If your imagination can hold water at all, then I’m sure you can picture me well — this mama with four rowdy boys. I have tired eyes, but I’m smiling. I snap easily, but I laugh, too. I’m quick to dance. I forget my kids’ names. I fold, wipe, pour, scrub, and break up fights in an endless cycle, and everything feels like minutia. This is the stage of climbing a million molehills in a day.

I get overwhelmed, because if everything is minutia, then nothing is small.

One of my boys wears a pair of shoes that looks like we fetched them from a dumpster downtown. He is my precious Pigpen with a cloud of dust always at his heels. He somehow always has spaghetti sauce on his back. With him, there is always something to clean, but I know where he gets it. Last week in New York, my hat started to blow away, and as I tried to catch it, I dumped my cappuccino on my own head. This is our real life. We are a bunch of messy folks. Look at my kids; they are just like me.

…continue reading over at (In)Courage!