“I don’t know how you manage.” I receive this comment most often after I hear, “You’ve got your hands full.”
Simply, I don’t. This past year, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 has resonated in my soul innumerable times.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I spent a lot of time this year exhibiting Christ’s power–my weakness was unavoidable. There is no other way to explain how I survived. Day by day, minute by minute, second by second, he has provided grace upon grace to continue. Each day, another victory. And when I didn’t think I could wake to wash, rinse, and repeat (again), somehow, the monotonous overwhelming days turned into a year. And we made it!
There were many moments I thought I was losing my mind, and texts to my mother were crazy. To give you a snippet about what an average day looked like, this may have been one of those texts–“Current status of house: T and P are playing with dental floss, S is wiping her hiney with wet wipes and taking them to the froggy potty. Then, she is finding and using all the minuscule pieces of tp that T originally brought me to use to wipe S that wouldn’t even be big enough for the hamster’s behind. The twins are hooked to the teat and the living room smells like poop because S just took the world’s largest bm in my living room on the froggy potty. Meanwhile P is watching the whole thing with his binoculars and T is telling him that isn’t appropriate…” Hello, weakness.
I fully acknowledge that people have been having twins since the beginning of time, and there’s nothing new about having twins. 5 kids under 5 was tough stuff, but truthfully, it doesn’t matter if you have one, three, five, or nineteen, being a mother is hard work! And the beauty of being a mama is no matter how much your days stink (truly), the mysterious and contradictory joy that accompanies those days can somehow far surpass all of the mama difficulties.Yes, in a short breadth of time, my kids will be grown.
But that doesn’t resolve the real, daily hardships we face. And yet, through the hardships, this year, I’ve been able to more fully realize my inadequacies and have come to embrace much more fully His gentle whisper, “I am sufficient.” And I stubbornly have learned to embrace the truth that His grace is sufficient for me and will be my strength when the only feelings I have are my mama weaknesses.
So happy #1, my sweet twins (albeit late-it’s how I roll these days). I love you. Thanks for teaching me to lean into His grace. And for teaching me that the answer to “How do you manage?” is “On my own, I can’t.”
