I would like to officially apologize to every parent I have ever judged. Particularly those parents who, while their child writhed in my exam chair, turned to me and offered explanations of the behavior on display in terms of what that child had “been through” as I gritted my teeth and silently rejected that story in favor of the one I preferred–lack of discipline–because my version made it easier to judge the parent…and ensure I never faced the same situation myself.

Fast forward a few years.

When I was a few months pregnant with The Kid, I started visiting his room daily to pray for him. (And occasionally read a parenting book while rocking in his glider and nodding off.) I prayed about The Standards: health, safety, sleep, general well-being. I did not pray for his neck, or for the kicking he would perform on his changing table, or for my own reaction when he would take the hairspray from my bathroom drawer and relocate it to a spot hidden from view. (In fairness to myself and out of respect to the distance that grace has taken me, I would like to point out that on this particular occasion of frustration I left TK’s line of sight and went into my closet before I released my well-honed, put-upon, guttural moan and follow-up stomping. I can’t imagine where he gets his temper.)

I didn’t pray–or think–about most of the things that have kept me up at night, rendered me a sweaty mess, or brought me to tears. The music classes, the X-ray rooms, the temper tantrums. In the Difficult Moments, I’ve been tempted to grit my teeth and just endure what feels like an onslaught of unfairness, a declaration of war upon me and my sanity. The halo experience was one thing: we saw it coming, took time to research and prepare, sought out help, and prayed. A lot. But when a music class pulls the rug out from under my Wednesday and leaves me reeling over What This Means for His Future and how my approval-seeking is SO far from dead…well, then. Accounts must be reassessed.

I’ve spent much of my life running from such battlefields, from situations that force me to confront my own weaknesses, my own fatal flaws. I pursued only the things I was “good at,” only the people who made me feel safe or confirmed the identity I had chosen. But taking on the terrain of marriage and parenthood leaves one without as easy a road to desertion, and in these lifelong relationships where Leaving is Not an Option, I find myself running into my own insufficiency on a daily basis.

And somehow, this is a gift.

I got up early this morning. Made my coffee, had my Come to Jesus time. “Fix me” is the prayer I really want to utter (that, or “Fix Him/Her”), and just be done with it. Let grace perform a quick tune-up and send me out of the garage and into the world, brand new. But these parts of ourselves that we don’t want to face–we’ve gotten so good at hiding them that it takes years to pull back the layers–years and vows and dirty laundry and temper tantrums and life. And when I started thinking about what really upset me last week–the fear of how other people would see me–I realized that grace does not let up on fear. That grace declares war on fear, and that’s why some days feel like a battlefield. Because I’m not meant to leave this war unchanged.

Something changed then, when I understood that the same shadows haunt me now that always have; when I knew that love will not release me from its grip and is determined to free me from every lie I’ve ever believed. And the work that love does, its unrelenting pursuit–I began to view it all a little differently. The battlefield began to be dotted by oases until the whole thing looked more like a garden. The moments of frustration and temper and weakness–they took on a sepia-toned element of opportunity, of invitation to More. And the divisions that I’ve placed between Good and Bad and Easy and Difficult begin to dissolve. It’s not war, then peace. It’s both. It’s everything at the same time.

So we showed up for class, me and my sweaty armpits and TK and his…uniqueness, and the way I chose to deal with it? There’s just no other way to put it but to tell you that I decided to stop giving a shit. Or at least to give fewer shits, because these are baby steps and Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that, and the more I focused on TK and less on how other people were reacting to us, the more I noticed how much in common we really had with everyone there. The other kid who wouldn’t sit down. The mom speaking to her toddler sternly in the corner. The battlefield of a dozen toddlers and their parents turning into more of a scene from a local bar, and I had to laugh and squeeze TK a little tighter. Then he started crying for no reason, but we got through that too.

There was a moment this morning, after the coffee was finished and I ventured upstairs, when I opened his door and he grinned at me. He walked over and grabbed The I Love You Book, his favorite right now, and started to sit on the floor. Then he stopped himself, placed it on my lap, and let me pull him up. And we read it through three times, with his onesie-clad body curled into my swelling belly, and I barely thought about how I had to get breakfast ready and brush his teeth. In the same chair where I prayed for only the things I could envision, love gave me a moment I never could have imagined. Being a wife and mother, a human being, makes me need redemption in every moment–and holds me in its grip, providing it just as often.