left without . . .

On any given day I have ten or more ideas for a blog post.

I keep a steady stream of maybe posts already written in my drafts section.

But usually I just plain run out of time to work my way through all those ideas and false starts and half-completed sentences.

Life just wears me down and fills me up and spreads me thin.

Some days it’s the baking.

Some days it’s the chaos and the mess that keeps me from writing and processing and attempting to craft pretty words out of ordinary living.

But today – oh today – it’s just been the details.  

The sit-down discussions. The wearying task of talking through life in all its tribulations with so many brown-haired and blonde-headed children who share my last name and my dinner table and occupy the backseat of my car.

From little to big – it’s been a big day loaded with words.

Words said through tears, through clenched teeth, through barely controlled voices.

Words of dissent and disrespect from a five-year-old.  Words of anger and frustration from an eight-year-old.  Words of confession and shame from a nine-year-old.  Words of reproach and questioning from an eighteen-year-old.

Words that declare “I am right and you are wrong”.

Words that beg to be heard and words that should have been left unsaid.

The din of it all is still overwhelming even in this quiet, crisp night air that is sitting on my shoulders and pressing on my heart.

And I have nothing left over to share.

Except this:

Parenting is heavy.

It’s lovely – that’s true.

And I am not unhappy to be under its power and its weight and its burden.

But all the same – I am tired.

And for tonight – this task of being Mother has taken all the words I have in me.