Sometimes I get tired.

The repetitious futility of my existence sometimes wears on me. Loading and unloading, folding and sorting, rinsing, flossing, brushing, scolding, wiping, hugging, wiping, cleaning up, sweeping, spitting in the wind.

We have a home study coming up. We want our house to be clean. So we clean it every morning. And by the time Dad gets home, it looks exactly like it did before we cleaned, except worse, because while we were cleaning, the brute squad got out a game of trivial pursuit ca. 1985 (the brute squad doesn't read yet), played with markers, peed in their pants and left them where they dropped (the brute squad is often unclad), or just went to the family closet and changed their 'clads' multiple times, no doubt in search of that one perfectly mismatched combination that says, 'my mother doesn't dress me and we get our clothes in bags not stores'.

So we clean, the house gets messier, and Dad, aka The Hammer, says, "okay, guys, we really have to clean tomorrow". The older kids, the ones doing the cleaning, say in a very realistic not rebellious way, "why don't we wait to clean until after the littles go to bed Friday night, then it will be clean for the visit Saturday?"

We have harnessed the army. We have taught it to work. We have trained it to help itself function. We have not, however, taught it to be responsible. We have trained it to match socks, but it doesn't care if they are matched correctly. We have trained it to clean a room, but not to keep it clean. We have taught it to check things off the list, but not to bear the burden.

And sometimes the volume overwhelms me. May I have a string cheese? Yes. Whammo, the entire pack is gone. May I have an apple? Yes? In the attic? Sure. There are 15 apple cores in the attic. No, 14, the baby just ate one. Umm, 15, I guess, she spit it all over the floor. May we play in the hose? Yes. That'll be one load of laundry that has to be washed immediately or it'll turn into mildew in 12.6 seconds.

But it is the emotional things that really bring me down. My incredibly handsome talented charming fun delightful pre-adolescent son had a crisis today. He's just at that age. He's sleeping in (always a morning person before), he doesn't get jokes (normally has the best sense of humor), he takes everything personally and is convinced he's the ugly one (I said, you're kidding, right?!). He's just at that age. So I spent 45 minutes laying on the couch with him, putting him back together like a lego kit, while every body sipped frozen dyed sugar water out of plastic sleeves on the back porch (should serve as a homing beacon for every ant in a 7 mile radius)(I hate ants)(we have three{3} different kinds of ants)(grrr).

Am I moving forward? Am I just spinning my wheels? Is this thing on? Didn't I say all these things yesterday?

The distance between who I am and what I did today and who I want to be is vast. It's not that I want to be anywhere else doing anything else. I just want to do it better. I want to eat less, yell less, growl less, weigh less, smile more, sing more, and eat the vegetables I buy and grow before they grow mold.

I am better than I used to be. Barely. My husband is allowing us to host some visitors for a church thing for 3 weeks. That is huge. We have earned a pittance of respect. He thinks we can keep it together to the point of not being disgusting for a whole three weeks. We "usta-couldn't" keep it clean long enough to have someone over for dinner.

But sometimes I get tired. I don't feel strong. I don't feel loved. I feel like a slug. How long does it take to be not fat? Longer.

Jesus, I need You to pull me into Your current. My own will is either not strong or goes the wrong way. I need to see Your beauty in the moment by moment, because I can't hold on to it for a whole day or even an hour. Draw me after You and I will run. I will run.