It was such a different scene for us: sitting in the hallway outside the gym-turned-sanctuary, looking through a window and listening to the sermon as it echoed through the doorway, taking turns with The Kid as he needed to be fed and burped and distracted.

My problem (okay, one of many) is that I look at such a scene–at anything, really, that doesn’t fit the Look I was going for–and see only things that need to be fixed, improved upon. When this scene, it is life.

We were only fifteen minutes late for church this week, not the twenty that we were the first week back. Well, fifteen minutes and a month, but who’s counting? We’re just trying to survive here. As TK slurped his bottle down, I heard our pastor’s familiar voice speak of the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I. The Husband took over for me, walking TK down the hall, and I heard that voice go on about the love that is different from what the world calls love; the lack of self-interest and the life lived on behalf of others that is what we were meant for. I glanced down at my diaper bag, its cup running over with soiled burp cloths and extra onesies and an empty bottle. I gazed down the hallway at TH bouncing TK on his shoulder. I felt the all-consuming distraction that entered my life on December 10, the inability to completely focus on any one thing save him. And I knew it was true: this is what I was meant for. A life lived on behalf of…well, not just me.

The truly helpless have always ripped at my heartstrings and rendered me a tearful mess. I can’t think about our first dog, how he approached me one night as I lay on the floor watching TV days before he was gone, how it was like he was saying goodbye. Don’t get me started on that scene in Harry and the Hendersons. The boy in my second-grade class with the torn clothes who couldn’t afford anything from the Friday snack cart? Forget it. As I grew up, though, I steeled myself against these emotional invasions: hold off on the pet. Don’t watch sad movies. Embrace a philosophy wherein everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

I can’t escape this invasion, though. And no one in my line of sight has ever been more helpless. That’s when I realize how often I try to run away from this kind of love, from this assault on my own heart and vulnerability and sense of safety. This new person in our home, this wrecking ball to our previous existence, leaves no stone unturned as he ravishes my carefully-ordered lists, as he upends my emotional stability, as he pierces my heart. That poked-out lower lip and sad cry that he has recently perfected? That loud wail of dependence? That goofy grin first thing in the morning? That look of wonder when he hears his dad’s voice? I am undone.

Exactly as I was meant to be.