Salt and Sugar

Most days I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve been blessed beyond what I could have ever imagined but somedays, somedays I don’t feel blessed. Some days the voices whisper and tell me lies.  But being a mom with twin girls and a boy who is only thirteen months older than them sometimes makes me weary. I see a mom with a two year old and a newborn and I feel like I’ve lost something, I’ve missed out. I’ve missed the ability to treasure each moment. What would it be like to only have to clean two bottoms or only have to carry one child everywhere you go while the others walk on their own?  It would be so nice to only breast feed one child at a time. When the twins were born my son was in the throws of cutting his one year molars. As a result of the combination of post c-section pain medication, hormones and my sons unrelenting screams there was one or maybe two nights where I was convinced that he was actually being tormented by an evil spirit. I would try to hold him and comfort him and he would scream and violently writhe in my arms and then unintentionally kick my c-section wound. My husband and I would head into the nights with very little hope of sleep or even rest from lying down. In those early months a three hour stretch of sleep was very seldom and was the best we could get with a teething one year old and twin newborns. On top of all this I was grieving my dads death quite frequently. Unless you have experienced loss you may not know that grief is quite physically taxing. I speculate that weeping actually burns quite a few calories. We were very, very  tired.  I barely remember the first nine months of my twins lives. I had no energy to play with my thirteen month old and even before the girls were born when he was nine, ten and eleven months I was on and off bed rest and when I was off I was still huge and tired, so so pregnant with two babies at once. I feel confident that I am not being dramatic when I say that the last two years of my life have been very, very hard. Kenturion was five months old when my dad died. We watched his body and the doctors fight and cut and sew and pump fluids and drain fluids and hook him up to grotesque machines for almost three days. None of us slept the last 24 hours before he died. I don’t think I stopped praying out loud for the last six hours before his death, on my knees with my hands stretched out on the floor as they wheeled him past us through the hallway into his last surgery, the last effort. I can remember perfectly even now how I felt as I prayed, every muscle in my body was flexed and to the max because of the great petition I was making for God to save my dads life.  I spared no ounce of energy, no fraction of personal dignity as I petitioned for him to live. I refused to risk standing on the other side of his death and questioning myself about whether I had prayed enough, whether I had cried out to God enough, weather I had become undignified in my posture enough, whether I had worshiped well in a time of suffering and loss. When it was done and we viewed his body for the last time I asked my mother if I could pull the sheet back to see where they opened his chest. They left it open in hopes that his heart could swell and heal. It was the size of my hand and I rested it on the wound. His body was swollen, like it had been awash at sea for those three days because of the amount of medicine the doctors gave him.  I got shingles and the flu that week, likely due to a weakened immune system from grief. I was struggling hard with breastfeeding my son who we now know had a tongue tie. That week after dad died Reed and Kent and I slept in the camping trailer on the side of my parents house as we planned the funeral and Reed helped my mom begin to dive into the mountain of a financial mess she had been left in.  I would wake up in the night at times and cry and then run outside to throw up. As I knelt in the gravel and leaned against the garage and Reed held my hair, I wondered in a small thought in the back of my mind if I just had the flu or if I was pregnant. I was terrified that I was pregnant, with a five month old and a dead dad to grieve.  We found out the night of my dads funeral that I was pregnant and then a month later that it was twins, identical twins who shared a placenta. The house we lived in at the time had quite a few stairs and we knew preterm labor was a potential and that we would need help when the babies came so we resolved to move, another thing to make us tired. Kenturion weaned against my efforts and wishes. We went to over thirty doctor appointments and E.R. visits in the duration of the twins pregnancy. I had pre-term labor issues and every ultrasound was a potential for us to find a development surrounding the girls shared placenta. Stressful is the word I would use to describe the last 23 months. Weary is the word I would use to describe how I feel in this moment with a child that needs to be potty trained and twin girls who lack discipline simply because I am not physically able to be consistent in teaching them. My house is messy, my hair is messy, my skin is dry from lack of drinking enough water and every week there is a five foot wide by three foot tall mountain of laundry that has to be washed, dried, folded and put away and every week there are three mouths that need to be fed with nourishing food and enough water so they aren’t dehydrated. Every week their bodies need to be washed so they don’t get sick. Every day I carry at least two twenty-five pound kids around ten times each day. I lift them at least a hundred times a day. My back hurts all the time. I try to go to the chiropractor but don’t have time or want to spend the money. Kenturion has a rash around his mouth most of the time because I don’t wipe his face after meals. The girls have dread locks on the backs of their heads because I don’t brush their hair. My kids always have muck under their finger nails because I never wash their hands except a quick wipe with a cold dish rag. Mara almost always has a slight rash on her bottom because I don’t have the energy to go find the diaper cream each of the six times I change her each day. Kenturion is  almost two and a half and has never been to the dentist. I see plaque forming on three of his front teeth. He still sucks a binky and I think it’s ruining his teeth. He still drinks a bottle before he goes to sleep because I don’t have energy to fight that battle right now. The girls are in carseats that don’t quite fit right in the car. My car is a mess. My shower hasn’t been cleaned in at least a month my floors have not been mopped in at least six weeks. I literally scrape my kitchen floor once a month with a metal spackle knife because I haven’t been able to teach my kids to not throw food on the floor when they eat. Most of the time I feel like a failure. My house is a mess, my life is a mess and my heart is a mess too.  But..…but   …..in this very moment……. there is a white haired, blue eyed boy under the covers at the end of the bed that I am nestled in. He is popping his head in and out of the covers saying with a huge grin, “I am silly! I am silly mamma!”  His coral colored gums flash at me over the computer screen. There is snow on the grass outside my window and the bamboo bushes are five green metronomes sweeping peace into my heart. A friends kind gift left on my porch of tea and chocolate is kindling to start a fire to warm again my weary, weary soul. And in my head a song starts to rise, “oh…….how he loves us so….oh…..how he loves…..how he loves us so.” How does He love me?  He loves me with arms wide. He loves me with blood spilled and flesh torn. Weary, if ever I felt to have been weary it is therefore that I know Him more deeply, the man of sorrows. Weary but weighted. The trials of this world are producing in me an eternal weight of glory. A weight of worship.  In other words…. My life is exalting the one who is so worthy to be praised. My weariness is my worship just as well as my hands raised and my voice in song….if not more so than sweet chapel praises. My weariness is my worship because I do not fray, I chose not to run from these curses, these trials and in my heart of hearts my soul bows to King Jesus. I want His way more than any way. I choose to open my hands to the gifts as well as the gray skies and ask God to use them for change. I need change. There are few things that I know with complete certainty and one is that I know I’m sinful and another is that I know that Jesus is the cure for that sin. And He did it! It is finished , redemption accomplished and I am in love! So I ask… I ask again and again, “Lord reveal yourself to me. Show me more of who you are.” And this is His road of revelation for me right now; snotty noses, dirty hands an aching back, and JOY….. buckets full of joy. The giggles heard in my house could be used as substitute for the most potent depression medication. The three bouncing naked bums running for bath time are almost too much to take in terms of the oxytocine levels they induce. And the little voice of my son whispering as he repeats every word of my husbands prayer at meal time is barely tolerable until I hear a tiny two year old squeaking, “I love you Jesus, we worship you.”  And my heart explodes out my eyes. Unspeakable joy amidst trail , fatigue, grief and pain. I’m a mom and like so many moms I am so weary… yes I am, but balanced and then outweighed with joy. Salt so we can taste the sweet as so much sweeter, and in the beauty of evening sunsets… what be it that makes them yet more beautiful, but the gray clouds in contrasting sky.