hmmmmm.

that last post is a hard one to follow.

the sunday evening after i posted it, the boys and i went out to my brother's house. my dear friend and sister (in law) commented that she had read my blog recently and was happy to hear we were doing well and were finding a new balance with tim's job and our family life. i was puzzled, having posted the blow-out "tired" post most recently. but she was referencing the post before that one, written only a couple of days before "tired", which talked about how it seemed like tim's schedule was settling down, the boys and i were happy to be able to be getting outside, etc. yes, i realized, that in the span of a few days i offered totally different view points of our life. talk about bi-polar.

but that's just how i am. when things are crappy, it's hard to remember that that's not how my life ALWAYS is. (which is another reason this space is nice-i can go back and dwell on a really good moment when there have been too many rotten ones and the fog is getting dense.) i have a hard time keeping perspective, but verbalizing often helps me.

my bi-polar posts were also proof of how one week seems much, much longer these days. sometimes tim gets two days off in a row. the day before the two day stretch, once the boys are in bed, i feel like i can breath. finally, we'll have some time with him and we can get some things done. and then the days blink by. and the other five days and the crazy schedule seems like they stretch on for weeks.

the good part of all this is i have come to appreciate my dear spouse and parenting teammate sooooooooooooo much more. i see and feel how much better our family is when we're all together. sadly, i used to often take tim's good traits for granted and often focused more on the areas that needed improvement. although i'm still not a perfect wife (please resist outbursts of laughter at that heinous understatement), i try to be more thankful for all the things tim does really well and to verbally tell him how much we love having him around and how much we just...love him.

after writing that last post, i did at times feel like, maybe in fact, i am just a bad mommy. but i know that's not true. your kind comments reaffirmed that. but what really affirmed it for me was:

last weekend i sat behind two of my brothers' families during my nephew's First Communion. i'll admit, i was very distracted by my beautiful nieces and nephews, but more, i was taken by the beauty of watching my sisters as mothers. these are women who are also tired. women who have given their bodies over and over for their children, lost too much sleep, have husbands who are gone more than they would like. mommas who stay home with their babes at this point in their lives because they know that that's what is best for their families. i got to see little glimpses of their true love for their children-subconscious things like stroking their hair and kissing their heads, checking on them while they sat or played underfoot as the congregation stood, holding them even though their arms were tired. no, they may not always gush on and on about their children and how motherhood completes them and how they couldn't possibly be any happier. true love isn't defined by warm fuzzies. i looked up to the cross and thought about true love. sacrificial love.

so sometimes i might feel like a bad wife and mother because my thoughts and feelings aren't always pure bliss. and while i do truly believe that we called to be joyful in our vocations, when i'm not so good at that, i'm reassured by my actions that, yes, i really do love my guys.