Just Write: Desperate

He was six weeks old, a tiny little thing with huge demands, and I was tired.

No -- exhausted.

So when he began to wail five minutes after I put him in his cradle, I crumpled to the floor and sobbed on my mother's living floor.

A desperate pile of body heaving and cracked, feeling broken beyond repair.

Tonight I remembered that scene as I drenched my own shirt with tears, driving home from my first acupuncture session.

Desperate, I told John when I arrived home, face scrunched and head in hands and his arms around my shoulders.

That's what you have to be to let someone you can barely understand poke tiny needles into your skin in the hope of relief.

Desperate.

I am thankful to carry a new life inside of me. But in the midst of thankful I am sick, too, with exhaustion and nausea like I never knew and more food and smell aversions than one would think could exist.

I live on prayer and petition, turkey and lemon aid, kindness and snuggles and gratitude.

But in the desperate moments, I wonder if I'm really living or merely surviving.

I ugly cry onto my husband's shoulder soaking his arm with salt-water tears, too, until I'm exhausted and broken before God

and finally

that's where I find the Potter

at the spinning wheel

piecing me back together

and making me something new.