One is ten. Two is fifteen. Three is seventeen. Four is BOOM.

Four months into to life with four ex utero, and my days are a mix of peace, fulfillment, meaning. Oh, and nine parts anger, stress, and denial that this--this noise and chaos and bodily-fluid-and-rambunktion cocktail--is our relatively-newish normal.

In the last five and half years, Papa and I have weathered the new parent experience (an insanely high learning curve), the two-under-two juggle, the three-easing-in gig. Pearly Girl's arrival was smooth, and within three weeks I was thinking, "This is easy. Cool!" Deluded, I thought I was proving to be just the kind of mega-awesome mom I always knew I was.

But the last few months have exploded my self-satisfied smugness. No, I can't point to crime-worthy messes or even particular instances so much as my general feeling of physical and emotional exhaustion. And I began realizing a few months ago that this wasn't depression; it was life. And if this was what my life was like, then my understanding of myself was being blasted to smithereens.

I had a breakthrough last month when I struck up a conversation with another mom of four whose kids are roughly a year ahead of each of ours. "So, does it get easier?" I asked hesitatingly, half-giggling, hoping that she could hear, and yet hoping she would miss, the barely-disguised hysteria behind my generic question.

"Yeah, it does," she said. Then she gazed down at her one-year-old and helped me to some perspective. "But four is hard. Everybody said, 'If you can do three, you can do four, five six.' And three for us was cake. But four was..." her voice trailed off. She looked at me. "I had a hard time. I had postpartum depression, which I'd never had with the other three kids. But my sisters-in-law helped. [They have four kids each, too.] They told me four was tough for them, too, but that it would get better." She paused, steadying the barely-walking brave soul hanging on to her pant leg. "Now the baby wants to go off on his own, and I'm like, 'He's not my baby anymore!' and at the same time I'm like, 'Go! Go!'"

Empathy comes in many forms, and sometimes it trickles into our lives almost unconsciously, emerging as in-the-trenches shared experience. Mom-of-four Amy put into words what I had been struggling to admit even to myself--that four kids is somehow astronomically harder to manage, but in subtle ways, that makes the very difficulty in care somehow negligible. I had felt like I was slowly drowning--and in truth, I still do, many days--but I felt like I couldn't acknowledge it because, well, three kids had been easy, and so many people told me that "if you could manage three, then you can manage four fine." Maybe someday I'll start second-guessing gross generalizations about parenting and spare myself the unrealistic expectations and inevitable guilty fallout.

I also felt like I couldn't acknowledge what our life is like because to do so prompts many people to jump to an illogical, if tenaciously popular, way of thinking. It goes something like this: if I, a mother of four, say that being a stay-at-home mother is hard, then I'm admitting failure. If I admit failure, then I 1) should really look into doing something more productive with my time, like working at something away from my children that tangibly and reliably rewards my efforts (unlike my current routine, which swings from high highs and low lows, like a bipolar monkey. Yep, pretty much like that), and 2) should stop embracing life and being open to more children. Because who in her right mind wants more of what causes her stress, sleeplessness, and six days straight of no showers? (Okay, it's usually not that bad. I had to pick a number that started with 's.' And 'seventeen' would have just scared people away.) In the midst of this juggle, I didn't know how to begin to respond to these arguments. In fact, I wasn't sure that I could personally categorically reject them, though logically I knew they were flawed.

A few years ago, Glennon Melton, a blogger at Momastery, wrote a great post entitled "Don't Carpe Diem," which went viral. In it, she discusses this very conundrum.

Parenting is hard. Just like lots of important jobs are hard. Why is it that the second a mother admits that it's hard, people feel the need to suggest that maybe she's not doing it right? Or that she certainly shouldn't add more to her load. Maybe the fact that it's so hard means she IS doing it right...in her own way...and she happens to be honest.

I disagree with some points here: I'm not doing it right, and I can't judge motherhood by my own standard (more on that in a bit). But the honesty part is what struck me, both when Amy talked to me and I read what Glennon wrote to the blogosphere. What is this life but hardships? And why was I stressing so much about the sheer hardness of life with small children? When I spend more than two seconds listening to myself, I realize how often the wambulance wails in my head and how I really do need to kick the wimpiness to the curb. In Lutheran-speak, I need to confess and repent the real culprit behind my stress: my own pride. I need to banish the Pharisee of Superwoman who, in a different but related vein, tries to keep me enslaved to the belief that I can control my life the way I want--and show the world how I really can live the perfect parent-magazine-spread life and put all those other moms to shame. That I can, in fact, do motherhood right, and do it right all the time, perfectly.

I realize that I am staggering from one ditch of self-pity and naval-gazing to another ditch of self-glorifying Mommydom. Both ways leave me with zero comfort and plenty of pent-up anxiety. Worse yet, I am leaving the One who can actually steer the ship, right the course, calm my heart, and lead me and mine to the Way Everlasting when I insist on thinking all of these gifts are entitlements and rewards. And I end up buried. As hard as I pity myself or congratulate myself, the law written on my heart whispers the truth: I fail at this mommy thing. I sin against my children daily, hourly. And real pity doesn't apply to evil. The meek were truly helpless and deserving of pity; I'm a sinner worthy of death. And I dwell on myself to the exclusion of every real good gift, like a massive quantity of explosives simmering before a lighted fuse. As Chad Bird put it in this blogpost among many other fine ones, "Behold, the sin of the world, that takes away the Lamb of God!"

Struggling is not abnormal. Struggling is what we do in this life. But struggling should not excuse the sins that hide behind it. I am angry many times because I think God is unfair to make my life something other than an Emommy awards show, that my service to my children goes unnoticed by most of the world, usually including my children; that my efforts don't merit a paycheck or an impressive job title or an awesome alumni magazine write-up. And my anger is so incredibly sinful, so immeasurably petty and juvenile, because God Himself did for me what I so dimly, blunderingly do for my own children. He loves me first and puts Himself aside. And He did this in His earthly life with the ultimate humility and grace and endless love. And remarkably, He still does love me, the merit-less and worthless, and gives Himself to me still.

And for this I am eternally grateful. And I am reminded, however fleetingly in this frenzied life, that He carries my sorrows, even the silly ones; He was cursed for my transgressions, even from my most terrible hatred down to my most childish anger. Upon Him was laid the chastisement that brings me ultimate peace, and by His stripes, I--with the messy remnants of my pride and sins raining in and on and through me--am healed and cleansed.

Because explosions can be beautiful.