Motherhood: I'm Not Cut Out for This

It's days like today when it snows in early November, I look out the window and think to myself

I'm not so sure I'm cut out for this.

Afternoons like this very one when my youngest takes a spill off a stool in the kitchen and summersaults himself stunned onto his back. I scoop him up and carry him to the chair where he cries about an ouchie on his leg, and I'm simultaneously rocking him and talking myself down off the ledge that wants me to jump headfirst into catscan

when I think I'm not cut out for this.

Days like yesterday when my oldest defiantly stomps out the door and promptly steps on a nail that goes through his shoe, piercing his skin. 

I'm hugging his shoulders and helping him limp to the couch thoughts running crazy in my head of last vaccination and tetanus and he's already propped his foot up and asking what's for dinner when I wonder to myself

about how I'm not quite convinced I'm cut out for this. 

When I'm whispering words of encouragement to trembling hearts

while my own is just as shaky

and I'm holding down the fort as day meets dusk

and praying hard and hallowed prayers of Thy will be done 

but please, too, protect my own soft heart

when I realize that life and living requires a toughness I just don't have,

and I'm certainly sure I'm not cut out for this.

None of it.

I'm cradling a ceramic mug and watching pieces of my heart run through fresh snow as I try to sip strength from the Words written across thin pages and the cup in my hands.

"Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand."

I breathe softly and fully out and accept the reminder

that every bit of refining fire makes the clay stronger

and that I'm right when I say I'm not cut out for this

because rather instead I've been carefully molded

and strengthened flame by flame.