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Soft rustlings came from the next room. I glanced at the clock. Yep. Eva was awake.

As I entered her room, she sat up in bed, her toddler-length hair tousled from a busy sleep. Dimples punctuated her chubby cheeks. Twinkling back at her I reached down with a wake-up hug. She wrestled herself free of sheets and lifted her arms, blankie in tow.

My nose informed me before my hands could register the dampness. She had wet her bed.

Because until we understand our neediness, we can't experience fulfillment.

Gritting my teeth against the words of criticism I wanted to unleash, I wash-clothed her bottom and changed her pants. I set her in front of "Sesame Street," jerked the sheets off the bed and announced I'd be back in a minute. Once in the privacy of my basement, I crammed the wet, stinky sheets in the washing machine, all the while tirading to the walls about potty training. I was stripping, washing and remaking these sheets twice a day now and had been for about two weeks. I'd had it. Grabbing the detergent box, I reached for the scoop to measure out the suds, all the while grumbling, mumbling and stumbling out feelings.

That's when it happened. It was as if the detergent box took on a life of its own. Whirling and spinning, it flew about the basement, spilling its contents in arches of momentum. As I watched it fly about me, I noticed it wasn't really moving on its own, but my hand was slinging it, propelling it about. I was flinging the box about the room.

While the box flew, it seemed to make a noise. Wahh Wa Wa Wahhh. Blahhhh Bla Bla Blahhh. Like the adults in a Charlie Brown animated cartoon, the voice whined and droned but the words were unintelligible. The voice was familiar. It was mine. My voice was speaking. What was it saying?

How am I supposed to know how to do this? No one has ever taught me this stuff! I'm tired of being the one who has to have the answers! I wish I could be the one to ask the questions!

I now refer to this as my "suds-slinging" incident. It is a moment in time when I came to grips with my mothering inadequacies. It stands as a monument in my days, reminding me of how I began to see what I don't have, what I can't do as a mother. This moment in the basement brought me face-to-face with some deeper crevice in my being. A gap. A wound, perhaps. It was empty where it should have been filled. A soul hole.

OK, this was a loooonnnngggg time ago. Eva is now in her early twenties and the mother of nearly 2-year-old Marcus. (It won't be long until she faces her own wet sheet moments with him.) As unsettling as it was to experience that emptiness, I now know that it was good for me. In fact, now that I've identified their shape, I find "soul holes" often in my life.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." In Matthew 5:3 Jesus spoke to the crowd assembled on the mountainside by the Sea of Galilee. With these words, he began what has become the most famous sermon of all time. The word he chose for poor actually means poverty-stricken, bankrupt, with nothing left in the house.

Why did he choose these words? Because until we understand our neediness, we can't experience fulfillment. As long as we think we can handle it all, we will. Until we understand what we can't do, we won't have a clue what God can do.

Inadequacies show us our need. And when we experience our need and then bring it to God, he can meet it. And when he meets it, we can be whole. Soul whole.

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