growing pains

or, choosing the good

Photo by Imani Bahati on Unsplash

With my back on the floor
Cold linoleum icing my growing pains
Watch the ceiling fan turn its shape again
My threads are coming loose

It’s the day after Christmas, and an impromptu decision to visit family has ruined naptime. I find myself lying on my back on the frigid concrete floor of my mother-in-law’s bathroom, the only room in the house dark enough for my girls to sleep, nursing the baby for an hour as my arm loses sensation because she won’t transfer to her makeshift bed, while the toddler whines from her pack-and-play to tell me that she’s not interested in napping (duh), that she has to poop (she doesn’t), that she needs a glass of water (she’s already had one).

I’d spent the night before allowing my anger to be transformed into joy as I cleaned up the Christmas dishes long after everyone else had gone to bed. I chose to be grateful for the day, to extend understanding towards those who could have helped clean but chose not to, to put in the extra work to make things simpler the next day… and I went to bed at peace. All that nice talk is out the window now. In this moment, desperate to slip out of the room leaving two sleeping babes in my wake, to be Sara for a moment instead of Mom, the anger—at everyone, at no one, at myself—is all-consuming.

Yeah, I’m one spoon away
From setting the ends of my hair on fire
If I’m kindling for a little while
At least I'd feel of use

When this song first came out, I—like many millenials—took the use of the word “spoon” to refer to “spoon theory”. Now, two kids later, I wonder if they meant literal spoons. Full of guac. On the floor. Again.

While my particular self-destructive tendencies are rarely flammable, I certainly relate to the sentiment. Sometimes my self-destruction is emotional: stewing in anger instead of forgiving. Sometimes it’s physical: gnawing on my fingers when my nursing aversion is intense, the closest I’ve ever come to genuine self-harm. And sometimes it takes the form of passive aggression, of burnout, of refusal to rest. White-knuckling my way through self-gift—at least I feel of use.

Maybe then my breath could embody
A wildfire starting
I'd sweep up the forest floor
And my body breathe life into the corners
Be a darker soil

I have some friends who are wrestling with some really heavy stuff—abuse, divorce, a messy conversion, worry about their children, drugs, anxiety, financial insecurity, and the list goes on. We all have friends who are struggling. We all are struggling ourselves.

Somehow this makes the cross easier to carry. “Whatever this sleepless night is worth, Love,” I whisper in my mind as I cradle a flailing baby in my arms, “it’s yours. Whatever good you can do through my best attempts at accepting the cross, do with those graces what You will.” If I can offer up my own sufferings—indeed, my own self—however small or petty or silly it might seem in the grand scheme of things, for those friends, for graces to be showered on them, for their peace of mind and deeper trust in Christ, then that suffering is fruitful. It feels fruitful. I can assent intellectually, of course, to the reality that all suffering is fruitful when united with the suffering of Christ on the cross… but to say, “I’m accepting this peacefully for so-and-so. I’m choosing virtue instead of vice as a prayer for this person.” There’s something beautiful and powerful in that.

The reality of the universal Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is so tangible in those moments. And while that prayer is too often followed by a meltdown on my part when things still don’t change—when the baby is still awake three hours later, when my own insomnia flares up, whatever it may be… In that moment, there is still grace to be had.

Making lists, folding laundry
Keeping tidy with my radio show
I’d be lying if I told you
I’m keeping tidy anymore

We spent the first few days of our Christmas break resting. Recovering from the burnout of a fourth grade class of thirty students and the first full semester of two kids. We prioritized each getting at least an hour of truly kid-free time every day. We stayed home, for the most part, or at least close to home. And then, almost imperceptibly, we shifted. We took morning trips. We folded weeks’ worth of laundry. We started making progress on projects that had gotten put on the back burner. Thinking through potential routines and hopes and dreams for the coming year. Job applications. Freelancing(!!) Financial plans. Writing plans.

Two months later, we can see how some of these things have panned out. Some haven’t. Some are still in progress—we’re placing them over and over again in the Lord’s hands, asking that His will be done. Some days we feel “with it”. Other days we feel like we’re free-falling, tumbling through scarcity or fear or emotional turmoil.

The laundry has piled up again. Clean, for the most part, but unfolded. This is a source of shame for me, and I find myself bringing it up often, as if allowing you all to witness Mt. Clean Laundry will somehow absolve me of the guilt of letting my family dress themselves from a Floor Pile O’ Clean Clothes.

