“You really need to go back to work,” The Sis told me the other day, after I had asked her yet another question about naps or feedings or something.

The world has not demanded much of me in the way of personal appearances for the past few months. There was the pregnancy announcement and concomitant job expulsion; then there was the hospital admission and semi-bed rest; and who can forget the C-section and newborn hibernation? The stretchy, cottony-smooth Gap pants The Sis gave me for my birthday have nearly grafted themselves onto my skin. Elastic waistbands are my constant companion these days, for there is still that extra layer of me that refuses to flatten into my Banana Republic Martin fits and my skinny jeans. This has all been well and good within the confines of our home, but the other day I had a job interview and it was time to lose the sweats.

The sweatshirt, anyway. The sweaty pits were along for the ride as always in these situations–situations in which I’m called upon to be “on,” to be evaluated, to show up. Anywhere but home, in other words. And as uncomfortable as those BR Martin fits are, these situations have them beat.

I’m in my own head more than ever these days–I recently picked out drapes and fixtures and they’re lovely, thank you very much–which is much different when you’re raising a baby than when you’re, say, running (my most comparable previous experience–I know, single girl problems). Staying in that space can feed into the lie that I am in control of everything, that the buck stops with me, that I have to make everything work on my own. Stepping out of it means letting go of pajama pants and fuzzy socks and familiarity. But that stepping out can also be an escape: an escape from the self-doubt that always knows just where to find me, an escape from being the caretaker and cry-hearer, an escape from a singular perspective. And whether that escape comes in the form of a new job or a trip to the mall, I need it. Often.

After hearing my profanity-laced vacuuming the other day, The Husband suggested we think about getting a housekeeper. (But I don’t like strangers in our house!) After seeing me break down in tears and hand him the baby with a sigh, he suggested I call the daycare and see where we are on the list–or, as he put it, “Maybe it’s time to outsource the childcare.” (But I don’t like strangers on my baby!) Right now I can’t imagine what life will look like when it doesn’t look like this, and even the potential positives in a new scenario are overshadowed by the ominous unknown. Will I be squeezing into work pants soon and burying my head in some kid’s mouth? (For the record–are you there, God? It’s me, Spoiled Brat–I like the writing-from-home-for-a-living-scenario much better.)

I think about how work in our world has been twisted from its original appearance, which was garden-tending; today’s “gardens” are strewn with fluorescent lighting, unhappy coworkers, TPS reports, cases of the Mondays. One of the hardest parts of living among such brokenness is being torn between what’s meant to be and what is; not knowing exactly where my place is. I’ve been dislodged from my “normal” life for months now, and a new normal has taken its place. A normal with its own ambivalence: how can I be a mom and anything else? How can my heart stretch far enough, my mind be present enough?

Then I remember a trip I made seven years ago, a loaded U-Haul and The Mom beside me and a stretching, stretching across hundreds of miles from home to a new city, a new city that became home when I found life and love there. And I know–because knowing is different than feeling–that whatever I’m called to do, whatever is next, I will be stretch-worthy for it. I’ve stretched from Alabama to New York, from Martin fits to maternity pants. I didn’t do it alone or in my head (though I consulted there often). It’s grace that made me stretch, grace that kept the stretching from turning into breaking, grace that made me the elastic pants that gave just enough to let new life in. Grace that moves me from baby monitor to computer monitor to everything in between, the unknown becoming known, the new places becoming home, the messes becoming gardens.

Yesterday I found a milk trail leading from the bathtub to the toilet.

I spotted the circles on the floor and immediately jumped to the “Blame The Husband” portion of my brain, then I examined the scene closer and realized I was to blame. I often leak after showers and baths, and I often pee, and when you do that little math equation, you get me + milk = gross.

Sometimes, in my most melodramatic moments, I don’t know who I am anymore.

A couple of years ago, I was walking to work every morning in New York City. I bought my coffee from the street vendor, who knew my order by heart. The drycleaner downstairs bellowed my name in a joyful Korean accent. I had a favorite table at the neighborhood wine bar. My roommate and I had a Standard Hangover Delivery Pack from the corner diner. My then-BF and I faced monumental weekend decisions like whether to stay in the neighborhood for dinner or venture a cab’s drive away. People referred to me as “doctor.”

