My friend recently introduced me to the concept of numbering how you are feeling. Some days you are an 8. You have patience and creativity to play with your children all day; you clean your house and cook the supper and even have energy for special time with your husband. Some days you are a 2. You get frustrated with your children and shout at them out of tiredness; the house is a mess; there is no supper and you don’t even have time to shower let alone anything else and you go to bed feeling like a failure.
In our house there have been more 2s than 8s recently.
My 2 month old is colicky and feeds every 2 hours and then goes through 3-4 hours of not wanting to be put down and pulling up his legs and squirming and wriggling and crying. This time usually co incides with when I am alone with the boys. His nights are hit and miss too. Sometimes he sleeps for 6 hours sometimes he is awake for 3 hours.
At the same time my 18 month old has started to throw tantrums at everything. Partly it is his age; partly the unsettledness of the last few months; partly frustration that he doesn’t know how to communicate with me and partly because we are born sinful. He is demanding and whiny and won’t eat what I give him and all his routines are off.
Life is hard!! Each day I have a 2 I feel like a failure, like I should be doing better; like I actually just can’t go on anymore. And what do we do then? What do we do when we know we have to keep going but we don’t know how on earth it is possible?
Then we take a hold of what we know to be true. We grab, with both hands, in a death grip, a truth and we do not let it go. I repeat to myself over and over and over 2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I repeat it when I am up in the middle of the night; when my toddler is working on my last nerve; when I am sobbing my eyes out. Repeat it and tell yourself it is true even though you don’t feel as if it is. His grace is sufficient. His grace IS sufficient. HIS grace is sufficient. And so we go, day after day. In the power of HIS grace.