Sometimes...

It happens every few weeks.  Okay, so I like to think it only happens every few weeks.  Maybe it happens every few days.  Or every few hours.  Shoot, sometimes it happens every few minutes.

Sometimes, a lot of times, I want to give up.

I want to curl up in a ball and cry.  (And sometimes I do!)

I want to turn on the TV so my toddler will be distracted and not see me empty the snack drawer into my mouth.  (And sometimes I do!)

I want to wear my sweatpants to the grocery store because the idea of wearing the exact same pair of jeans every single day because they're the only pair of jeans that I can yet squeeze into with these post-partum thighs of mine makes me feel despondent.  (And sometimes I do!)

Sometimes, a lot of times, I just want to bury my head under the covers and simply give up.

That happened today.  When my toddler woke up prematurely from his nap (which happens waaaaayyyy too often, I might add) and was crying and crying and crying for me with weary tears streaming down his face even as my own tears were falling because I'm completely, utterly, overly exhausted myself.

It happened when my infant screamed and screamed tonight and woke up his brother and tore my heart out all at once.

It happened when I called my husband to bawl to him and hear his voice for comfort but he didn't answer because he was delivering someone else's baby.

I wanted to give up.

But I didn't.  Because I can't.  Because I love these boys too much and because they need me.  And because God came when I prayed, "Jesus, please help!"  I maybe had to pray that prayer several times before I felt like He heard me, but I knew He heard me and was holding me all the while.

And somehow, by the grace of God alone, I survived another day as a mom of two tiny boys and the wife of a medical resident who isn't here much right now and who wishes he could rescue me but can't.  These days when Eli is gone before we get up and still gone when we go to bed are really rough.  We've had too many of them lately and it's wearing us down.  So sometimes I want to give up.  To throw in the towel.  To quit residency altogether and go live in my parents' basement.

But I don't.  Because God's grace allows me to take the covers off my head and go to the crying toddler in the other room and comfort him.  Because God's grace allows me to bear the screams of the infant because I know that his every need has been met and there's nothing more I can do for him but let him cry it out.  Because God's grace allows me to remember that we are blessed to have crying, screaming little boys in the first place, and that I am blessed to be their mom even when I bear the majority of the parenting single-handedly these days.

These are the thorns in my flesh.  The trifecta: residency and loneliness and exhaustion.  Sometimes they torment me and I plead with the Lord to take them all away.  But His grace is sufficient and His power is made perfect in my weakness (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

Good thing, because I'm weak as weak can be on nights like these.

So another day is done, and tomorrow will probably bring another moment, or two or three, when I will want to give up.  But I won't.  Because God's grace is sufficient...