Now? Well, cut to me yesterday pacing the floor with The Kid screaming in my arms and me sobbing back at him, “I don’t know what you want! I just DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO FOR YOU!”

Dear God. What has it all come to?

Yesterday was a bad day. TK spit up what appeared to be bucketfuls of liquid, soaking bibs and burp cloths and all the other accoutrements of our new life. I walked around, a vomit-drenched zombie, cursing people from the neighbors to the President for being alive, wondering if I’d ruined my own life and why I suck so badly at this motherhood thing. TK went from breaking my heart one second with his screams to pushing me toward insanity the next (not a far trip these days). I thought six weeks was supposed to be a turning point, I thought, cursing the people who had told me that, and wondering if my turning point looked like the edge of a cliff. The Husband arrived home to what looked like a crime scene, or what was dangerously close to becoming one, me all glazed eyes and tears and TK now pulling the asshole move of sleeping like an angel when seconds ago he had been screaming as if receiving surgery minus anesthesia. TH took TK and we all sat down on the couch (once I grabbed a glass of wine), and I tried to explain: No, I am not going to work every day. Yes, I can wear pajamas from dawn to dusk and back again if I want. Yes, I can even turn on the TV or put in a movie at times. But what I’m doing here? IT’S NOT A VACATION. Imagine, I told him, that a client came into your office and needed something from you desperately, but instead of saying what it was, he just screamed. And screamed. And refused to stop screaming. And then took a massive shit on your desk, then threw up on top of it.

TH laughed. Then he said, “Sometimes it feels like that’s what happens every day.”

I’m not sure what happened next. All I know is that when I woke up, my fist was bruised and all of TH’s teeth had been punched out.

We joke about it, TH and I, that we’re in a competition for whose days suck worse. And as I look around, I see that we’re all in our own little wars: working moms vs. stay-at-home moms, husbands vs. wives, adults vs. children. But my biggest battle seems to be with myself: fighting for the truth vs. letting the lies get the better of me. The truth: that I don’t suck monumentally at motherhood because my baby cries. That a bucket of spit-up doesn’t wash away every good thing. That the story of our life now is not a departure from the one told in New York, or even pre-TK, but a continuation of it, and it is not represented or summarized or concluded by one terrible day. That this, too, shall pass, but for the moments when it won’t? As shit-stained and spit-soaked as they are, one day I’ll look back at them and they will somehow be gilded and glowing. So why not let some of that light in now?

Also, The Sis is coming over later, and TH will be home tonight, and there are wine and baths and grace. And for now, TK sits beside me in his bouncy seat, making baby noises and looking unbelievably, unendingly, endearingly cute. When he cries, I will remember how much I love him right now. And I will pray for grace that is as real–no, more real–than everything else.

I’ve been thinking about New York lately.

Emotional whiplash is natural when the span of a year brings a cross-country move, a wedding, and a pregnancy. In the debris of hoped-for and delivered blessings, my contrarian human nature looks frantically about, like that period of time after a breakup when you aren’t quite healed and are prone to delusions about the relationship you just escaped. New York wasn’t a bad relationship for me, but it was a huge chapter in my life that is now filed in the drawer marked Past. Despite that filing, though, I find the city sneaking up on me in thoughts and dreams, images from that old life contrasting markedly from the present one. I remember wandering aimlessly past Gramercy Park toward Union Square and the West Village; evening happy hours and weekend brunches; Saturday afternoon football viewings and long runs in the park. These memories intersperse themselves throughout my present daily routine: feedings and burpings, farts from the Pack ‘n Play, trying on the Baby Bjorn with him in it; alternating between swing and bouncy seat in search of a soothing mechanism.

I wouldn’t call it a longing for the past or even a direct comparison; after all, one of the reasons I like to revisit that time in my life is because it carries the origins of our story, The Husband’s and mine, and when we’re faced with shit-filled diapers and midnight cries, we need to remember where we came from so we don’t take each other for granted now. Because I knew, even then, that those magical first days of being together and falling in love would–if we were lucky–give way to something else altogether. This is, after all, what happy endings look like: not pop songs and credits rolling, but bleary eyes and loads of laundry. Hollywood skips that part.

