I’m lazying on the couch while the dogs sprawl over my feet. The boys are just beginning to stir, and I can hear the girls whinnying and neighing as they prance ponies around their room. These fleeting sunrise moments are enchanting; but sooner or later, I’m going to have to get up and pull the rug out from under them. For now, I have piping hot coffee thanks to my handy thermos, and it’s just a little too chilly to move about the room. The mountains don’t care if it’s mid May, and neither does the lake that has barely thawed from the coldest winter I can ever remember in my life. This is my morning ritual–hot coffee on the couch. I sleep here many nights because it’s easier to drag myself off of a couch than to pull myself out of bed. And to tell you the truth, I’m not thoroughly convinced of my bed’s morality. It’s a seductive being with phenomenal powers. I love it, but it never knows when to let go.
There are dishes all over my kitchen because I claimed yesterday as a writing day. Then I didn’t get much done because the kids weren’t on board with that. They were on board with whining over writing assignments and forgetting how to do math. Balancing life is possible, but it isn’t always easy. And some weeks I just pray for the blessed reset button of Sabbath to hurry.
My life is good, like farm-life is good and childbirth is good–it’s the kind of good that character and joy are made of. But there are several moments in every day when I look at dishes and I want to break them. I want to put on my running shoes and beat the road to a bloody pulp–but there is no one to watch my children. So instead, I turn on hot water and I make a sink full of suds. I wash those dishes and I scrub those pans and I sing and pray until my shoulders drop back where they should be and my blood is finally a little cooler than the dish water. Then I go about my life until the next wall crashes down in front of my face and I fail and then begin again.
Last night was one of those nights you leave out of a letter to grandma and instead drive it down to the local bar to drink beer and sing it in blues form. It was one for the record books. I eventually gave in to my four year old’s shenanigans and crawled into his bed hoping my presence would be sleep inducing. He decided that he didn’t want to sleep with me, and the frown I made to coerce him turned into a blubbering flow of hot tears that must have been dammed by something government made. I tried to wipe them away, but they just kept coming, and coming, and coming. When he threw his little body over my chest and cried, “I’m sorry I made you sad! I’m sorry I made you sad!” that didn’t help matters, either. I kissed him and excused myself and then drove to the nearest mental institution.
Did I mention that I was tired?
This book that I am writing is much dearer to my heart than the last one–though I never thought that would be possible–and I’m answering the same sweet call from the Father in writing it. Even so, I have to fight exhaustion and actually write it. It still surprises me how words from my glorious day dreams fail to find their own way to the page. But they don’t, and this book will repeat everything I have ever written in falling drastically short of my own expectations. Even shy the prettiness of perfection, the five word jewels that Tennyson wrote about and so often used, it’s taking longer to finish than I had planned. When you self publish, you pay yourself to write with little hope that investment will ever be returned–except, I hope, in lives changed. I no longer run ads on this blog because, despite common sense, obedience demanded that I take them down. The money I’d tight-fisted to last through this book writing is gone, and so I’ll finish it this month or fail to finish for quite a while. I’m still hoping beyond hope to finish (if you feel led to pray for that). Actually, I’m kinda freaking out.
And also, I’m a little tired.
