I look at this picture and think two things.  First, what a sweet moment with my baby.  And second, I look EXHAUSTED.

Recently, I’ve been reading A Circle of Quiet, the first of Madeleine L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, and early on in the book I came across a few pages that spoke exactly to my life right now.  Writing about the “tired thirties,” L’Engle laments:

I was always tired.  So was Hugh.  During the decade between thirty and forty, most couples are raising small children, and we were no exception.  Hugh was struggling to support his growing family in the strange world outside the theatre.  And there was I, absolutely stuck in bucology, with the washing machine freezing at least once a week, the kitchen never above 55* when the wind blew from the northwest, not able to write until after my little ones were in bed, by which time I was so tired that I often quite literally fell asleep with my head on the typewriter.

The various pressures of twentieth-century living have made it almost impossible for the young mother with pre-school aged children to have any solitude.  During the long drag of years before our youngest child went to school, my love for my family and my need to write were in acute conflict.  The problem was really that I put two things first.  My husband and children came first.  So did my writing.  Bump.

Bump, indeed.  For the last five years, I’ve been hustling more, and on less sleep, than at any other time in my life.  Two pregnancies; two babies.  (One in the NICU, the other didn’t sleep.)  Five homes.  Three jobs, plus a stint as a stay-at-home-mom.  (That was the sanest, happiest, most rested period of my thirties thus far.)  I’ve been through a stretch of time for the first eighteen months of Nugget’s life when I never got unbroken sleep for an entire night – not once; was usually up three or more times; and – for awhile at least – averaged four hours or less of sleep per night.  It’s no exaggeration to say that I was debilitatingly tired during that time; I was so tired that I felt nauseous many days.  Even now, six months after we finally sleep-trained Nugget, I still don’t feel caught up on rest from that period.

And somewhere in there, I have to practice law.  I’m not an artist like L’Engle, and I don’t feel called to write like she probably did.  But my family depends on my income and my job is demanding, so – bump.  I’m going through a particularly busy and stressful time at work – these times come around now and again – and while I know I am doing everything I can right now, there is a part of me that wonders whether it is enough.  I try to give my complete attention to the kids when I am with them, and complete attention to my job when I am doing it, and sometimes that’s impossible.  Nugget wakes up early from weekend naps and wants Mommy’s arms and only Mommy’s arms, but I was in the middle of writing a brief and why is he up early?  Peanut’s school calls a conference in the middle of a week when I have every working hour budgeted and then some.  I have to be a mother to preschool-aged children, and also a lawyer, and the constant hustle on both parts is just wearing me down.

There’s nothing to do by this point but hang on tight and keep trudging on in the hopes that when dawn breaks and I am somehow rested again – if that day ever comes – that I will have managed to hang onto both my career and my relationship with my kids.  At the moment I don’t feel like I do anything well, and stuff for just me – well, that’s almost not even worth bothering with.  I squeeze reading into my commutes, I sneak out when I can to go rock climbing while the kids nap, and I hope that someday I’ll have more time for myself and less guilt about it.

I’m not saying I dislike where I am.  I enjoy having a career and contributing to the family income and solving interesting puzzles at work.  And motherhood has fulfilled a deep and cherished, and very long-held, desire of my heart – more so than I could even have imagined it would.  So I hang on tight.  I hope that I will get more comfortable at work.  I look forward to the day when I feel completely rested again.  I am grateful every time someone extends me a little bit of grace that shows me they remember what it was like in the Tired Thirties.  I snatch time for myself – a book here, a run there – when I can, when the kids don’t need me.  I remind myself of the sweet moments when it all just seems too hard.

Bump.