The path of least resistance involves looking backward; remaining Here isn’t for the faint-hearted, especially when Here involves a lack of sleep and a hefty dose of suburban mundanity. It’s just so upper-middle-class American of me to hope for a particular outcome my entire life and then nitpick over it when it finally arrives. This kind of security, this abundance of blessings, is what sends so many ungrateful souls into the arms of lesser gods–the idolatry of fancy cars and toys, of extramarital diversions, of mind-numbing television, of bottomless glasses of alcohol: we want more than whatever we have because we fail to see the more in what we do have. Faith trusts that a bigger story than the one we see is forever being told, even through apparent mundanity. Faith always sees the more.

Yesterday, for the first time in nine months, I turned on the faucet in the tub. I brought The Kid upstairs and placed his sleeping form in his bouncy seat in our bedroom, and I submerged myself in the hot water and bubbles. For a moment, I imagined this experience as it was nine months ago, two years ago, a lifetime ago. I guiltily considered my independence then, allowed myself to feel its brand of freedom, and the black-and-white, better vs. worse, right/wrong version of myself demanded comparison.

Then I heard TK coo in his seat from the bedroom, and felt the love flood depths of my heart that never existed prior to Here, prior to him, prior to us. And there was no comparison.

As for TH and me, the moments of laughter and intimacy we shared at trendy restaurants and in bars have been exchanged for what I dared to look at last night: late hours in a nursery, watching him change our son’s diaper and hand him to me for a feeding; staring at TK’s wide, wondering eyes as they survey the scene. Then I turn to TH as he, unasked, pulls up his usual chair and reads beside us, pausing every few minutes to look at us. The new language and moments of intimacy, of life together; the mundanity transformed to More by gratitude, grace, and looking around at Now in wonder.

I am living in a period of forced weakness. The weakness is physical and its purpose is clear. But as I look back over my life, I realize this isn’t the first time such a period has occurred, and in the past, things were different.

For the past six and a half months, my antagonists have been confined to my own body: nausea, dizziness, lack of appetite, weight gain, excessive urination, headaches, absence of preferred amounts of wine. Then there are the gifts of the third trimester: achy joints, backaches, and the most recent–a swelling in my hands that has rendered my wedding ring unwearable and those hands almost nonfunctional. I can type (thank God), but when I sat down yesterday to start writing thank-you notes for baby gifts, my fingers began going numb after the first two. After a few more, I could barely grip the pen and my entire hand was going tingly. I realized that had I still been working, forced to hold a tight grip on a drill in one hand and a kid’s head in the other, things would have gone downhill fast. (All of this to say that unemployment can be a gift and if you receive a thank-you note from me that is illegible and covered in blood and tears, don’t be alarmed. I’ll make it. Insert martyr’s sigh here.)

But it’s all headed somewhere, and as The Sis teased yesterday in her sing-songy, I’m imitating a doctor voice, “The only cure is delivery.” Maybe that’s why I dreamed last night of going into labor, except that in an odd echo of my glucose test blood retrieval, the nurse couldn’t get me numb with the epidural needle so they sent me home and told me to come back later. I think you can imagine what I told them.

The thing is, though, it’s always been headed somewhere. I just didn’t always have a constant kicking reminder in my belly of that, and so I doubted. When I didn’t get married right out of college, I extended my search a couple of years and waited for The One to show up. When I was no longer the star student of the class, I settled for mid-range mediocrity and took solace in the fact that I’d still be called Doctor. When I was surrounded by married friends and still had no prospects of my own, I moved to New York to look for a new identity there. And when I got there and ended up broke and interminably single, watching my options reduce down not to The One, but to One, I clung to a raw faith bred not by Sunday School songs and easy platitudes but by disappointment and brokenness. I saw all the things I didn’t have for what they were: a means to an end. A form of attaining my own security and affirming my own worth. I would never have appreciated any of them had they been granted when I wanted them. I would have taken them for granted and made them miserable out of my own defensiveness and discontent, because underneath it all I would have still been broken.

