Just met another mom at the park.
Some people you meet, you know are one-off friends. You have a pleasant, but polite conversation and you go your separate ways when it’s time for naps.
This blessed mom walked right up to me and didn’t even TRY to fake that everything was fine and she was doing great.
She had a three year old and a 3 month old. Of course she wasn’t great. She was barely staying awake and shuffling through life.
I knew she was my people from the start.
She stared at my crew with her mouth agape.
“How in the world are you doing it?,” she breathed with a lilting Caribbean accent.
I chuckled. “Some days I only halfway ‘do it.’ And some days I do belly flops. But with God’s grace… I keep at it.”
We began talking like it was a conversation we had left off five years ago and picked right back up again.
We only had five minutes to chat before my kids needed me and hers started breaking down. Which is usually how it goes.
But this time, I went out on a limb and invited her over to my “messy, messy house” for some coffee. Those exact words.
There is a time when you have to buckle down and turn your eyes inward so hard just to plug all of the holes in the sinking boat. God honors that time and uses every bit of it for His glory.
And there is also a time when you can spare a few fingers and plug the holes in someone else’s boat. Or at least, you can train your kids to grab some buckets and start bailing 
Besides, no one cares about a messy boat when they’re on a dinghy next you going straight into the Bermuda Triangle.
As the season turns and we can shove the kids out of the house again to run the neighborhood, I might have another “neighbor” who will sit with me in the muck and share this life, slapping at the mosquitos that appear before it gets too cold.
An American humorist, writer and author. When boiling down the chicken soup of life, she finds those golden, fried nuggets of truth & writes them long after the kids go to bed.
