How do I begin to say...

The truth? the truth to the question that we all get asked about a million times a day?

How are you doing?

Most of the time, my answer is something along the lines of "Good. Insane. Life is crazy, but it's good." And that's really true. It really is. Life is good - there is inherent goodness in life simply because of the Giver of it, and there are shining silver linings to every single day. And life in our house is mostly crazy. Who would expect it to be anything else with a 5, 3, and 1 year old and a newborn/infant around?

But really...really, if I'm being honest the main word running on repeat in my mind all fall was not good. It was drowning. We all often say that we are just trying to keep our head above water with something. Well, I wasn't even doing that any more. I felt like I was drowning.

I know I seem on here like everything is all happy-happy-unicorns. And that's an intentional effort, not an intentional deception, and I'd like to share the difference with you. I'm not trying to make anyone think I've got it all together. And believe me, if you stop by my house unannounced, you'll see it with your own eyes. So why do I intentionally not blog all the choppy waters that leave me floundering and gasping for air?

For one thing, I don't want to look back on this time of my life and reread all the pity-party-lines all over again. That's easy enough for any of us to drudge up; I frankly don't even really need a whole lot of drama to be able to throw a pretty smashing pity party. But that's not God-honoring in the moment, and it's not any part of how I want to live each day, and it's certainly not the kind of legacy I wish to leave.

Negativity is not how I want to color our life today, nor how I want to reflect on it later. So I don't flesh it all out. I don't make exhaustive lists of every single yucky thing that happened in a single day (although trust me, I've been tempted on more than a few occasions recently). So when I say (in real life and here) that life is hard but it's good, I'm not trying to be all holy-holy-righteous-glass-half-full girl. I'm often struggling, and just trying to feed the good wolf, y'all.

But...(second), I *am* pretty much a glass half full kind of girl. And my gentle faithful Father continues to teach me lessons along my way. I like to write them down, because I want to remember them. And I like to share them, because I know how it encourages me to hear other people's stories, and I pray it will encourage someone else to hear mine. And I want to see the good in the bad, the intended beauty in the seeming disaster.

Let me go a little deeper, a little more personal here. When I wrote The Problem with Devotion Based on Emotion, I was in an awful place. I was in Mordor, if you've read the post. I simply wrote down the sermon I had been preaching to myself for several weeks.

I recently shared an "out of the mouths of babes" story about Little Lady. She is, without a doubt, far more spiritually sensitive and spiritually discerning than her older brother. It is remarkable, to be quite honest with you, but along with that comes intense attack. When I told you a little more about all of us, who we really are, I said that she is a bit of a troublemaker, and we are trusting in faith that our shepherding will make her stubborn for Kingdom purposes...well, I didn't exactly say much about how difficult that shepherding can be. Husband and I wryly joke to one another that if we sent James Dobson a video of LL on one of her tears, he'd have to write yet another new edition of his famous book.

Imagine trying to herd a sheep who was hellbent (yes, I said it, and trust me, I mean it) on wandering away. Who bolts away; you chase it; it bites you and runs the other direction. You bodily carry it back to the fold, because it refuses to submissively follow. As soon as you reach the rest of the herd, it sets about bellowing and bleating...such a ruckus you can barely think. You try to remember what those formulaic books about shepherding said about this; all they ever said was that if you gently and consistently herded your sheep, they would all fall in line, and if they didn't, well then you're just shepherding incorrectly. You must be a failure of a shepherd. In fact, the book says that if you have failed then you're probably not really a shepherd at all. You dress like one, and talk like one, and hang out with them, but if you can't get a wayward sheep under control, then you're just fooling yourself about being a shepherd. The books say probably what your problem is is that you are actually the one rebelling against authority, and the sheep knows it, and is just so smart that it refuses to submit to your authority as a shepherd unless you're submitting to your own authority of...well, whoever a shepherd's boss is.

Now imagine that this sheep does this every day...all day...for months at a time. Your other sheep are suffering from the enormous amount of time the wayward one requires. Your pastures look just terrible, as you haven't had time to do anything to them. Your robes are probably filthy and torn from chasing the sheep through the mud and briars all day long. You are enormously sleep-deprived, because between the baby lamb in the fold waking up at night, and having to use the nighttime hours to complete pasture-work that used to be accomplished during the day when the wayward sheep could actually frolic with the other sheep without head-butting all of them, your eyes are closed for maybe - maybe - five hours total a night, and that not all at once.

Do you begin to understand where the word "drowning" is coming from?

I digress.

When I wrote The Tipping Point, and at the end encouraged us all to not make permanent decisions in a temporary season, trust me folks, I was shouting those words at myself most loudly of all. A few weeks ago I told Husband that with just the basics of taking care of everyone, housework, errands and shopping, teaching school, laundry, meals, etc...I feel like a person who is tens of thousands of dollars in consumer debt and making the minimum payment each month. The interest (the work that I don't get to each day) is accruing faster than I am making dents in it all.

So now as I'm writing this, I can tell you that we've been enjoying a restful break. A sweet respite from the drowning feeling. My house was even CLEAN while we were on our break from school for Christmas, and I've even had time to bake quite a bit, and make a few special meals for Thanksgiving, Christmas day, and New Year's day. But I've also been using peacetime to prepare to go back to war. This is the reality of Christian life, is it not? We are taking up our crosses, not being carried toward Heaven on a litter of flowers. (That, by the way, is a paraphrased quote from Stepping Heavenward.)

Today must be deployment day.

It is Husband's day off, which is usually my day to run errands. I was so looking forward to going shopping (alone) with some of my Christmas gift money, as I have only about 3 long-sleeved shirts that I wear on an everyday kind of day. But Husband is sick with a terrible stomach virus. I am caring for him (in sickness and in health, baby!!) in addition to our regular day, which will now include - in addition to copious amounts of Germ-X - a post-nap grocery store run since it's my usual shopping day and we're down to bare bones on most daily things. (Who doesn't love to go to the grocery store at 5 pm with 4 kids? Really, I can't be the only one.) And these sweet children are giving me a real run for my money today. Poor big kids were so crushed when they found out that Daddy wasn't up to playing on his day off, and the attitudes followed suit. Throw in a DVD player that has frozen and eaten a DVD belonging to the library, a toddler who isn't sleeping well and started melting down immediately after breakfast, and a constipated teething baby who seems able to poop only when she is 20 minutes into a nap...and you can guess what our house is like today. And that's the short list, folks.

Just before lunch, Husband had staggered out of bed for a few minutes to check something on the computer (in the kitchen). I don't know how it all started; I'm not sure words can adequately describe the thrill of having all four children crying at once, while two of them are hanging on my legs, and the oldest is wailing and flailing in frustration over lowercase 'n's and all I want to do is make lunch but it's hard to walk to the pantry to get the peanut butter out when you're dragging 2 children along like very heavy Uggs. Right then I looked at helpless Hubby, who was looking pitiful and guilty at the same time, and just laughed. I laughed! (Really, it was hard not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.) He said he wished he could help, I said I wished so too. But go to bed.

And I go to war. And life is good. It is crazy...and it is good.

(And as I wrap this up, I'm almost positive I just hear Little Man retching in his crib. Excuse me.) {edit a few hours later - just a very productive cough, whew!}