Over the course of an entire weekend, because we are tired parents and cannot commit to a three-hour movie in one sitting, my husband and I watched the Godfather. The violent scenes were few, but unwitnessed: I would bury my face in Timothy’s shoulder and ask “can I look can I look when is it over is it over yet?” The same face-burrowing happened a few weeks earlier, when we watched the Patriot. I have no stomach for blood.

The first time it happened, I found Sam—a unisex name since we were uncertain if the chick would turn out to be a rooster or a hen—face down, wings outstretched, the other babies carrying on scratching and pecking and fluttering as though their yellow sibling was not stiff in the pine shavings right next to them. The loss was not unexpected; Sam had developed pasty butt, which is exactly what it sounds like, and I had attempted to rescue the little chick by washing its rear end (to clear the paste) and then using a hair dryer to keep it warm afterward. My efforts were not enough, and I was glad that I was the one to find Sam. The chicks were still young enough to be in our kitchen, huddled under the heat lamp.

Click click click BOOM. Every time I cook anything on the stove, it starts with these sounds, with a little flame, with a whoosh of blue fire, with the faint scent of gas. It isn’t like our old electric range, which was sluggish, flat, and flameless. This is quick to ignite, and there’s no way to miss it. With our old stove, I’d leave the house and fret about forgetting to turn the range off. But my husband assures me that won’t happen now: I can’t miss the fire, I can’t miss the sound. It’s clear the heat is on. Even after it’s lit, I can hear the little hissing, the puff puff puff. 

Last night, we had good intentions: yoga, reading our next Anxious Generation chapter, early bedtime. And the sun hadn’t set when we lounged on the deck and opened a bottle of Chenin blanc. The chickens were still scratching in the backyard, the shadows were long but we could see each other in the fading light. I don’t know what we talked about or how long we talked. I don’t know how, after nearly twelve years of marriage, we haven’t run out of things to talk about. We have weekly date nights. We text during the day, at least a little. But if we come together, there is rarely silence.

I have one tattoo that scrapes across my left ribcage and another that blooms on my upper right arm. My husband is equally marked: left rib, right arm. But my children are no less permanently stained: pens and markers bleed all over their fingers. Their cheeks are smudged with greens, reds, blues. Clothes that I forget to spot treat emerge from the dryer still speckled with whatever they’d used for their artwork that day. I hope that Crayola is not terribly toxic; it is embedded in my children’s hands.

I say I have no time, but what I lack is eternity. I do have time, just not enough. What I need is not more minutes, more hours, but more diligence, more wisdom, more grace. I have time, but not for everything: not for homeschooling and cooking and baking and cleaning and socializing and gardening and small group and date nights.

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.