It was a rare moment: The Kid sleeping soundly in his swing, leaving me with an uncertain number of minutes to myself, and no urgent tasks to be completed. My brain instantly switched into Strategize mode, considering the second-tier chores on the list, wondering if I had time to attack any of them. Then Someone told me to just be still. Be still, and Just Look. Look ahead at the face before me, this infant that dominates our days, that fills every moment with his need, and behold him in a moment of peace. Look at him and love him and weigh this moment down with gratitude, because there will be a time when I will look back and not believe how quickly it all went by. So I pulled up a patch of couch and sat and stared. And his peace became mine, and love rather than strategy filled the room.

Leap Day was a big deal this year, at least on all the shows we DVR and watch later in pieces, and I considered what it meant to have that extra twenty-four hours at my disposal. I always feel in want of time, and that I mismanage the moments I do have, and I wondered at both the gift and responsibility bestowed with an extra day. Our leap day coincided with a breakdown of the water heater, so I didn’t waste any extra time in the shower, so there was that. But after those few moments of being still, I realized that sometimes, my quest to constantly be filling time actually ends in my killing time. Making time come alive? That often only happens when I slow down long enough to do what the world would call “nothing”: staring moments straight in the face and seeing, for once, all that I have.

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.

As I look back over the posts I’ve written since The Kid came along–or just think back over the past couple of weeks–I gain a sense of how bipolar the nature of this whole child-rearing enterprise is. Life is a day-to-day operation with a little one around, and I don’t do so well with those terms. Forced into living in discrete moments, I’ve rebelled and panicked and pitched tantrums. But sanity, the light at the end of the tunnel, appears to be more of a reality as he grows. Especially since his most recent bout of fussiness and unpredictability was revealed to be due to just that–a growth spurt, a discovery I made after blaming it on everything else first. Besides being day-to-day, life now is also about trial and error. I’m not so fond of the error part.

But when the clouds lift, oh do they lift. The past couple of days have been good to me and The Kid, with him now on Prevacid and Mylocon to deal with all the digestive troubles his parents passed on to him, and the weather allowing us to take the BOB out on long walk/runs, and my growing confidence behind the wheel spurring us on to Trader Joe’s and Target and other adventures. And when times are good, I wonder how I could have ever been so down; then I remember that I may be reminded soon, during the next inevitable rough patch. And I also remember this…

Part of the problem, as The Sis so wisely put it the other day, is that The Husband and I had a good thing going before TK arrived. We didn’t have him so that he could meet a need or fill a hole; he was more an overflow of our relationship. And what a relationship it was (is): we happen to really like each other, and like doing things together. We were that annoying couple who grocery shopped and went to the gym in tandem. Now that TK is here, we’re separated more often (apparently you’re not supposed to leave them at home alone? Who knew?). So the adjustments we’ve had to make, due solely to him, haven’t always been welcome ones.

Then there’s the routine-oriented, self-motivated living I’ve done up to this point–my hatred of interruptions and change. God has dealt with me on this matter throughout my life, especially in recent years. And through those dealings, I have learned a plain truth: I am never broken without it being for good. So I must be in for something really good, because there are pieces of me lying all over this damn house. But also here are one who is great at holding me, and One who is perfect at putting me back together. So there’s that.

Life has a deeper emotional undertow now, which means the highs are higher…and the lows are lower. And every day brings some of each. I’ve learned that it doesn’t help to narrate the tough times with an interior monologue peppered by profanity–maybe I can give that up for Lent? I’ve also learned that for all the interruptions and change brought about by The Kid, there are the moments when The Husband holds him beside me, and I see their faces mirror each other, and I think it’s pretty amazing that I’ve been allowed to be a part of this story.

The truth is not debatable, as my former counselor would say, so let’s start with the truth: I love my son, desperately so. This truth will never change. But there is no mutual exclusivity between that and the fact that sometimes, I remember how life was easier when I sat on my fire escape in New York and daydreamed with a glass of Prosecco in hand, just because I could. Dear God, that seems a lifetime ago.

