This morning I was awakened once again at 4:17 a.m. by my toddler. And the blur continues.

Then I read this blog post by one of my favorite bloggers, Glennon Melton. Man, I love her. She sounds intense, like in person she might stress me out? But her writing … I just love.

You should read what she had to say this morning. All our children want in this world, really, is for us to be HAPPY. I am a happiness-seeker and have always tried to “feed my soul” when I feel it being emptied, but it’s true that once you become a mother people place all these extra expectations on you. You’re labeled selfish or self-involved if you feed your soul too much. You should be focused more on your children — YOU’RE A MOTHER NOW. There’s no time for you anymore. Usually the people who place that kind of crap on you have forgotten how to feed their own souls.

There are plenty of selfish parents out there who don’t know how to really love another person, and those people can’t be lumped together with people like me who just don’t want to disappear into the blur. Sometimes I feel like the only thing saving me from being sucked into the vortex is this blog, and I might be hanging onto my happiness and my SELF with my fingernails … but I’m hanging on. I have a life to live, and it’s MINE. My children are a part of it, a big part. But they are not my everything. My husband is my partner in all things, but he is also not my everything.

That does not make me self-involved. It makes me a real person with real interests other than my kids … even though they really are all I talk about. So today I encourage any woman reading this to think about what makes you truly happy, and DO IT. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for the people who love you and want you to be HAPPY.

The past month or two has been rough around here. I think it’s just plain exhaustion — lack of sleep makes everything harder. It has nothing to do with the baby … she’s a great sleeper. It’s the older two who are wearing me out, just doing the normal rambunctious boy-type things that 5-year-olds and 2-year-olds do when they are housed under one roof.

Oh, like what?

Like the older one putting the little one on his shoulders and trying to go down the slide in the backyard. Or dumping an $85 bottle of prescription lotion on the floor. Or working in tandem to accomplish a task that is impossible to accomplish alone, like reaching the neighbor’s cat who is sitting on top of the 8-foot fence outside. Like fighting over things and breaking things and beating each other’s heads against the floor.

I know at least the early-morning and midnight wakings are just a phase, and luckily I have a love affair with strong coffee. But the lack of rest has made my patience wear thin and I’ve been forced to face the fact that I yell and act crazy a LOT. After spending days on end feeling like I was doing a crap job as a stay-at-home mom because shouldn’t I be loving every moment and crafting the hell out of something in preparation for Thanksgiving? I resolved to do better. Every night I tucked them in bed determined to do better because they deserved better even though they damn near set the house on fire today. Tomorrow, I wouldn’t get as frustrated. Tomorrow, I would have more patience.

And then tomorrow came and I HAD NO PATIENCE because I was awakened at 4:00 a.m. by Asher who insisted that me, him, his blanket, his kitty cat and his monkey needed to hang out. He drags that crap all over the house with him. All of this.

I was (am) too exhausted to know what to do to make anything better. If I can’t even get my kid to sleep until the sun comes up, how am I supposed to solve any other real-life problems?! That’s what I yelled at Husband when he asked me where his such-and-such was. I don’t know where it is. I cannot solve one more problem.

And so, one day last week after I got Maverick ready for bed, we knelt down to pray like we do every night because it’s the one thing I know I do right after a long day of things I’ve done wrong. We’d had a rough afternoon and I was just relieved that the day was almost over. He surprised me by saying the sweetest prayer, asking God to help him learn to listen so he could do a better job of obeying his Mommy and Daddy. When he was done, I also said a prayer and asked for help to be a good mother. He looked up at me and said “That was so silly, mommy! You’re already a good mommy! Oh my goodness, that is SO SILLY.” And he laughed like it was hilarious and gave me a big hug I will never forget. 

Sometimes I go through these cycles of struggle-struggle-struggle, feel like a failure-feel like a failure-feel like a failure, and then something happens and I am humbly reminded that my children are so full of grace. I don’t think the most important thing is me being the most fantastic mom that ever mothered. That’s not going to happen — let’s be honest. The most important thing is for them to know that they are worthy of an apology. I want my children to understand that everyone messes up. 

Including their very own mother.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I could be coping better, but I don’t really know how to cope any better than I already am, so I bought myself a book — Desperate: Hope For The Mom Who Needs To Breathe.

People kept talking about it so I figured it was worth a shot. I haven’t finished the whole thing yet, but so far I think it’s just what I needed. 

Because I am a person of action, I immediately put some of the ideas into practice — adapting them to my life and personality, and to my kid’s personalities. This book affirmed what I already know to be true: being a mom of small kids is brutal and it eventually gets better, but in the meantime it’s up to ME to keep MY shit together. So whatever I need to do to make that happen … I just need to do it.

I’ve been proactively taking charge of my life and trying to make our situation work for us, and it’s helping a lot. Husband and I are struggling to find our footing as we adjust to having a family of five. I’ll have weeks when I feel like I can totally handle my three kids, and weeks when I am worn so thin I feel like I can’t possibly deal with being a mom for one more minute. An important piece of the puzzle for me is camaraderie and support from women in my life. I love my husband, but expecting him to be my every source of emotional support is unfair. He’s my best friend, but he’s not my girlfriend — and we like it that way. 

This week I was sinking into an emotional pit of despair where I felt like no one understands me or what I’m dealing with and all of this is just TOO HARD, OMG. It was a full-on pity party that I couldn’t put an end to. So in a desperate attempt to feel understood, I texted my girlfriend a long tirade of desolate thoughts.

And this is why I need my girlfriends, each one. I’m paraphrasing here, but basically she acknowledged that what I’m (we’re) doing is hard. She also told that I needed to pull myself out of my hole and buck up, because it’s warrior time. It won’t always be like this, but right now it is, so ARMOR UP. And I thought, yes. No one will ever fully understand what my days are like, and that is okay. I don’t think what I need most is to be completely understood. 

What I actually need most, as it turns out, is for someone to help me put my armor back on when it’s falling off.