Easy is a Moving Target

I have a friend whose children are five months younger than mine. So her oldest is not yet two, and her littlest is about two months. She is in the "crazy" stage and we had a lot of "fun" (wink wink) commiserating when she came to visit the other day, laughing about how ridiculously hard some days can be. You know, those days when your kids are crying and screaming and so you end up crying and screaming and then by the evening you're in a puddle on the floor thinking, "God, I am a horrible mother, why did you think this was a good idea?!" Those kind of days.

I think it is so important to have mother friends who have been where you are. So important. Partly so that you can laugh about the bad days with them. There is nothing like someone else's stories to give you a little perspective!

I have a lot on my plate right now. I have some writing commitments I'm struggling to meet, some editorial work, and some work I'm getting paid to do but has a deadline and is time-consuming. It feels like I have a part time job. And in the meanwhile Michael has more energy than ever, and he needs me to be present for him. The twins are starting solids, and I'm trying to get them on a nap schedule, and every time I think we've found a routine that works BAM they change things up again.

Ever since the twins were born I feel like I've been clinging to the idea of some future time when things will be "easy" again. I've read through forums, I've asked other twin moms, I've searched on Google: when do things get easy?

But listening to my friend, I realized ... six months ago, if I could've seen my life now, I would have called it easy!

I think this is partly because things have gotten easier. The twins sleep a little better, they're content on their own or with their brothers for much longer periods of time, they're happy nursers. I no longer have to stay in Michael's room for half an hour at night until he falls asleep because of nighttime separation anxiety. I am cooking dinner every night, going grocery shopping once a week, and for the most part my clean laundry all gets folded in a timely manner. All things I could only dream about six months ago.

There are still plenty of other challenges. Naps that are too short, nights that are disrupted, exhaustion that leaves no room for writing or quality conversation with my husband or the myriad of projects we want to tackle with the house. Encouraged by the fact I had meals under control, I signed up to take some meals to new mothers in the area. That was a mistake and I ended up flaking on all but one of them. I am still in a position where I need help rather than give it.

And of course there are some new challenges. Michael is ... well, he's two years old. Dominic is about to start crawling. Etc.

I think I am coming out of survival mode. But life is by no means "easy."

Except for once a few weekends ago, when I was home alone with just one baby. THAT was easy. And yet being home along with a baby would have been so hard when it was just Michael.

Perhaps life doesn't have to be easy in order to be good.

Rosie, a fellow twin mom (who is expecting her fifth! yay!), once told me that things get easier and then harder and then easier again. I am starting to experience that for myself. Things keep changing, and so I keep changing. As a parent you are forced to stretch, to grow, and growth is hard.

In any area of life when you master one thing, when something becomes "easy," it's time to move on to the next step. Except I have always had a tendency to want to stay where it's easy. To stick with what I already know and can do. Which eventually leads to stagnation.

Parenthood doesn't let you do that.

And so I trust that even hardship, even my failures as a parent, are a mercy, are a source of grace, because they are leading me to become a better person who has more to give, to my family and to others.

The Present Moment

As I drove past a Catholic church on my way to visit a friend on Wednesday (after hearing our baby's heartbeat for the second time that morning!), I crossed myself as usual, and then added the prayer, "Lord, please help me to live in the present moment."

My friend is a stay-at-home Mom to two beautiful little boys--my godson, who is 19 months, and his little 6-7 month-old brother. We talked about how motherhood makes you live in the present moment--can practically force you to do so, just as parenthood (in some ways) can force you to be selfless in ways that being married without kids doesn't. (Don't feel like getting up in the middle of the night to feed the baby? Well, you don't have all that much choice!)

And I realized (again) that I am in a pretty funny place right now. I want that so badly--that present-moment lifestyle of taking care of a little one. It's what I've always wanted for my life, to be a mother (and to write), and I guess not many people have their childhood wishes fulfilled so clearly. But living in the present moment isn't something I'm called to do five or six months from now; it's something I'm called to do--well, now, in the present. And it's very difficult.

I keep finding myself wishing that I was on the other side of this graduate degree, that grad school was over. Even more often, I find myself wishing, simply, that it was next semester, that the process of drafting my manuscript was over and I could simply focus on revision, which to me right now seems like a distant and peaceful dream. (Oh, I know revision will be tough. But the stories will already all exist in some state or other, and believe me, that's a big deal.)

I have to struggle sometimes not to be jealous of my friends who aren't in school, not because I have some romanticized idea of their lives, but because I am at this weird in-between spot where I *can't* make dinner for my husband half the time (we usually cook together, which is nice too), or keep up with the laundry and the dishes and the dusting, much as I want to, because even though I am home three weekdays out of five ... I am grading, and reading and writing for class, and working on my manuscript.

My present moment right now is overwhelming. It is, in fact, a place where I am mightily struggling with discouragement about myself. But it is where I am. It's where God wants me to be, and more importantly, it is where He is. A funny sort of in-between place it might be, with my future tangible in the very poking, stirring feelings of my baby moving around inside of me; but I know I am here for a reason, and if that reason is to bear the fruit God wills, I must live within His reality. (In fact, there is very little that has taught me as much about the operation of God's will in my life as grad school, from the very moment I chose to go. And I know He has so much more to show me if I rest in Him, in this present.)