This morning, during some particularly loud and long crying jags (his, then mine), I wondered if I had ever felt this way before: exhausted, inept, ready to quit on a daily basis. Had such a time ever occurred? My memory bank told me that it did, told me, in fact, the exact dates of its duration: July 2003-June 2005. The Worst Two Years of My Life, as I’ve referred to them, filled with days of not wanting to get out of bed without even the decency to blame it on actual depression; rather, my distaste for life was purely circumstantial.

I’m kind of a baby myself.

Then I remembered what came next, what came even because of those two years: the Escape to New York, the finding of grace and redefining of faith, the formation of lifelong friendships, the traveling, the snagging of a certain love of my life. Five years of ups and downs and financial insecurity and personal bliss and fire escapes, preceded by a shitstorm of epic proportions that, thankfully, included the counselor mentioned above sent as an emissary from above to anchor me to the truth even as I wandered despairingly. The same counselor who married me to that love of my life five years later.

So, in the darkness of a nursery as cries pierce the air and my sanity, I remember. I remember my own story, how what is seen was not made out of what was visible. I remember how my future husband just showed up at church one day, happening to know my people already, and how he was way too nice to ever get involved with me–or so I thought. I remember moving from the fire escape to a Starbucks, typing my story as winter grew near and the city grew dark. I remember that the best stories come from the darkness, from the spots of insecurity and despair and seeming hopelessness.

You say you see no hope/You say you see no reason we should dream

That the world will never change/You’re saying love is foolish to believe…

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify what’s stronger than hate

Would they not arrange the stage to look as if the hero came too late?

He’s almost in defeat/It’s looking like the evil side will win

So on the edge of every seat from the moment that the whole thing begins, it is

Love who makes the mortar and it’s love who stacked these stones

And it’s love who made the stage here/Although it looks like we’re alone

In this scene set in shadows/Like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us but it’s love who wrote the play

For in this darkness love can show the way

(David Wilcox, “Show the Way”)

I know a love that is hard-fought, often disbelieved but never disproven, tested to the edge and always found to be true. This is the love shown to me over and over in my life, and it will therefore be the love I have to give as I learn it myself. For me, most things–including these early days of having a child, and likely the later days too–are not all flowers and unicorns and happy thoughts and floating on air. More power to the people whose personality test reads “sanguine,” but mine veers more toward “melancholy.” Those upbeat types would probably read my blog and see a huge Debbie Downer who just needs to chin it and stop complaining. There is truth to that: I do make things more difficult, typically by taking the slow train to seeing blessings in the mess. Mess being loosely defined as whatever doesn’t run as smoothly as and in the manner that I planned it. But my rough edges, my tendency to miss the forest for the trees, my unwillingness to hew every status update into a positive whether or not it reflects how I feel? These parts of me allow my story to be told the way it was meant to be–with redemption included. With the Now, but Not Yet. With the, at turns, crying and angelic face of The Kid next to mine as I survey this messy miracle and know that the common denominator to every experience worth being recounted is love. And when added to faith and hope and grace, that is everything. And in this family? We have all of the above.

Even pregnancy can’t prepare a woman for the daily sacrifice of what life with a child looks like. To wit, the other day I went to the bathroom and peed while holding my infant on my lap.

I won’t get into how I got there; for you mothers out there, I doubt I have to. But, as I explained it to The Husband a few nights ago (as he no doubt just wanted to check the score on the game), there’s not a moment or thought that goes by that does not include him. The new him being The Kid.

Our fledgling family is working its way through this new dynamic and I’m struggling with it on my own. Going out to dinner with the girls the other night was enough to throw me into a tailspin: calculations of transit time plus eating time and making it all work to ensure I was home by feeding time; considerations of what I can and can’t order lest it upset TK’s sensitive stomach (and result in more spit-up and dirty diapers for me and TH to clean up); texts sent to TH to gauge just how stranded he’s feeling at home. Then there was the Valentine’s dinner for me and TH, our first dinner out since before The Kid burst onto the scene: similar time and menu considerations set against the backdrop of our foundational relationship; conversations about his well-being alongside our plans; discussions of spit-up and dirty diapers instead of ordering another bottle of wine.

