You're so LUCKY!!

I loathe these words. I cannot imagine any words that distance a relationship faster as a mom. I've said it, too. It seems encouraging.

Yes, my son does sleep through the night. Yes, he does weigh as much as a small hippo. Yet, my mind is still full of self-blame, confusion, and longing. I am still tired. I am still lonely. I tell myself every day that this is a phase, to enjoy these moments with him, and things will get easier. I know what is true, but what I need is for people to pull me closer. It seems we push out those we least understand. I do it, too. If I think someone has it together, I certainly don't lean in and learn their secrets...I send them out the door praying they didn't stay long enough to find out I'm nothing like them.

I cannot tell you how often I hear, "You are so lucky! Be thankful!" Translation in my head: "I don't (won't) hear any of your complaints because your life is so seemingly easy." For a long time, I LOVED hear these words. They fed me, and told me I was a great mom. Right? Isn't our children's behavior the DIRECT influence of our amazing abilities as parents? Then everything came crashing down.

To tell you the truth, these past three weeks have been some of my hardest. I have dealt with death, loss, leaving, and yet this seems to get under my skin. Malacai is going through, what I assume, is the 4 month regression, or the 4 month "wakeful". It all started one night about 3 weeks ago. He began waking up in the night to eat, which turned into waking up to play and laugh and cry...and anything to get me in the room. It then spilled over into the days. Naps became shorter. He became harder and harder to get soothed and asleep for naps. Anytime I would lay him down...boom...awake. After a week of waking up constantly at night, we decided to let him cry.[ I actually thought we would have a kid who didn't need to sleep to fall asleep.] Making this decision was extremely difficult. I still hear Cai screaming in my ears long after he is asleep. It haunts me. I'm not sure hearing my son cry will ever get easy. It's necessary for him. Though, it does get much easier with each day. After one night of crying to sleep, Cai slept through the night again. He wakes up every once and a while, but now is able to soothe himself again.

Now there are the naps. Three weeks. It may not seem very long, but, well, it is. Progressively all of our tactics have melted away. Music. In bed early. Rocking. Swing. Paci. Darkness. Eating is all we have left.

EATING IS ALL WE HAVE LEFT.

The guilt creeps up my neck. I want to delete it. Sure, there is nothing wrong with feeding your child to sleep, giving them a bottle to get them drowsy. But it feels like desperation to me, at the end of a long list of options that won't help my son. I hear the critics in my head. I hear the others who say, "oh, that's just fine! It's wonderful to have him on you. These days will be gone before you know it!" Ok, yes. That is true. But I am so tired of sitting in a dark room, alone, praying I don't cough and wake him up.

I'd love a cup of coffee.
Or a shower.

So...what do I do? Austin and I were sitting in the nursery, in the dark of course, holding Cai and whispering.

"We need to see this season as wonderful, too" Austin says, "But I have no idea how."

Abundant life has to include perspective changes and rejoicing in hard seasons, I thought.

So, we call on Jesus again and ask for help. We need different eyes and ears, the same difference we are praying for Cai to discover when He knows Jesus. And somehow this hope, the hope of Jesus, let's me lift my head.

Sure enough, I'm not just lucky, I'm really, really blessed. For one, my son looks elated after eating and falling asleep (see photo above). And more importantly, Jesus is for real.