On Saturday, The Husband was trying to get out the door to go to Costco with The Kid but finding it difficult, as I was attached to his leg like a jellyfish and begging him not to go without me. And Little Brother, if he must join. I needed some time out of the house, even (especially?) if that time was to be spent in a suburban consumer warehouse. So we bundled up, strapped the smaller ones into their car seats, and headed out.

Afterward, we were looking to kill a little more time so we stopped at Starbucks. The line was horrendous and LB was starting to scream, so TH parked the car and I sat in the lot with my offspring, one of whom was perfecting his “I’m being stabbed” routine. When TH came back out and turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. We looked at each other. LB screamed. TK laughed, whether at his brother or parents we weren’t sure. TH turned the key again. It was official: we were stranded.

In moments like these, I vacillate between extremes. I either draw on a strength outside myself and rise to the occasion (rare), or I completely shut down. Maybe because I was out of the house and therefore not alone with the screaming infant, I went with Option A. After all, it just wouldn’t do to have two babies crying. I prayed for help, which always feels a little silly and privileged–God, please get us out of our lovely car in this safe parking lot, and by the way can our team win the football game?–but the car wouldn’t start anyway. Then a couple pulled up and asked what our trouble was, and they were not serial killers or swingers, so there was our help. While they gave us a jump (TH tells me that the Southern phrase “jumped us off” is not only incorrect, but inappropriate), I pushed LB around the lot in his stroller and drank my pumpkin spice latte. A few minutes later, our car was started and we were heading home.

I’ve been reaching the end of my personal battery a hella lot in the last five weeks of LB’s existence, to the point that I’ve wondered how and why people do this ever, and if we’re going to, why we don’t have support groups for it, and the phrase “I have nothing left” has escaped my lips in the afternoon hours during a baby’s cries and in the middle-of-the-night hours to TH beside me. This is hard. It’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard. I am physically, emotionally, and mentally depleted. I am, more than ever, at the bitter end of myself.

And here is what whispers to me through the crying, in the night, and past the insanity of it all:

The place where I have nothing left to give is where everything that matters is located.

All the things I don’t have are what save me: the grace, the patience, the kindness, the fortitude–they are there, have been given on my behalf. They are not lost to me. They just aren’t always (ever) my default setting. But they are Someone’s. And grace shows up with supplies, just bags of equipment, and knows exactly where to get started.

Spoiler alert: it’s not the crying baby who needs the work.

Grace shows up with the double therapy appointments every other week to which I accompany TK, a two-hour expenditure of time and energy that could feel like work…if they weren’t framed in joy, my reliably allotted time with my firstborn who needs that right now–and so do I.

Grace shows up on the afternoon walk, when I look down and see that there are two boys–two of them!–and these are my sons, and I get to be their mother, and we will make it past the screaming to something better. We already have with one of them. There is past precedent. And just then, LB screams and I roll my eyes and when they roll back to where they belong, they watch TK reach his perfect hand out and clasp LB’s alien claw and it’s like he knows just what needs to be done–and what is that if not grace with skin?

And grace shows up even in that dark bedroom at 4 am, when LB’s eyes are wide open and he is two seconds from crying and all I want is sleep and I say it again–“I have nothing left”–and it occurs to me that maybe it’s time to stop saying and start asking. So I pray for help, more fervently than in the car, and grace shows up on my youngest son’s face in the form of a smile that lights up the night. I would have missed it if my eyes weren’t where they were supposed to be, if grace hadn’t moved them there, and for a quick second it occurs to me that these moments with him will not last forever and maybe, just maybe, I could let them be beautiful every once in a while.

And just like that, the car becomes a church and the walk becomes worship and the bedroom becomes a temple, and all that I’m not matters so little compared to all that I have.