Everything is different.

I’ll be honest: right now, different doesn’t always feel better. Different usually feels more difficult. Loading gear, timing cries, repositioning, wiping butt and face. No more hangovers, just early mornings. And the weekend? What is a weekend? We often have to remind ourselves that we chose this path, and chose it for a reason…a reason whose dividends pay out over time.

If I sound selfish, it’s because I am. I’ve had several decades of honing my own routine, getting set in my own ways, and considering only myself. “Enough of all that,” said God. Marriage was a gentle nudge away from self-centeredness; having a kid is an alarm clock right in my ear, forcing me out of myself. I know I needed it, and I’m thankful for the fact that, just like a good little French bebe, the alarm clock waits until the morning now to go off (who am I kidding? I consider it our proudest accomplishment, whether we had anything to do with it or not). But I’m leaning on faith in the dividends; I’m ready for a returned smile; and I choose to believe, every moment, that grace provides the math that turns sacrifice into gain.

On Saturday I was sentenced to an afternoon of relaxation–quite a tall order.

I was armed with a litany of reasons as to why The Husband’s spa gift to me was so desperately needed. The Kid received his first vaccinations on Friday, several shots to the legs, and as a consequence had taken to losing his shit on an even more regular basis than the naptime and early evening fussiness that casts a shadow on his otherwise pleasant existence. On the flip side, he had begun sleeping through the night; however, this did not translate to my sleeping through the night as I awoke in a panic multiple times and listened for his breathing through the monitor, shirt soaked through with leaking milk (you’re welcome for that image). My toenails were approaching Dumb and Dumber status–after the past few months in which I had not been able to bend over and attend them, a chainsaw approach was a looming possibility. My back was riddled with knots. My face had seen brighter days. So I pumped a bottle for TK and climbed into the car, headed for my date with the spa.

I remember a time in New York when I decided to try out a yoga class at my gym. Work ran late that day (naturally), so I was hurriedly bobbing through human traffic on my way to Grand Central. Get the hell out of my way so I can get to yoga class and effing RELAX! I yelled in my head to the flesh-and-blood obstacles surrounding me, noting the irony of that statement without any sense of humor. During my five-minute drive to the spa, I faced a similar irony: Move out of my way so I can have this relaxing massage, facial, and pedicure and get back to feed my screaming kid!

The facialist informed me that I needed to exfoliate better; the pedicurist chided me for having heels coated with dead skin; the masseur delivered the death blow while kneading my knotted back and pointing out the fact that my left side was much worse than my right.

I carry The Kid with my left arm.

I thought about it later while I was feeding him, about how he is completely dependent on others for not only his survival but his transportation. He can’t move more than an inch without someone getting him there, an arm or a pair of them carrying him. I thought about how, my whole life, I’ve been a victim of my own overweening effort: stressing myself out with deadlines and goals and books on childcare and unrealistic, later unmet, expectations. Landing myself in yoga classes and spas that show me just how deadly my doing is. I thought about all the ways I’ve been carried–about people who look out for me and love much better than I do; about how that love is often communicated by holding my hands still and taking my burden on. About how “I believe in you” is not just an expression of faith, but a promise to stay–and love. About how that love is not attained through effort. TK lands in my arms, daily, without trying. And I, thank God, have arms waiting for me–belonging to one who looks at my paranoia and rigidity and impatience and stays, somehow seeing more. Faith is believing that there is more than the quirks and the screaming. Faith provides the arms that keep love afloat.

The books talk a lot about babies learning to soothe themselves. There is scant information on how mothers can do the same.

