Ups and Downs

On any given day at home with the kids, I run the emotional gamut from total joy to total frustration. There are times I feel so touched I want to freeze the moment forever, and times I am so frustrated I wish I could get out of the house and scream.

Sometimes she spontaneously hugs me and says, “mommy, I love you!” Or, “mommy, are you sad? It will be okay.” Today after I got home from work, she muttered quietly to herself while playing nearby, “mommy, miss you.” Sometimes she puts two-and-two together and says something so clever, or insightful, that I am momentarily speechless. Sometimes she will giggle hysterically, or throw her arms in the air and dance, or lie quietly with me.

But sometimes she drives me up the wall. She will keep yelling what she wants, over and over and over, completely ignoring my responses, as if she hasn’t heard me say no, and why. She will whine all day. She will say she wants to eat something, then change her mind and refuse to touch it once I’ve gone to the trouble of getting it ready. She will do a million little things that I technically can’t discipline her for, but which build up gratingly on my nerves.

He is the same. Sometimes he’ll pull himself up and wiggle his butt, or clap on command, or grin so big I feel like my heart splits open. Sometimes he’ll cry every other hour through the entire night. Or be so fussy he starts wailing the minute I try to set him down.

And it’s the same with the two of them in combination. Sometimes he’ll shriek in happiness and crawl towards her, or she’ll hug him and stroke his hair. She’ll take care of him when I’m preoccupied, wiping his drool, jiggling toys in his face, distracting him from a dangerous situation by stuffing Cheerios in his mouth. Sometimes they will both have a meltdown at the same time, or her meltdown will wake him from a nap just when he finally fell asleep.

This is why any given day at home is so exhausting. This is why I don’t know what to say half the time when D asks how the day went. Um, it was exhilaratingly cute and inexpressibly frustrating? You had to have been there? This is why work is so much easier. It takes a lot for someone to upset me in the clinic or operating room, and even then it doesn’t nearly approach how frustrated the kids can make me. Marriage certainly has its emotional highs and lows, but they happen more like once a month instead of five times a day.

I think this is why parenting is a spiritually formative experience. You either rely on God, or you go crazy. There’s no room for middle ground, for getting by. No space for idle torpidity. There’s no looking good at church or small group, no hiding your bad mood from your spouse at the end of the day. Either you operate in the Spirit, or your natural selfishness and weariness emerge with flying colors. Kids don’t have filters. They let out all their joy; they push all your buttons. Going along for the ride with perspective, helping the best and worst moments count towards something meaningful and build towards something bigger—that’s not something you can do on your own.