I am not good at this...

If I have learned anything about being a stay-at-home Mama in just 10 months, it's that I am not good at it.

No, really.

My maximum time indoors is about 48 hours, and then I go officially stir-crazy.  I get really tired of wiping bottoms and boogers and broccoli-off-of-hands.  I ache sometimes for two hours to sit and play piano, or write, or go hike 6 miles while Dan's working without a thought to needing to nurse or nap the baby.  I miss people, and social events, and playing music until 2am.  I miss going out to dinner with the girls without watching the clock for seven-bedtime-thirty.  It kinda sucks not being able to drink caffeine, because otherwise little mister will be bouncing off the ever-lovin' walls right around midnight.  I get so aggravated and irritated with a mischievous 10 month old whose current favorite pastimes are blowing butternut squash all over the kitchen and biting the breast that feeds him fourtie-seven times a day.  I grow weary of waking up to "Mamamamama", even still, two or three times every night.  I long for unbroken sleep like I've never really longed for anything in my life.  Being needed so much is so not easy.  Mama said there'd be days like this, but nobody mentioned that one little person can make you bone-tired, 24/7.  Geeze.  If someone had been gut-honest with me beforehand, I might have taken pause, and thought it through a little more...

But I'm glad nobody was.  Even on the worst days.

'Cause I may not be good at being a stay-at-home Mama...but God is really, really good at giving grace.      And He's so good at giving gifts and glimpses.  Glimpses of eternal perspective, in the eyes and thought processes of my little boy.  Gifts of glory.  The way this little person learns and grows and explores, and I... I get to be the one to witness, the one to share.  Who am I, that I get to do that?

There's this book that I read to Timothy, I got it at Big Lots for $1.  Every single time I read it, and I made the sound of a kitten sneezing - "Achooo!" - I get this huge belly laugh from him.  Ha...  It makes me smile and chuckle, just thinking about it.  And every night after bath, his favorite thing is for Daddy to throw his towel up like a parachute, and hide under it with him... Timothy just giggles and giggles.  Every time Dan or I come home from being out, all four of his limbs start moving, no matter what he's doing, and his whole face lights up and you think it might break from smiling so much.  If there's a pot of anything on the stove, Timothy loves to watch the steam rising from it...it fascinates him.  He loves nothing better than pushing buttons - on anything.  He loves music and books and being outside and being tickled and being in the same room with his Mama and Daddy.

So at the end of the day...even the toughest, tired-est days...I still whisper, "You're my little love..." in his ear.  And I thank God for grace and brand new mercies.  I thank Him that His grace is sufficient and, even when I'm at my wit's end, He is able and strong enough and loves me enough not to expect me to have it all together.  His strength is made perfect in weakness.*

I don't have this Mama thing down.  I'm not "good" at this.  But the glory is, I don't have to be.  I can only love on my boy and pour my heart into these days...and trust in Father for the rest.  For the grace.  For the glimpses.  For the glory.


-HK

*2 Cor 12:9