(Trigger warning:  Brief mention of suicide and self harm.)

When I turned forty, I thought I said goodbye to a decade of being tired. Chuckbob wasn’t even a thought. COVID was months away.

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I remember when my Second Son was just weeks old, and I was a fresh mom of three wheeling the stroller into the doctor’s office. The two bigs were doing zoomies around the waiting room while I nursed a hungry baby and looked on helplessly at my children wreaking havoc despite my whisper yelling to BEHAVE. At that moment, all I could think about was being hopelessly outnumbered. WHAT HAD I DONE? (Anyway, I had two more after that, so clearly not a lesson I learned well.)

Being a toddler mom in the trenches was exhausting and hilarious and precious all at once, but I kept clinging to the idea that it would get better, maybe? Or easier at least to parent these wild, wonderful kids, to keep them alive, to keep them safe, and now I know two impossibly opposite truths. It was the best already. And yet, it still gets better. And so so much harder.

Now, I’m still trying to keep them alive, but it looks different from not letting them drown in the bathtub and keeping them out of the road and off high structures. Now it’s angry, broken children with guns, social media, bullying, and all the ways the world will lie to you, telling you you aren’t good enough. Or skinny enough. Or pretty enough. Or man enough.

Now, the exhaustion is next level. The emotional investment is continuous. The protective instinct that wars with the act of letting go. 

I can’t be alone in this.

Every day, I wake up at 6 am and wake the whole house up. I make lunch for five people – a healthy balanced lunch – and admonish a small army of children to brush their teeth and their hair and put on shoes and dontmissthebusbecauseimnotdrivingyoutoschooliswear.

Then I check in with the teens and tweens because anxiety and adhd and turn on cartoons for the toddler so I can wring out every last second of sleep. I feed horses and chickens, check the water, check on my plants, glance at the mess, and choose which work task/house chore/DIY project I will tackle that day. Even though I know I should focus on the housework, but sometimes the drudgery is TOO MUCH, and the laundry is TOO MUCH.

And through it all, we never stop fighting for our kids. They are brilliant and witty and infuriating and terrifying. And on days like last week and this, when children are dying at school, when my social media is flooded with Apalachee Strong and the stories of teachers who took a bullet for their students break me to pieces–when threats are phoned in across our city, made in my hometown in the aftermath–it doesn’t feel possible to keep them safe.

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Part of why I have been so silent for the past three years on this blog is because my story doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is my responsibility and my privilege to protect the ones I hold close as they navigate their teen years. So while the world started falling apart in 2020, we were on our own journey – here, now, is a brief glimpse I have permission to share.

In May of 2022, on a regular Thursday night, one of our children pulled me into the laundry room to tell me that they were having thoughts of suicide, that maybe if they just … weren’t here … then all of their problems and overwhelming feelings would go away. Thankfully, they immediately recognized the danger in that and told me right away. I held my breath, fixed my face while my heart was seizing, and told them how much they were loved, how much we needed them here, and all the things you say to the blood of your blood, to these marvelous miraculous humans knitted together in your body, safe for the whisper of time you carried them.

I don’t remember much of the weekend, other than now it serves as one of those markers, a measurement of the before and after when life is irrevocably altered. And then, on the following Monday, I received a panicked phone call from another child who had taken safety pins from a classroom and attempted to cut their arms in a wild impulse to self-harm. I held my breath, fixed my face while my heart was seizing, and said again all the things you say to the blood of your blood.

I spent hours that day on the phone, on the internet, desperately searching for therapists who took our insurance, lived within an hour of us, and could see my children sooner than six months. Friends, that is a unicorn that did not exist. I was exhausted to the marrow of my bones, fighting to get care for my children, fighting to keep them alive, fighting to keep them safe.

The next day, May 24, 2022, at 11:38 am, an 18-year-old man walked into Robb Elementary School, 90 miles west of us in Uvalde, TX, and shot and killed 19 children and two teachers, wounding 17 others.

That night, I found myself full length on my kitchen floor, face down in the tile, heaving with sobs. Crying for those babies, for all the babies in the line of fire since 1999, crying because no matter what, I couldn’t keep my children safe – from themselves, from the broken ones with guns, from the world – I couldn’t put them on the bus and be sure they’ll come home.  I still can’t. A night again, marked by the before and after. And the after never looks like before – it’s never linear, and it’s always harder – sometimes we get better, and sometimes we get worse.*

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This week? This week was worse. I’m afraid and I’m angry. Livid with rage, actually. I can’t be alone in this. And making change, talking about guns, talking about mental health (and how hard it is to get care), that’s a conversation to be had, must be had, but for now, hear this.

I’ve written before about being afraid, that being brave isn’t the same as not being afraid. That courage is not the absence of fear but rather our actions in the face of it, and we have a savior who tasted death so we could live in freedom. I know we were never promised safe. Maybe if I just keep saying it, I’ll keep believing it.

Our pastor preached this Sunday on being in the midst of storms, of Christ’s presence there in the midst of them, and how they will not sink us. I traced the words over and over in my journal as he spoke them. “It will not sink us.” If I keep saying it, I’ll keep believing it.

I like to blog for you all with answers, and today I don’t have them. I just need to know I’m not alone. I need YOU to know YOU are not alone. And the storms, they will not sink us.

With love.

~M.

*Both of my kiddos mentioned here are thriving now, thanks to much prayer, good medicine, and great care teams.