tonight

I'm sitting here at the kitchen table with my face all tear-streaked. It's ten o'clock at night, so black outside the sliding glass door that I could see my reflection in it if I hadn't taken off my glasses to wipe my sleeve across my damp eyes. Because I just had a complete breakdown watching a Taylor Swift video about how her mom makes her feel so loved.

(Poor Steve is reading this and thinking, Of course you did. He has one evening shift after an entire week off, and his wife--his very sensitive wife who cries about Olympics commercials and whom he has forbidden from watching the animal cruelty SPCA ads where Sarah McLaughlin sings and puppies look sadly at the camera for just this reason--starts watching music videos about moms that make her cry at the kitchen table. This guy can't catch a break.)

But emotive lady singers and self-depreciating humor aside--does anyone else feel like the weight and wonder of motherhood is sometimes just too much? It is shocking to me that I can love these little people so deeply, that I can try so hard, and that no matter how much I put into raising them, I just can't imagine that they will be able to know how amazing they are, how loved. I love them so much it hurts, a tight knot in the space we learn from infancy is where our heart is--the place that feels empty when you need to be held, that fills up with warmth when your baby first reaches her chubby hands towards you. Right now it is clenched like a fist around this frantic, desperate hope that I'll be able to get it right for them. It seems like such a huge task for such a small me.

I know I'm a good mom. I like my alone time, sure, and I have yet to figure out how to consistently keep the house clean, but I try so hard to be a good mom. I know some of that has to bleed through, even on the days when Charlie cocks his head to the side and asks, "Mommy, are you crabby: yes or no?" I think it is just that sometimes when the house is still and my babes are asleep, the full weight of the years ahead crashes down on me, and I realize I have so far to go, grappling in the dark: reading, adjusting, praying, course-correcting, discussing, messing up and starting fresh again and again as I try to figure out what the right things are for these incredible kids, and how on earth I can live up to the miraculous task of being their mother.

I am their mother. I think it will always be awe inspiring to me, to be someone's mother. Much less three someones' mother.

I just hope at the end of the day, at the end of each day, they go to sleep knowing that my arms are their safe spot, and feeling that they are a song in my heart, loved fiercely and forever. Man it just hurts to love them so much.

I am so thankful for the grace of our Father in Heaven, which makes up the difference when I fail to understand their tender baby hearts, which they exemplify every time I ask their forgiveness and they answer with the embrace of little arms around my neck.

It is time for pajamas and kissing small sleepy heads as they dream, and TV in bed and maybe a snack or an ice cream bar. Time to rest up; we do it all again tomorrow. :)