words

I miss crafting with words.
I miss the flow, the spiral, the effortless dance that my fingers would play out while the words locked inside my head were fed through my fingertips and onto a page.
It hardly required effort, there wasn't even much thought attached, it was simply there--open the page, unlock the brain and go.

Today has been harder than I'd like to admit.
My first day back at this stay-at-home mom gig, and we've had a struggling afternoon. Jameson is finally napping now (please God, for at least another hour), and I managed to get some errands done (although I forgot the milk for Hubs tea. Dang it.), but this was not without mass effort.

I am lacking in patience, I am lacking in understanding, I am lacking in toddler-whispering skills that allow one to get through places like the library and Target without your two-year old son screaming at other children who happen to also be glancing at the Sesame Street DVDs, and grown women also buying bleach in the laundry aisle.
Time and again I come around with, "These are for everyone, and I know it makes you upset when you see other people using them, but we have to take turns. If you cannot take turns, we will leave." and then there are more shrieks, and then there is me, wrestling with a 30-pound mass of muscles and fury while trying to stand upright with a six-month old fetus in my belly.
What a sight to behold.

All those magic words, and acronyms spelling out empathy, and scripts listed out generally seem to work about 10% of the time, and the other 90% I am left fluttering around, praying to Jesus that I am not inherently creating a monster in this moment, and that I am also responding with as much grace and love as I can muster.
Why can't any of this just be clear cut?

Because humans are not clear cut, and if you are looking for evidence of this, look no further than my two-year old son who is at the height of his humanity. He has not yet figured out how to temper or hide his emotions, and so they are all there for everyone to see, front and center. And if you ever doubted that human beings were confused, easily upset, lost little creatures, then come and spend an afternoon at my house and observe otherwise.

I see myself in him all too often, crying up at God with my mess of emotions and humanity smacking me in the face, begging for someone to calm me down and walk me through this hormonal cloud I am stuck in. Just like my son needs me to take his hand, look him in the eye, and articulate what he is feeling while reassuring him that there is someone there who understands, so I, too, need God to hold my heart and remind me that He is bigger than all of this, and He gets it.

I often feel like I've been left to figure things out on my own. And maybe I have, for a little while, because that is part of growing up. I won't be able to tell Jameson what's wrong forever (and I am sure that the time will come when he will not appreciate my assuming that I know), and so God is probably giving me space to learn myself and my reactions, and to see if I have made any progress on the tantrum-throwing front.

I don't have a resolution here, or an acronym for myself to recite in the moments that God is silent.
I don't have an encouraging word to end this with, a miracle story of the moment that God decided to open up the heavens and let me know that He's heard me crying for three years.
I've just got myself, and this fledgling faith that has somehow managed to keep itself rooted through the tsunami's its been through. Sometimes I doubt it's existence, but it's there, I know it's there, because it stabs me in the heart every time I try to walk away.