Oh, okay, I’m still broken. Just let the internet stop working or the washing machine overflow or a crumb show up on the counter and that truth will rise to the surface. But. The cracks that showed up before New York, followed by a demolition afterward and a slow rebuilding, provided a new foundation of truth in which people are not provided to supply my happiness, and the roles I play are not the sum of my identity. So I can be a wife and, soon, a mother in freedom. Because I live in a home where patience is more than a virtue–it’s a self-sacrificing way of life (practiced, sometimes, even by me); where forgiveness is the new currency; where The One who did, eventually, show up can look at me and see one “faultless in spite of all her faults.” My lessons in humility have relocated their classrooms from the streets of New York to the confines of our home, but because of a greater wisdom than mine and what looked at the time like denial, they are now full of hope and laughter. And freshly painted walls. And Halloween decorations I never would have had the vision to create. And cleaning supplies.

And never forgetting the fact that I only have a home because of One who gave up His.

Lately, I find myself confronting emotional depths that I had conveniently neglected with the passing years of adulthood. It’s so much easier to face the world without letting yourself get torn apart by it; after all, this planet offers much that can disappoint and even threaten to destroy us, leave tears on our faces and anguish in our hearts. The proper path of maturity often dictates that we find a drawer in which to place these emotions, or extinguish them altogether, and I’ve bought into that practice. It’s easier than feeling things deeply. But pregnancy did a number on me, followed by yesterday’s tenth anniversary, and sometimes the waves of emotion have to roll unchecked with the pulling together and gathering up left for their aftermath.

Ten years. A decade. I watched the television, like most of you, as the images of that day unfurled on screen, and thought I don’t want to degrade the experience of those who lost nearly everything by going into detail about how it affected me on my couch hundreds of miles away, I will say that John Donne’s words never proved truer. And when I became a New Yorker four years later, I was integrated into something larger than myself, something stronger than hate and destruction, something resilient and hopeful beyond despair, a fighting spirit born of what felt very much like faith. Now I’m settled back into a spot hundreds of miles away, feeling the disconnect that geography brings but also the kinship that it can’t erase, and as the State Farm commercial and Paul Simon’s solo appeared onscreen, the wounds of that day felt fresher than ever; sadness and rage rose up within me and left me close to despair, and I couldn’t help but be surprised and unnerved: ten years gone by. Years of healing, and I didn’t even lose a loved one in the disaster, yet there is a depth of anguish that is completely unresolved.

Apparently, I am expanding in more directions than I thought. I watched a profile on the FDNY Ten House, standing next to Ground Zero, the men of that unit who were lost and the tourists who have appeared there every day since to thank the remaining firefighters. I heard their deep gratitude for these expressions of appreciation, coupled with the acknowledgement that each visit is a reminder of the loss, that there is no respite from the pain they carry.

I think about it on a smaller scale, how each of us individually is weighed down by what we choose to carry–how some of it is unnecessary burden and some of it is meant to make us stronger, make us who we are meant to be. I think about the doctor’s order that I not carry heavy loads and TH’s immediate responses: picking shaded parking spots, not letting me help with the groceries. Then, the load I can’t and wouldn’t stop carrying, the one I am now understanding will only grow once it moves outside my body and takes on more meaning: a life inextricably bound to mine and TH’s as we are tied together by the cords of family, a three-fold unit steeped in a new kind of love that inconveniences me out of my self-absorption and into the emotional upheaval that characterizes sacrifice. Sacrifice never has a day off.

In my life, I’ve been taught through difficulty and grace to let go of loads I’m not meant to bear; namely, that illusion of control, the letting go of which at first feels like falling apart but turns out to be a rebuilding through redemption. And I’ve watched the world’s brokenness invade the bonds of love and leave loss behind. Letting go can be freeing or it can feel like death, depending on what we’re charged to give up. Yesterday, I  reveled in The Niece’s laughter as I lifted her in the air; I watched fatherhood take shape in TH as he put The Nephews to bed. I witnessed growth and deepening on a day that will always mark sadness and devastation. And I realized that this is the world in which we live; the love and loss migrating side by side as we walk forward. We can escape neither, and the feelings are not meant to be resolved after ten years or a hundred, because hate is not meant to go unchecked, unanswered, or unmatched by love. Injustice is meant to be swallowed up by ultimate justice, which will not be delivered this side of eternity. So I let the tears flow unguarded and make me more human; I let the nudges from within bring me to life like I never knew life before. I watch from hundreds of miles away as water flows unchecked into the footprints of what was–scars that can only be answered by sacrifice, by what remains standing, and by the depth of wounds that bear my name and carry me.

