Every Saturday, the four of us bound–or hobble–through the threshold of our gym’s childcare building, and she greets us: “Hello, beautiful family!” Usually I have to bite my lip to keep a bitter laugh from escaping. “Beautiful?” I want to reply. “I was a failure at this before eight am. And it’s the weekend.”

My counselor (well, the one here in town–YES I HAVE MULTIPLE COUNSELORS IN MULTIPLE STATES) hadn’t flinched when I said the words, one in particular: that the clawing and the grabbing and the poking, it can all start to feel like…a violation. She had just nodded, a matter-of-fact yet kind acknowledgement that, yes, this is hard. This season of complete dependence, and so much of it falling on me, so much of it channeling through and leaning on me, from the moment they were conceived? The fact that I’m an introvert, that I crave–nay, require–personal space, and boundaries, and that that space and those boundaries are constantly intruded upon, even ignored? All of that combining to make me feel crazy, it doesn’t make me crazy. It makes me normal.

We’re not really allowed to feel that, are we? I remember a blog post floating around social media a few years ago, with a title something like “You Don’t Get to Complain about This Since You Asked for It,” or a similar graceless proclamation, and how I’d read with my constant companion–Guilt–and learned that there is only one feeling allowed, one place where we’re permitted to remain without exit: gratitude.

Forgive me for thinking that this is a journey. That we’re not perfect. That complexity is allowed. That the article was bullshit.

Forgive me for all that…and God have mercy on me for being one of the worst perpetrators.

She had asked me if there was an inner voice, a monologue, and I had thought, Only a million of them. But that yes, there is, and I’m just now understanding that this voice of judgment is actually me. How the anger, and the frustration, they are both natural and a reflection of the impossible standard to which I hold myself, and I assign them faces of people so that I can fight back, but really? For all my own proclamations of grace, I’m the one failing to practice it.

And there’s this idea…that maybe I’d see things differently if I talked to myself differently.

Maybe if I acknowledged to myself that, yes, getting pissed on in the face is not a fun way to spend a Saturday morning–that there is room and time for gratitude but some things just plain suck. Maybe all this isn’t so much a character flaw as it is an indication that we are made for more, for better, for gardens and cities eternal and beautiful. Maybe this place where we reside between here and there, between what is and what should be, where we grit our teeth and deal by shutting down or lashing out or kicking trash cans–maybe that tension of between-ness that makes us feel crazy is actually the mark on us that makes us real.

Because I also know this: that the more I know of grace, the more I know of my own failings. Yet this is not meant to be a source of flagellation or hopelessness; it is somehow designed that way to drive me deeper into that grace. Closer to the home for which I’m meant.

Why did I ever think that this kind of love would be simple–or, at least, just simple? Because there is the simplicity that comes with primality, of being their defender and protector; but there is more. Always. There is the taxation of body and heart, there is the weariness of repetition, and all these underpinnings that are so hard but also channels of grace. There is a journey permitted–why do I beat myself up for not having arrived? Why would I reduce the mystery into one solved answer when it is allowed to be a prism beyond understanding?

I love my kids. Being a mom makes me feel crazy. It’s all allowed to be true. Beautiful and ugly in a never-ending mix.

It’s the end of the day, and the four of us climb the stairs together. The Kid likes to narrate lately: “Up. Down. Up. Down.” It slows us down and drives me crazy and it’s the best sound I’ve ever heard. Little Brother is already a climber, and he takes his sweet-ass time as well, one step at a time. I want to scream, and be more like him. We arrive at the top together, not a perfect specimen but a motley crew of asshats–forgiven and redeemed asshats–and head toward bath and bed, tired and broken, sinful and irritable, wounded and healing. No audience waiting to greet us, but no judge ready to condemn us, just grace waiting with arms open to enfold us and call us not crazy, but by name.

Maybe I’ll be better tomorrow:
My voice will be softer
my touch gentler
my words kinder.
Maybe my husband will hear and see that I’m still glad it’s us
Doing this.
Maybe I won’t leave it unsaid,
How I love him even more than before, when it was easy.
Maybe my children won’t doubt how wanted they are,
How long was our wait,
How joyful their arrival.
Maybe I’ll be better with myself:
I’ll stop making excuses,
and stop cutting myself down.
Maybe I’ll remember to breathe more
and clench less.
Maybe I’ll be better tomorrow.
“Or maybe you won’t,” I hear, the voice taunting.
“You won’t,” comes another, louder yet softer and gentler–
“But I will. And I’m not leaving.”
So maybe I’ll be better tomorrow,
Or maybe I’ll still be me.
But that’s all right–
because he’ll still be him.