend, I hear you.
Sometimes I want to scream when I read words that tell me to cherish these moments. These moments of pure exhaustion when I am hanging on by a thread. When I don‘t remember the last time I had a proper meal or felt like I wasn‘t in charge of everything. When my heart wasn‘t torn by the guilt of craving a moment for myself, while knowing that I should appreciate the gift of having a family to love.
Because we already know it‘s true. We know that one day we will look around and miss all of this madness. But today—in the middle of it—we don‘t need to add guilt to our exhaustion, and we certainly don‘t want to have to add "find joy" to our to-do list.
We just need hope (and maybe a long uninterrupted nap).
We need to know that somewhere someone else feels the same way that we do. We need to believe that we aren‘t alone. And beyond having hope that tomorrow could be different, we need to know that there is purpose in where we are standing today.
Friend, there is only one way that we are going to have the strength to keep going. There is only one way that we are going to have all that it takes to love our families with the love that they deserve, the love we so desperately want to give them. We must become rooted in the Truth of who God is calling us to be by hearing and believing the Truth of who He says that we already are."
- From the book Hope Unfolding. (I think I need to add this to my summer reading list!)
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