I am ready for summer to die.

My internal clock must still be set on New York, because as soon as I see September approaching, my body expects to walk outside and feel cool winds, see leaves turning color. And that is just not happening around here in Atlanta. The highs promise to remain in the mid-90s all week, and when I go outside all I feel is pit sweat and lightheadedness. My brothers, this should not be.

The Apple Crumble and Autumn scented candles I bought in a spasm of hope a few weeks ago sit on the shelf, waiting for their moment to come to life. I see Halloween decorations and costumes and candy already dotting the aisles of the drugstore, and all I can do is wait for that turn in the temperature. As a child (i.e., up until a few years ago), I used to cling to summer–with its moments spent on lakes and at beaches and in pools, and dread fall–with its accompanying books and schedules. Now my favorite seasons are the in-between ones, the relief that spring brings from the frozen hibernation of winter and the relief that fall brings from the sweaty heat of summer. These seasons carry promise–the guarantee that time will turn over, that we will not stay where we are forever. Something deep within me responds to that promise, maybe because I know how much I need to not stay in one spot.

And yet that’s what I’m doing these days, home more often than not, my butt growing more accustomed to the couch cushions than the running trail as a matter of both circumstance and necessity. I’m facing the challenge of finding life in a blinking cursor and a growing document on a screen; in walks to the mailbox; in new recipes; in the pages of books; and in the people around me–one highlight being the wake-up call beside me this past Saturday morning in the form of The Husband bolting out of bed voluntarily and running around the house in celebration of Fantasy Football Draft Day. Talk about coming to life: we accomplished more before noon than ever (although most of it had to do with assembling food and drinks and loading them in the car to take to The Sis and Bro-in-Law’s).

I’m learning not to limit life to the places where I expect it to show up. I’m remembering why it’s not just encouraging that there was a third day–it’s essential. There is material I need for each day hidden in the reality of empty sheets and barren tombs. When I face the little deaths that life on this earth inevitably brings, I am forced to embrace the central tenet of my faith, the fact that resurrection means everything. If I don’t believe that life can come from death as much today as two milennia ago, then I might as well just fall asleep until labor starts. But in the waiting, there is living, and the fluttering life I feel inside will soon be matched by cool breezes outside, and as I bury my stuffed-up nose in the pages of great stories, I read the truth behind them all, the idea that sustains both nature and literature and everyday life: with death always comes life. That’s a promise.

Day One of unemployment began with a spin class and a nice long cup of coffee. And now, I sit staring at my to-do list and battling the urge to justify my time off by accomplishing great things in the world, or at least small things like making eye appointments for me and The Husband, or baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies, or updating my CPR certification.

So, instead, I do the thing that is the antidote to my self-driven sense of urgency, the panacea for my hereditary state of anxiety. I grab my heaviest book  and that coffee and a steaming bowl of grits and head to the sunroom. I read, and I listen, and I battle other urges, like the urge to waste time on people.com and Gawker, and I try to be still instead. And sidle up close to that thin veil between earth and eternity, between my perception and what’s Real.

I’ve always wanted time off, and in some ways my move to New York was a form of escape that answered the stirrings within my heart for more than school and my backyard. I never backpacked in Europe or herded cattle out West, and while I know that makes me like just about every other non-independently wealthy person on earth, I did feel the years of school and studying pile upon my shoulders, and my entry into the Real World of working began two short weeks after I received my final educational certificate. I spent so many years educating myself that I never had the luxury of Finding Myself, and twenty-eight years devoid of self-awareness and any sense of irony testify to that. Then New York happened, and TH happened, and old jobs were replaced with new ones, and I landed in a new life in a new city with the old drill in my hand.

