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If I were a shopping cart, I'd be the one with the broken wheel that wobbles and doesn't seem to go where you want it to go. If I were coffee, I'd be the cup you send back because it's just not strong enough. If I were a bra, I'd be the one you've had for 10 years that is barely holding itself together, much less holding up the intended body parts. I'm tired.

It's been one of those weeks. Yesterday my 2–year–old daughter, Charli, painted herself blue and ran around the house naked. A couple of days ago she proceeded to finger paint all over my freshly painted dining room chairs, a project I will never again undertake, by the way.

Homeschooling 10–year–old Chandler is more demanding at the moment because he broke his wrist during a game of living room basketball. Of course it was his right wrist, and of course he's right–handed. Work that would have been independent is now dependent upon my listening to him verbalize the answers rather than him writing them down on his own.

Max the dog, we've just discovered, has chewed off Batman's legs leaving Charli beside herself because she wants Batman to wear his shoes. There is half a roll of toilet paper on my bathroom floor and red dye in the sink from Rockette Barbie's dripping–wet red velvet Christmas garb. (Charli felt she needed a bath.)

Naps, Charli has decided, are an obstacle that deters her from her true purpose in life—moving nonstop from one mess to the next and doing it loudly (unless it's a covert mission that requires complete secrecy). Gone are the two peaceful afternoon hours during which I could accomplish those tasks requiring sustained brain power.

Even nightfall brings no respite. As I sit here writing, my little darling has just pole–vaulted out of her crib. I can distinguish the kathunk which signals her escape from the "night–night time" (Charli's term of endearment for crib) from the thud which alerts me to the expulsion of an unwelcome stuffed animal from the "night–night time" menagerie.

If the interruptions, the messes, the flubbed projects and broken arms were all I had, I'd go out of my mind. But they aren't, not by a long shot.

I also have a gracious God who is able to miraculously turn a disaster into a delight. I have a God who I believe invented a special giggle for 2–year–olds that is meant solely to revive their tired moms. I have a God who knows just when my tank is about to run out, and who provides exactly the right fuel to get me through the final leg of each day's journey.

Just this afternoon, a normally 15–minute walk around the lake with Charli turned into a one–and–a–half–hour stroll. She blissfully pushed her doll in its miniature pink stroller, stopping along the way to take a leisurely sip of her "good soda." My tank got a lot fuller when she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, "I'm a mommy, just like you."

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