It began with sticks, with fallen branches. My son planted them like they were alive, jabbing their snapped-off ends into his sandbox. When he’d constructed a veritable forest of dead limbs, he collected crispy brown leaves and sprinkled them over the tops of the sticks, and handfuls of rotting pine needles. I wasn’t sure—did he know these were all dead? Did he think this forest was somehow going to take root, unspooling green leaves and tender buds?

Of course I noticed my son was constantly going to pee. But I made excuses: he wanted to urinate on a bush or a tree outside and didn’t actually have to go; he wanted to leave our homeschool co-op classroom and had learned this was the best way to escape his education; he drinks water religiously; he’s turned pottying into a tic in the same way he sometimes licks his lips over and over or rubs his nose nonstop. I was not oblivious. But I spoke to myself: this is why. This is the cause. And I listened to myself.

I am living the dream, but it belongs to someone else. 

This is the lie that discontentment whispers: sure, this is good, but it’s not good for you. Sure, technically you’ve been blessed, but not really because you never asked for these so-called blessings. Maybe my life looks like it should be full of joy, but it’s okay that I’m dissatisfied, because the gifts I’ve been given were really meant for someone else.

As much as I love the sun, some days when it flings aside the gray clouds and we get a warm damp afternoon instead of a drizzly wet one, I’m disappointed instead of grateful.

It may be true that a watched pot never boils, but a scrutinized lump of dough never rises, either.

I know and have known for a long time that love is not the lurch in my belly, the thrill, the rapid heartbeat, the flicker of passion. It is, instead, the deep part of the ocean, where the water is always dark even if the sun is high and hot on the surface of the sea. Where no current yanks and thrusts, no tide sucks and rips, no wave spits and slaps. It is calmer, unmoved, unchanging. But it is easy to miss. I can’t actually see it. I forget that it is even there.

Day two of rain, although it has slackened so I can now see the sky. It’s the color of snow, but we won’t get any; the temperature has risen to the fifties. I hear the sound of water everywhere: the dishwasher humming, tires splashing through puddles on the street, hot water dripping through fresh coffee grinds in a new pourover, the washing machine churning. Outside is soggy, gray, and unfriendly. Inside is warm but cluttered with toys and sprinkled with dead frasier fir needles that still, a month post-Christmas, have evaded the dustpan

Our life together began long before children, but you wouldn’t know it by stepping into our house. The only photos lining the walls are professional shots of newborns and a few family sessions in between. There’s nothing to document a life before the babies came. That life did exist, and it was both troubling and glorious, but all you’ll find here is proof that we’ve procreated.

The days are short, cold, dark, and busy. The calendar is bulging, the timer dinging, the kettle screaming. We’re shuffling here, scurrying there, forgetting this, losing that. And the image of Jesus I repeatedly find myself facing is one of a swaddled baby stuffed in a bale of hay, swarmed by an assortment of farm animals. I need Jesus now more than ever, when I’m tired, grumpy, and stressed, but I find little comfort in the picture of a babe in a stable, illuminated by a giant star perched atop the little barn. What can he do for me?

I’m not an angry person, only an irritable, grumpy, frustrated person. I’m not prone to rage or fury, only a quietly simmering annoyance. I would have sworn those weren’t the same things, rage and irritation, before I had children. It takes a lot to make me mad, that’s what I would have said. Not a lot to annoy me, though. But that’s not the same thing.

The Lord may be slow, but I am not. Perhaps the Creator can unhurriedly speak life into existence, and then rest, but I can’t afford myself that luxury.

I’m quick to blame my lack of joy on my personality: as both a realist and a perfectionist, I don’t have much capacity for something that seems at odds with reality and imperfection.

I have a cold. I’m not dying. But because I’m breathing through my mouth instead of my stopped-up nostrils, it feels like I’m dying. I picture my lungs, half-deflated. Surely I can’t be providing enough oxygen to my body through my dried-out mouth? My chest hurts; I’m sure that’s not anxiety, that must be me slowly suffocating to death. 

Recently, I’ve been trying to become more aware of how many times I say no when I could say yes.

Five days ago, we celebrated our eleventh anniversary. Five days before that, Father’s Day. And the best part of both is that the best part is now.

It’s not even noon, and I can hear my kettle hissing for the third time this morning. I’m not drinking a pretty little cup of tea; I’m pour-overing a strong black coffee.

I must make a lot of lists, because list-making is a game my children frequently want to play. They rustle through the drawers in our dining room hutch for sheets of computer paper, journals, and pens. Then they work very hard: my daughter on making figures that look like letters, my son at writing a few words he’s learned (apples, rice, bananas). Most of the time, they’re crafting a grocery list.

Somehow, I still find myself saying to people who ask about future education for my children, “I think I might homeschool.” My son is nearly five. Kindergarten approaches. We’ve joined a local co-op. I’ve ordered curriculum. I’ve read a few books on homeschooling and have several more waiting on the shelf. I’m not thinking about homeschooling; I’m deep in the midst of planning for it, and yet I struggle to say the words out loud.

I blame the perfectionist in me for many wrongs; it’s the catchall scapegoat. Surely my worship is not disordered, my loves not in disarray. No, the reason I am warring inside myself is purely a result of my personality clashing with my circumstances.