Friday night was…how to put it…disastrous. On the Mom Keeping It Together front, I mean. See, I’ve apparently approached my relationship with The Kid much like how I used to approach my relationship with God: as if we had brokered a deal wherein there was a tacit agreement to terms I created, terms that conveniently fit into my schedule and life plan. With God, it was “I’ll be good and you make things go well.” With TK, it was “You’re now only getting up once a night after sleeping for five hours; you will only improve from that routine.”

God let our false agreement fall apart; TK did likewise this weekend.

No one should be held totally accountable for what happens after midnight, right? At 1 am on Friday night/Saturday morning, TK erupted into inexplicable screams. “What the hell?” I muttered to myself, The Husband waking beside me. “It’s too early for him to be hungry.”

I waited a minute; the crying didn’t cease. I slammed my head against the pillow. “Well I guess I’ll just go f-ing feed him,” I hissed, much to TH’s (and my) horror. I hurled myself out of bed, and TH followed me to the nursery like a shadow. He changed TK’s diaper and delivered him to the Boppy on my lap. And Did. Not. Leave. He was justly shaken by my behavior, and I was too. Once again, I was stuck in the never-ending cycle of overreact–feel guilty–cry–apologize. I looked down at TK, happily slurping away, oblivious to the inner (and outer) turmoil that his cries engendered. I cried harder. I looked up at TH, who was so not oblivious to the turmoil. Shit, I thought. We’re going to have to TALK about this.

It began with a kindness that I took as judgment: his telling me that I couldn’t let every cry undo me. I explained through my own tears that it’s impossible for me not to have an emotional reaction to TK’s crying–that it affects me more than I ever expected, that for all my pre-birth studying, the books had not prepared me for this. That I always knew I was rigid and demanding, but when TK veers off “our” schedule, it not only frustrates me but makes me doubt myself as a mother. That was when TH’s reassurances grew plainer, his encouragement louder. The three of us reached a tenuous detente there in the darkness, TK’s swallowing punctuating the tension in the air.

The next day, I was graciously afforded a visit to the gym. When I arrived home, I found a card in the one place TH knew I was most likely to find it: the daytime nursing spot on the couch. My seeming home base these days. Grace in the trenches. I opened it to find more encouragement, and a spa certificate. My bad behavior met with unconditional love–seems like I’ve found that somewhere before.

And TK seems to be helping out now, too. His fussiness has stalled a little; he’s responding to intentional nap rituals and to the magical “shhh!” that is both a soothing technique for him and a version of the yoga “ohmm” for me. I breathe in grace and breathe out patience; it’s a slow process, but it’s happening. As the sound reaches TK’s tiny ears, he quiets a bit and peace washes over both of us. I’m learning that a schedule, a plan of my own making, is not likely to work without being amended or sometimes even traded in altogether. So I add an “ish” to every note on the calendar, to every date and time and expectation. It took me nearly thirty years to hand over my old plan to God and accept the offensive truth that he had a better one. Maybe it won’t take as long with TK for me to learn that grace flows in multiple directions.

Yesterday I went to a friend’s house, where four women plus me gathered with their kids in an informal playgroup. I watched as the children, all older and bigger than The Kid, wobbled around the room, and the moms chatted distractedly with each other, conversation interspersed with phrases like, “Because those are the rules!” and “You’re headed for time out.”

I looked down at TK, slurping his paci inches from my face, and thought for the millionth time: When did I become a mother?

I’m such a Miranda.

It seems an ill-fitting title, much like fiancee sounded pretentious (hello, I don’t speak French) upon my engagement and wife sounded impossibly adult upon my marriage. I have a long way to go before I grow into motherhood–like, the-rest-of-my-life long. Then there’s the inevitable conflict–reflected even in our plan for me to work a part-time schedule–between the part of me that needs to be surrounded by other mothers for advice and commiseration purposes and the part of me that finds all this talk of tummy time and car seats slightly mind-numbing. I mean, where’s the wine?

Find me in the magazine section at the bookstore and I will be the one holding a copy of Us Weekly rather than Parents every time.

