Someone Wants to Hear Me Sing

Who am I kidding? I'm wretched. I'm lonely. I'm in need. No one sees what I am doing. The ones I love most are not satisfied with me. The love I am grasping for like a hungry infant is not forthcoming. I'm empty. I hunger. I want.

We finished swim lessons today. Finally the summer stretches out lazily before me like a river. I have nothing to do but visit the beach and my relatives in Kentucky, and then in August to start rehearsal for a play (more on that later!) I'll hit these marks and in between we will get up each morning with a single daily goal - to log hours in the pool, punctuated by meals and nap-times. From conveying my children to swim lessons and back every day for a month, I am spent. I'm so glad I don't have anywhere to be tomorrow. Maybe now I'll clean my house.

Maybe I won't.

But I aspire to. I aspire to too many things, self-improvements: better housekeeping, better parenting, better communion with nature, better finances, better responses, better loving. I do well, but I could do better. Every day this month, I cared for my children. I fed them three meals a day, kept them safe, and sometimes did their laundry. I worked on teaching them to clean up after themselves and to obey their mother and to stop screaming at each other. I made it possible for them to learn how to swim. I also taught Sunday school and saved hundreds of dollars with coupons and threw a birthday party. That's a lot, isn't it? Even just keeping the children safe is worth more than all the rest combined. I'd like to call it enough. But to satisfy every expectation, I know it's not. There is still space for someone to find it lacking.

"Mommy, keep singing!"

I was singing along with the radio in the car this morning. I knew almost all the words.

"You are Lord of Lords,
You are King of Kings,
You are Mighty God,
Lord of everything.
You're Emmanuel
You're the Great I Am
You're my Prince of Peace
Who is the Lamb.
You're my saving God
You're my saving grace.
You will reign forever.
You're the Ancient of Days.
You're the Alpha, Omega,
Beginning and End.
You're my savior, Messiah,
Redeemer, and Friend.
You're my Prince of Peace
And I will live my life for you."

Whenever I got quiet, my two-year-0ld told me to keep singing, a touching request. So I sang louder, and with feeling. She was right - I needed to keep singing that, over and over. And I think I needed someone to want to hear me sing, and I don't think she was the only one who did.

Now, late in the day, as I type this, over and over a sweet baby is relentlessly climbing my back. Detritus litters the floor. I fear, in the end, I may never be much more than I am now. I'm too much of a drama queen. I'm too passive aggressive. I'm too exacting (of myself mostly.) I'm too craving.

I have lately been contemplating - at times obsessively - the Roman Catholic church. Is it the true Church? Am I going to end up in it? I hear of it being our Holy Mother. I don't know if that description includes every branch of Christ's Body, the low along with the high. All I know is I want to run into her arms. Where else can I nurse and be satisfied at those comforting breasts? I mean, is God Himself equipped with those? I don't know how to imagine it. I just know it's what I need.