Since the birth of my darling little boy sixteen months ago, I have posted on this blog exactly 15 times. I have been caught up on the laundry twice. I’ve made breakfast for my family perhaps 20 times during all those months (pathetic considering that we used to eat breakfast together almost every day). I’ve purchased, rather than sewn, the Christmas pajamas; I haven’t scrapbooked a page. And, after our recent move (recent being four months ago), I still have a basement full of stuff to unpack. Who knows how long it will be before I get to it? Who knows how long it will take me to finish my next novel (at the turtle’s pace I’m writing at now)? Who knows if my family will ever again have clean clothes when they need them or anything besides cold cereal for breakfast?
To be fair, our little guy is not entirely to blame for my lack of progress in writing and just about everything else. His arrival coincided with several other significant events in our lives, all of which have drastically altered my days, nights, and pretty much every breath I take.
Without going into all that, I’ll just say that I’m hard pressed to think of a time as stressful as the past several months. My husband and I have been dealing with several crisis of varying degrees with our four older children. We continue to love them all dearly, but they are draining us both mentally, physically, and financially. Added to their teen angst, learning disablities, and the like, our sweet, sleepless baby has just about put me over the edge. Since his arrival he has yet to sleep through the night. This has been new territory for my husband and I, as our other children were all pretty great sleepers (three of the four sleeping through the night by six weeks—we didn’t know how good we had it!). Since Andrew’s arrival, and our subsequent sleeplessness, we’ve read all the books, tried all the methods and come rather close to losing our minds in our efforts to get a good night’s sleep once again.
Recently, during a middle-of-the-night, rocking and calming my baby session, I had a frank discussion with our Father in Heaven about the state of my life. My purpose was two-fold. First, I recognized the many blessings he’s bestowed upon me. I have a wonderful husband and five unique, exhausting children. I’m grateful for this crazy family of ours. I love them all dearly; my life revolves around them. I’m doing the things I wanted more than anything else when I was growing up—being a wife and mother. But lovely as that is, lately my life has had its moments. And it was about these moments and our five children, specifically the one on my lap, that the second part of my prayer was concerned with. It was time, I’d decided, to call in the promise from Heavenly Father that he won’t give us more than we can handle.
Because I’m pretty sure I’m there, as in one beat away from total insanity.
It’s one thing to have a baby who keeps me up at night. It’s another to have that baby plus a fourth grader who, in spite of my year-long effort homeschooling her, spending thousands in vision therapy etc. still cannot read. And it’s yet another to have three high needs teenagers all in various crisis points in their lives. In other words—
“Uncle, already!”
And so I pled with our Father in Heaven to please let our little guy sleep so I could. So I could be well rested and level-headed to deal with the events of my days. So the tears I’d probably cry would at least be from true emotions and not sleep-deprivation.
As is often the case, this particular prayer was not answered in the way I hoped. My baby did not fall into an instant, deep sleep. He did, however, wrap his arms around my neck and lay his head on my shoulder—one of my very favorite things in the world. I’ve been a mom long enough to know that hugs like that get farther and fewer between as children grow older. I cherish every one and, tired though I’ve been these past months, I’ve cherished the time, these middle of the night moments, with Andrew.
As I felt his little arms tighten around me, the thought distinctly came that this was exactly what I needed. While I’d been yearning for sleep, Heavenly Father was giving me what I actually needed even more—peaceful moments with the baby we wanted so badly, time alone with him, reminders of the joys that really do come with being a parent. In our crazy, busy, stressful days, there isn’t a lot of alone time for Andrew and I. But for the past sixteen months, we’ve spent good time together anyway, rocking, singing, reading stories. I’ve had plenty of chances to brush the hair back from his face, to look down into his eyes, to kiss his neck. We’ve cuddled and snuggled even more than I did with our other children during less stressful and busy times of life. In short, I’ve been able to do what I promised myself I would—to enjoy and treasure the oh-so-short time when he’s a baby.
It was a revelation that left me uplifted and gave me the energy to pull myself out of bed the next morning and face another day. Our lives and our family are certainly not perfect, but I am grateful for the sweet, middle-of-the-night reminder that Heavenly Father is aware of each of us and knows and provides what we truly need.