1+1 = ?

There are days that I pause long enough to wonder what weight I'm capable of carrying. I've been told that God does not give people more than they can handle - and while I wish I could say that the lion's share of the time I feel as though I can take on the world I think the truer reality is that I spend quite a bit of time considering how close I might be to that line and to the buckling of the legs of my life.

I've caught myself gazing out my office window several times this afternoon. Funny - I don't know that I ever believed I'd have an office with a window. Certainly not one that overlooked Elliot Bay and the Olympics. Ah, the weight of a window. A transparent pane of glass that symbolizes, in part, where I am now in my career. It provides a new perspective - and also gives me some indication on how far down I could potentially fall. Some days this window is a scary thing. In school it was easier to achieve a single A than to string them together into a consistent 4.0 average. Now, perhaps it's easier to be awarded a promotion - and a window - than it is to consistently prove that you deserve both. Somehow, when there was seemingly less to lose with respect to my career, there was also a feeling of relief. If I screw this up something else will come along. I can stay home - with my children - as some part of me always wanted. Now - now there are days where I let my trepidation overwhelm me. Days where I fear that I can't 'have it all.' That I can't have this job and be the mother and wife that I want to be, ultimately. What do I do with that? I don't think there's an answer necessarily.

What brings even further gravity to the 'have it all' argument is the thought of bringing another little someone into the equation. There is no question that we have our hands full as it is - between two very full time jobs and one very precocious toddler. There's also no denying that the mother part of me is orbiting towards the desire for one more member to complete our loving family. People make much more difficult situations happen. I know this. People with little to no means have much larger families. People with more strenuous jobs still support their families. But can I? Does God think that I can handle it? Do I think I can? I waver on that determination most days. I think there was a not so quiet part of me that debated what kind of mother I'd be to one baby, let alone two. It's the not knowing - it's the great uncertainty - parenthood for the first time. But once G and I made the decision to enter into the unknown world we did so with gusto and excitement and hands firmly intertwined. I have a faith, a quiet confidence, that I will be re-visited by that same conviction when we do finally make that decision. It's just that...it's a little less unknown now. I now know what it's like to be sleep deprived for huge amounts of time strung together like a bitter cloth of woven frailities and exhaustion. I know what it's like to fight and pick and bicker with the man you love over things so small that they're imperceptible to the 'outside world' because you are so removed from yourself out of the deep sadness of feeling as though you are failing your crying child. Of forgetting what life is like outside of sweatpants. Of the fear - the persistent fear - that something is wrong with your child because he isn't compliantly developing according to the pediatrician's say-so chart of milestones. Of the worry shaken through you when the baby monitor goes off in the middle of the night and you stir desperately out of the sleep you weren't even allowing yourself to fall into because you're afraid he'll stop breathing. And yet - with all of that now a part of my internal fabric, I still so much want to go back there. Go back to that land of Never-Nod. Perhaps a little wiser. Definitely looking older. I want to go back there in spite of all of the fear and the fighting and the exhaustion and the worry. Because the good outweighs the bad in such vast numbers that I'm unable to recount it all here. Because family really is paramount to me. I don't know what my life will look like come baby number two. But it'd sure be nice to consider it all while looking out this window across an expanse of water - while the sun slips down the late afternoon sky. I suppose it doesn't matter where you see that sun rise or set when it all comes down to it. I guess I'd gladly trade the window for a family to watch that sun with - through any window. And in knowing that - maybe there really isn't that much to fear after all.