Reality check

This is just a brief post - you guessed it, James is asleep!  I have about 30 minutes to write this, answer emails, check my bank balance (with all the security steps, that alone takes 17 minutes!) and ... oh yes, run to the toilet!

James is now 17 weeks, a tad over 4 months.  I'm exhausted.  I haven't really felt it until now, but it's really hitting home.  And in exhaustion, I get a chance to glimpse who I have become: it's rather like being in a pressure cooker.

There's no where to run or hide - who I am, rather than who I wish I was, comes to the surface because I lack the energy to be 'polished'.

So, am I tolerant of others?  Do I lose my temper quickly? 

What I see is that I have more patience than I expected, especially with James.  If I get short tempered, it is with Dirk and, I think, that rarely happens.  I must check with him though!  I'll add that to the list of things I want to talk to him about over the weekend - if I don't write them down, I forget what I want to say!

And my personal 'fault line', chocolate, currently plays a rather big role in my life.  It's because I see chocolate as self-nurture, as care and love when I feel alone.  Not that this is a reflection on Dirk, but more a reflection of the fact that he's gone from 6.30am to 8.30pm.  I'm up from 5.30am to 10pm, not including the night shift - my family live in Ireland, and none of my friends live nearby, so the days are long and do feel lonely.

On the plus side, there is chocolate!  We also have some sort of rhythm, day to day and week-to-week. 

When I was in labour I prayed throughout the whole process and it gave me an inner reserve of strength.  Now I dip into that daily, asking for help with chores, insight into how to best support James (there are a million questions I have from 'should I wean him off his soother?' to 'why did he wake up crying uncontrollably last night?') and patience, so that exhaustion does not become bad temperedness with James or Dirk. 

Prayer gets me through the day.  It helps me feel that I'm not alone, and that there is wisdom and comfort available to me.  Mostly I try to pray for grace and peace, rather than a specific outcome, as I don't really know what the highest and best outcome is in any given situation: I just need to be gracious enough to accept the process and the outcome.  One prayer at a time!