But here I am anyway, and I work on reconciling the faith that this role is one of the many for which I was made with the fact that I may never be fluent in baby talk. I have grown accustomed to the “two steps forward, one step back” brand of schedule that accompanies  living with a newborn, and besides, I’m a Type-A people-pleaser: feelings of inadequacy are nothing new. But I still flail wildly about as I try to swat them away, like I did while leaning over TK’s crib the other night at bedtime. The Husband was out playing basketball, and I assigned the blame to him as to why TK wouldn’t calm down and go to sleep like usual.  What magic does TH have that I don’t? The crying eventually quieted and I returned to my bed only to hear it pick up again. But along with the rise in blood pressure came the Voice that speaks so frequently, the one that means either God exists or I’m crazy, and it told me the truth: that sometimes I need to be reminded that I’m not meant to do it alone.

The Bro-in-Law is coming over in an hour so I can get out and walk; The Sis frequents our house weekly; and sometimes, The Kid will not go to sleep unless Daddy is home. These are not points of weakness on my part but designs on a life that was not meant to be lived in seclusion. Hard for me to admit, but irresistible enough for me not to embrace.

It is not your love that sustains the marriage–but from now on, your marriage that sustains the love.                                   Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How many iterations can love take in a lifetime? I intend to find out.

The Husband and I started as friends, in a brilliant move of grace that knew how hard-won my trust is, how walls are more comfortable to me than bridges and how I attempt to transform standoffishness into a performance piece. There was a year of waiting before it became more, a year that–thanks again to grace–was not lost but only deepened and cemented that friendship. I had abandoned hope that it would become anything more, not knowing the best part–that we were building a foundation for a lifetime together, a lifetime that would sustain so much more than viewings of Lost and laughter over drinks. I had no idea that a year of waiting would be an element of our story that would witness to me years later, that would remind me of the hope of more, of the glory–and evidence–of all we cannot see.

I cling to that hope now, daily.

This past weekend we had one rough night, one out of dozens of (relatively speaking) good ones, and it was enough to undo me. On the couch the next morning, with The Kid hanging off my chest and TH sitting near us, I broke down. I felt misunderstood, overburdened, circling a field of hopelessness. But worst of all, I feared that the inches between us on the couch were becoming metaphorical miles, that having a child was alienating us from each other, changing our relationship to one of terse conversations about poop quality and battling philosophies about crying. There was an edge present, bolstered by sleeplessness and piercing wails, that was absent in all those Manhattan bars.

Or maybe it was just me. After all, TH was peacefully playing Madden ’08 before all hell broke loose on my face, tears and snot commingling in a way they never had for those Lost viewings, when my hair was washed and I wasn’t wearing sweats.

How does marriage survive children?

It wouldn’t, if I were in it with anyone else. That I haven’t gone insane is a testament to grace and to TH’s character more than evidence of any strength of my own. As the tears splattered down and I added to TK’s cries with my own–“I feel like a crazy person! I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”–TH’s face flickered fear briefly, then flashed reassurance. “Maybe I won’t go on that retreat this weekend,” he said. Then he secured an hour away for me later that day. This in addition to myriad other examples: pizza ordered when the idea of cooking slays me, loans paid on my behalf when the news of a pregnancy fires me, patience with my quoting of the very child-care books that are driving me crazy, my neuroses regarding housecleaning and pacifier sterilization. And the volunteering on his part from the very beginning–a partial work week to accommodate a God-given but so far worldly-unpaid desire to write. A belief in me that, many days, goes entirely underserved were it not for faith in what is more than sweats and dirty hair and hormones.

He scooted over on the couch, toward me when a lesser man would have ventured away, and held me, puddle of water that I had become. The Kid–fully fed now and temporarily quiet–sat nearby in his bouncy seat, unaware of the relationship going on in his midst, the love that founded him and endures his unknowing assaults. Anyone who would have walked in at that moment would have seen an unwashed mess, a barely-holding-it-together trio. But anyone who would have walked in at that moment would have been uninvited. Our party of three is held together by more than what can be seen; marriage is nothing if not a promise.