I think it was Wednesday, that night last week when dinner became my breaking point. An evening at the Colosseum would have been more peaceful; The Husband, for his part, compared it to the Thunderdome.

It was just dinner.

But The Kid was throwing himself on the floor (apparently, along with increased language comes increased independence comes an increased sense of control comes increased tantrums–not that I would know anything about that MYSELF). Little Brother, who’s gaining some independence of his own, was tossing his food like confetti into the air, when not pounding into the table with his fist, a look on his face like he had just smelled his own diaper. When, in a perfect storm of chaos and cacophony, they both landed body parts in thuds on the table and floor and simultaneously emitted shrill whines, I slammed my own palms on the table and threw my chair back.

“I’m done.”

The days are long but the years are short blah blah FUCKING BLAH. Sometimes things just suck, okay? And sometimes you have to walk away. Or I did, at least, into another room, where I stared from a couch into our backyard and wondered how hard it would be to disappear and create a new identity. I breathed. I prayed. But mostly I just sat still, waiting and not, hoping sanity would be restored in both the kitchen and my soul.

Eventually, I got up. Not because I really wanted to, mind you–but because it was time. Time to return to them.

These breaking points, these broken moments, seem to populate so many of my days–hours–now. Brotherly squabbles, one kicking the other in the face and tears erupting, overflowing, discipline required but I don’t even know how to give it without feeling like I could have done better, should have done different. Uplifted prayers, mostly the “HELP” version, whispers of “I need you now. And now. And now,” this never-ending struggle to love and teach and be loved and learn, and when I start measuring successes and failures, kind words versus blown fuses, I feel the nudge that tells me I’m in the wrong territory again. This is not a math class–parenthood; life. This is a walk. Through grace. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MISTAKES, I hear, and am terrified. There will always be mistakes, I hear, differently this time–not a calculus of law but an invitation of grace–and I am free. Freer, at least.

Because the day always ends the same: rocking LB, his head on my shoulder. Lying beside TK, telling him all the reasons why he’s special, sometimes with apologies thrown in, until his breathing evens out and he falls asleep beside me. He falls asleep to love. That ain’t nothing.

Then I go to the bathroom, where hot water and relief await, and a glance out the window reveals one of those sunsets that takes the breath away: blues, purples, pinks, and oranges, melting into the tree line, and I know who sent it. It’s got his name written all over it. “Great is thy faithfulness,” the notes and words echo in my head, placed there so long ago, staying even when I didn’t believe them, and they slowly start to spread downward to my heart. I still get the sunset. After a shitty, failure of a day, I still get the sunset.

“His story will get told, either by default or intentionally, and until he can do it I GET TO,” I had written her, when we were emailing about whether it’s a copyright infringement to write about your children, because we both do. All the time. And afterward, I had thought about his story, and mine, how they are all just invitations into the greatest one. Into the only one that allows ours to make sense. How that story appeared to end with death and darkness, loud cries and torn curtains, blood and water flowing until none seemed left. How that was just the beginning, because I was saved then and am still saved every day: wooden beams and sunsets, forgiveness and redemption. Never a day without either. How, the next day, I will trip over a root in the yard and curse–of course–and that this is grace too, the fact that this is the path and we don’t always skip the yucky steps, what some call regret but I get to call redeemed, because sometimes you have to feel each tiny splinter before you can stand back and see them, whole, the wooden beams standing still and always, trees with roots reaching so far–even here, so that I trip over them–spelling deliverance.