The tidiness—in every area—comes and goes in a familiar but not-always-predictable rhythm. And there’s comfort in seeing it, even if I still long for stability instead.

Yeah, I swing from believing
That maybe my working will all pay off
To considering drinking with Molotov
I'm halfway out the door

My mood on any given day feels at once annoyingly calculable and conveniently out of my hands. Have I had enough to eat and drink for how long I’ve been awake? How much sleep did I get last night? Where am I in my cycle? Did the girls nap normally? Did we get any fresh air? How much of a rush are we in to get to whatever we’re doing next?

Sometimes it really does feel like a light switch in my brain—I’ll be totally fine one moment, and the next I’m ready to come out guns-a’blazin to take a swing at whoever says the wrong thing at the wrong time. One day, I’m confident and comfortable in the little routines and rituals that form the building blocks of our little life; the next, I’m ready to move halfway across the city (or state, or country) and buy a farm and start homesteading in a place where we don’t know anyone. One day, our toddler will melt my heart with her blossoming understanding of the faith, and the next, she’ll throw a toy at my face and I’ll lose it.

It ebbs and flows, this little vocation of ours. And sometimes this is natural and normal and good and healthy, while other times it’s a sign that something needs to change. We usually intuitively know the difference, although we don’t always acknowledge it. In those “halfway out the door” moments, how do we respond? How do we simultaneously convince ourselves to return to the fray while also taking care of our legitimate unmet needs?

Eventually, I pray, we’ll learn to avoid that headspace from the get-go, to advocate and balance, to pray and work.

But I think we all know that this won’t ever fully happen this side of Heaven. And that’s okay.

Maybe then my brеath could embody
A wildfire starting
I'd sweep up the forеst floor
And my body breathe life into the corners
Be a darker soil

Can this season of parenting littles become something fruitful? Do I know how to trust that the front-end work we are doing will pay its dividends in later years? It all feels so monotonous sometimes. So overwhelming. Crowding in on me. Climbing all over me. Tugging at my shirt and my pants and my name.

Do I believe that this season will bear good fruit? Do I know how to remain open to the possibility that it won’t? How do I hold the belief that my actions, attitudes, words, and example in this time are important, even critically so, in my children’s development, while also acknowledging that they, like me, have free will and may choose something else?

Do I allow myself to fall in love with good things? Do I set the example of chasing after the True, the Good, and the Beautiful so as to allow myself to flourish, helping to form my children’s taste and appetites so that they, too, can pursue Christ?

What about my marriage? Am I tending to my relationship with James so that it will bear good fruit?

In short, am I pursuing holiness? Is this vocation—this beautiful, painful, exquisite, heart-wrenching, laughing-till-you-cry, crying-till-you-run-out-of-tears vocation—is it working?

Promise me, that you'll start where I end
And I promise to give you everything that I am
We’ll go on and on and on

The day after Christmas, James got sick with a cold. We were worried it was the flu, but it seemed to pass more quickly than that. But, like every time one of us is down for the count in some way or another, I have been struck by the grace of the sacrament of marriage, which enables us to pick up for one another when we need it, even when we thought mere moments before that we would be unable to endure another minute.

It’s the same thing when I’m ill, or when I’ve had a long night with the baby, or when we accidentally double- or triple-schedule ourselves and I have to dash out to Mass right at bedtime (yes, this has happened more than once, I know, I know) leaving him to handle bedtime for one or both of the girls by himself.

We pick up the slack for one another. We lean into the complementarity and asymmetry of different seasons, even when it doesn’t feel fair.¹

In the end all I hope for
Is to be a bit of warmth for you
When there’s not a lot of warmth left
To go around

This constant calling to self-gift, to self-emptying love, is relentless. Motherhood is relentless. Marriage is relentless. And it is in and through that relentlessness that we are being sanctified.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that these first years of parenting—these years of spit-up and sound machines and separation anxiety—are stretching for a reason. This season of matrescence is a season of growth in every conceivable metric, and there are bound to be growing pains that come along with that. This is the hard and slow and beautiful work of holiness, my friends. This is the beloved cross of our vocation.

Where are you currently experiencing growing pains? Do you see the growth happening yet, or are you lying in the dark hoping-against-hope that it’s coming?

1. You’ll be seeing this piece by

Leah Libresco Sargeant

referenced a couple times in the coming weeks as I just adored it and it ties in so well with where my thoughts have been lately. Just go ahead and read it now if you haven’t already.