Million Hour Days

 If you ever start talking about joy too much, you'll end up waking up in a bad mood the next day, and that is sort of what has happened to me this week. Summer days, for anyone, but probably especially for a parent and maybe especially in the unbearable heat of Florida, are interminably long. Like a million hours in one day long. 

To pass the time and burn the endless energy of 3 boys and their friends, we go to the beach twice day.  Every day I optimistically lug my folding chair down to the beach and set it down with the towels. Then I look longingly at it and head out into the ocean with my 3 younger kids and usually 2-3 of their friends. If the waves are like they have been, I am not only a mother, but a lifeguard and the currents whisk us at least half a mile down the beach while I count and search for heads bobbing in the white foam. Today I even performed a rip current rescue on a kid that was not in our group who drifted too far out and could not get back to shore. I had to use my daughter's board to tow him in, and one of my sons was unusually generous given the urgency and allowed her onto his. 

I am not really the type of mother who likes to sit on the beach very long anyway. I would really rather be out on my own surfboard with them. Still sometimes that chair looks awfully nice. And sometimes I get to sit on it for a little while when the kids play manhunt on the boardwalk, and only have to get up every few minutes to make sure they don't run over any innocent passerby in their quests.

But by dinner time, all of my energy and patience has been used up. The witching hour really never ends. The kids, solar power fueled and annoyed by being trapped up close to each other in the air conditioning most of the day, fight over nothing and absolutely everything. I always try to do our Bible time at dinner because it is one of the few times when most everyone is in the same place and not running in different directions. But by then, one of the younger 3 is almost always screaming that one of the other ones won't stop LOOKING at them. On nights like that the oldest mostly just avoids the table and I can't really blame him. Dinner isn't really that good anyway. 

Last night, inspired by a book I have been reading, I took a deep breath and asked the two that were fighting to come up with something they liked about each other. And usually whenever I try to do any of those things from books, they blow up spectacularly in my face because my kids like to keep me humble. But last night after a while, things got quiet. And kids started thinking. When they were done with each other they moved on to me and the kid that I have been doing the most battle with lately (who also happens to have a heart the size of Texas when he is not being belligerent) said "Sometimes you say things you don't mean, but you always ALWAYS apologize, and you never give up on me." Like I always do in these situations I got all teary eyed and embarrassed everyone and then they all just started eating and I read the Bible to them and felt just the tiniest bit of hope that we were all going to be ok before the next fight began.

Most evenings as soon as my husband gets home, he doesn't even get a minute to eat before we have to usher everyone, usually a few friends again too, back out to the beach to dissolve the last of that agitation. I usually go with him but tonight I stayed to write. Of course, that meant that they were back in 15 minutes because the only one who didn't even get in the ocean got a spontaneous nosebleed and panicked.

I am reading a book right now, the one that inspired me, by a Christian woman who has 10 kids. And somehow also still maintains her sanity. And writes books. All I can figure is that she is a lot better at crowd control than I am, because...how? But comparing never gets any of us anywhere. We are all different, all made for different things, different purposes. All I really want is to do my part well. But sometimes I just wake up in the morning and it feels like an impossible task. There's work and kids and friends and everyone needs a part of me, and I am already dehydrated, and I have no idea how to bring peace and emotional regulation to my family of giant feelings when I can barely keep from crying when one of them gives me a compliment. 

Just 2 more weeks of summer ahead and then everything will get simple again. My work hours will increase, and home schooling will start back up and one of the kids is going to have back surgery. 

This is why we live one million-hour day at a time. Even while I am living it, in between the fights and the moments when I think "I canNOT do this one more second. I am terrible at this." I look across the ocean at the boys with their friends yelling "mom watch THIS" as they sail down the line or face plant into a wave. And laugh when the wind gets knocked out of me as my daughter tumbles backward into me in the whitewash. I sometimes want to pause these tiny snippets because I know they will be the ones I remember the most clearly. They're the ones I want to remember.

I wake up and drink my coffee and search the word of God for that one sentence that is going to fill me up with the joy and the energy that I am going to need to face another one these days. And some days, I don't feel that joy. Some days I spend the whole day fighting the urge to run away or climb into bed and lock the door. But joy in this human body is maybe not a constant feeling, just a knowing. It's what keeps me going. Saying what I don't mean, hopefully less and less every day as I grow. Always saying I'm sorry when I do.

And never giving up. Not on my kids, but most of all not on myself. He's not done with me yet. A million-hour day is like a breath in eternity.