Now, the drill and the open-mouthed kids are on an unplanned hiatus, and as my fingers find keys instead of cavities, I am learning to see (once again) the gift of the unplanned. The upside of unemployment. The way prayers are answered with a sense of humor on the side–I thought you always wanted a break?–and how silly it looks to search frantically for ways to replace what may have been removed purposely, by grace. And, at the end of all that, to still admit that the bottom line is always this: my best guess of what Now is supposed to look like is more similar to a child’s stick-figure, crayon-rendered self-portrait than anything da Vinci ever achieved.

And that leaves me with prayer.

TH and I taped and scrubbed walls yesterday, and then he spent the afternoon turning lavender walls blue, and when I ventured upstairs in brief visits with my shirt over my nose, I was amazed at the transformation he was rendering with his roller. Amazed and humbled. And this morning, after the coffee was drained and the reading was done, I felt the urge to return to that room now called Nursery and do something my old schedule wouldn’t have permitted: sit on the floor and be still, and cover The Kid’s room with prayers. From my perch on the floor, at the height of a child, I looked around at the plastic and paint cans and brushes, at the work space that will be a living space; I marveled at the promises that fill it, promises already kept and new promises that wait to be made. Endings that become beginnings and paths that open up to new roads. The most honest and elaborate prayer I can offer is, as always, thank you. For unplanned holes in time that can suddenly seem so full; for Woeful Uncertainty renamed Beautiful Mystery; for partially-finished, debris-strewn rooms becoming temples.

It hit me while I was lying in bed this week, trying to go to sleep. (That’s the time, after all, when my emotions usually become fodder for target practice.) My relief at leaving a negative job situation was giving way to a much more familiar and persistent feeling.

Guilt.

Being one of two sisters, splitting things in half has been my way of life. My parents have been dealt hands of inequity over the years from people who should have known (and done) better, so they have always emphasized equal parts and treatment to the two of us, and it has been with that perspective that I have approached the world: do your part and get your share. And that’s what hit me this week in bed: with house payments and car payments and (my substantial) loan repayments showing up monthly, and me jobless for the foreseeable future, I am not doing my part. Which means The Husband is, on a purely mathematical level, doing more than his. And I have a problem with this that translates into guilt.

This is a marriage, and I’m not punching a clock. So what’s really going on here?

Having operated out of need most of my life, whether it was as a child needing protection or as a should-already-be-an adult dealing in emotional insecurity and needing affirmation, I reached a point of virtual self-sufficience once I finished school and moved across the country. I had to. And though the finances were dicey and sparse the entire five years I set up camp in Manhattan, I managed to get my ducks in a row and wave my flag of independence. As my budget took on order, my emotional life (after a few years of rampant upheaval) went through some cleanup too, and I began to cut back on the childish choices and eventually reached a tenuous peace with what I couldn’t control: no more scratching and clawing my way around a ladder that only led down. I found the guy, got the job, started the joint new life: vows, agreements, plans, budgets.

Promises are one thing. Plans are another. Promises we make to each other and are responsible for their outcome. Plans? We think we carve those painstakingly into stone when we’re actually writing in a child’s hand with crayon on flyaway paper. The world doesn’t owe us our plan. The world doesn’t deal in equity.

Life has a way of exposing our need just when we’ve gone to all the trouble of removing it. And if I can’t stand neediness when it comes from other people, there’s one thing I hate even more: my own neediness bare to the world. Even to TH, who is so much better than I at building upon a foundation of love than equity, of grace rather than fairness. Reminds me of Someone else.

I learned early that the world didn’t play fair, but I took refuge in my idea that God did. It turned out that he is less concerned with my idea of Fair and Just and Equitable, not least because I have a stunted view of what these things actually look like, but also because grace goes beyond what fair ever could. Grace shows mercy, and sometimes mercy can look like broken bones and slammed doors if they keep me from a path of destruction. Or pure selfishness.

Sometimes people lose their security even though it’s not fair. Sometimes that’s the only way those people can learn what it means to be loved beyond what’s fair.