Do you have those moments in your life where a seemingly random interaction with a stranger sticks with you forever? Flashback to 2008, when I was at the pediatrician for a well visit with Daniel (a few months old) and Philip (about 15 months old). Phil had just barely learned to walk, so I had the giant double stroller (my lifesaver!) with me at the office. As I attempted to navigate my big ol' stroller into the tiny door, one mom kindly held it open for me and another mom stood there smiling. She had the hand of a little boy in each of her hands, they appeared to be about 4 and 5 years old. She looked at my little one-year-apart boys and smiled at bleary-eyed-and-struggling little Jen.
"It will get easier, I promise," she said, as she walked past me out the door. "Mine are just as close in age. It will get easier."
I watched her back as she walked down the hall. It was one of those moments where time stood still. Her life was something the twenty-eight-year-old-me could barely imagine. Who is this woman, with the tiny dark-haired children? Some sort of prophet? I don' t know. But I can still picture that mom and her boys in my mind, even 11 years later. As an exhausted mom of two-under-two, I would cling to those words, and to that vision of the mom walking out of the pediatrician's office with a little boy's hand in each of her hands, for years to come. Just WALKING. Everyone walking! On their two little feet!
"It will get easier," I told myself, as I cleaned baby food times two off the walls in our dining nook.
"It will get easier," I said, as bottle-fed or nursed one baby and spoon-fed another.
"It will get easier," I said, as I bounced a crying baby on my hip while a toddler clung to my leg.
"It will get easier," I said, as I woke up in the middle of the night (again) to put a (different) pacifier in someone's mouth.
"It will get easier," I said, when I had three under three, and three in diapers at the same time.
It will get easier, I said, as I managed the temper tantrum, cleaned up the vomit, mixed the bottle, washed spaghetti off the floor, threw in the thousandth load of laundry that week, took someone to the potty and pressed play on the Elmo DVD (again).
It will get easier.
It will get easier.
It was my mantra, given to me by a random mom in Circle City Pediatrics.
And you know what?
It did.
That part of it did get easier.
That diaper part? It's so far in the past I hardly remember it. Walking? I can walk into the pediatrician with hardly a care in the world. Shoot, they could probably check themselves in and scan my HSA card at this point. She was right. We just walk places. Gear? We passed on our legend of a double stroller a few years ago, after so much faithful service, it was not needed anymore. No more pacifiers. No more Elmo on repeat. No more baby food or Gerber puffs or onesies or swaddle blankets or hauling the bottles and supplies everywhere we go. No more buckles or helping with mittens or cutting pizza into tiny pieces. My hands are so much more free.
But my heart, oh my heart, it is not. It's the other side of the coin. The part my grandma warned me about. It does get easier. Physically easier. SO much easier. I sleep through the night most nights. I clean up vomit only when someone has the flu. I read stories when I want to but also people read to themselves- chapter books!!?!? Then turn out their light. Everyone cuts their own food. Everyone pours their own milk. Washes their dishes. Helps sweep the floor. Bathes themselves. My hands are not needed for every button or zipper or butt that needs to be wiped.
Physically, my load has gotten lighter. But emotionally? "Just wait," my grandma wisely said. "That gets SO MUCH HARDER."
Do you know that your heart is now walking around outside your body, Jen? TIMES FOUR? And that their pain is your pain? And their sadness, yours? It's one thing when your baby cries, and you just feed them or change them because that's all they need. Totally another thing when your big kid cries when they've been rejected by a friend. Or are stressed about a test. I'd take a million hours of the same Elmo's World over the heartbreak of a kid that doesn't get invited, or the stress of a daunting homework assignment, or the worry of the scary story they heard at a party that's keeping them up in the middle of the night for months on end.
But then again, maybe I wouldn't. To everything, there is a season, right? They have grown, and I've grown, too. I learned to manage the pacifier, maybe now it's time for me to grow again and manage the intangibles. Help them learn to be in the world and not of it. Teach them how to be a friend and have a friend and live and love and laugh make a life worth living. I thought I was raising babies, but in the bigger picture, I'm raising humans. Humans who will grow up and be (hopefully) contributing members of society. It was my own mistake to be so short-sighted. I thought I was getting through the milestones: walking, eating, potty-ing in a potty, sneezing into their elbow, eating vegetables, going off to school. I thought that was my job, just get them through the little years. When it got easier (and it did), I thought that easier was forever.
"This is it!" I thought. "I have arrived at the promised moment! It is easier! Just like I heard it would be!"
But what I'm learning is that easier is not forever. Nothing is. There are moments of ease, and seasons of relative bliss, and moments of challenge, and seasons of challenged-spurred growth.
I hit a dark place back in January. It's not hard to hit a dark place in January in Indiana, but this one was especially dark. I worried that maybe I had passed by all the sweetness of my life. That second grade for the older boys was the peak, and after that it was all downhill. I cried myself to sleep worrying that I had let them down. I laid it all at the feet of Jesus, all my insecurity and my sadness and my doubt.
I wondered if this cup could just pass me by.
"But," the Lord whispered, "this cup is all there is."
I'm learning that JUST BECAUSE THINGS GET HARD does not mean I am doing it wrong. It means we're growing. We've hit some beautiful sweet spots over the years. I look back in awe at those perfectly aligned moments in time where everyone is just the right age and they are all getting along perfectly and life is, for the moment, sweet. I hit the first one when Noah was about 6 months and the boys were 3, 5 and 6. I thought to myself- "This is it! I made it through the hard part!" What I didn't know is that I was just in a sweet spot, and it wouldn't last forever. Babies turn into toddlers, and sweet spots turn into growth opportunities. Second graders head to third grade, kindergartners head to first grade. . .the only thing constant is change. I have seasons in the past 12 years of parenting where my heart was so full that I thought it could burst. And I've had seasons where I thought to myself. . ."I don't even like any of these kids at all. Why did I sign up for this?" But it passes, it all passes. The good passes, the bad passes. I grow and I change and I learn and I am new. And, honestly, it's just all passing too fast.
Paul's been out of town this weekend and the boys have been so good that I'm wondering if this might be a sweet spot again. I'm almost afraid to acknowledge it, but this time, I stop and I savor it. I know too well that I need to store the sweetest moments in my heart for the days when things get hard.
On Tuesday, my "baby" has his six-year-old well visit. I know I will picture that mom of the little dark-haired children as I do every time I walk into our pediatrician's office. Every well visit marking off another year in their lives, every step on the scale a reminder of the growing that happens while I'm not even paying attention.
It gets easier. It gets harder. It gets sweeter. It gets trickier. You learn, you grow, you change, you adapt, you have no choice. There aren't the right words to say it well in your standard social interaction, and plus nobody can simply tell you what you need to learn yourself. So, I look at the mom fussing over her newborn and trying to entertain her toddler and smile.
"It gets easier," I promise her.
And it will.
And harder
And easier again.
All too fast.
