Why?

It has begun and I am already out of answers. Months ago the questions started, but recently they have shifted over to the dreaded why questions. What do you say to things like, "Mama, why is that a ladder?" Trey turns it around on Addison and asks him if he's experiencing a moment of existential doubt. I, on the other hand, tell him he's run out of questions for the day. I fear he will drive the workers doing my parents' renovations to distraction with his endless queries about the tools and every little move they make. Why are you doing that? Why are your pants dirty? Why don't you have kids? It can get a little personal and embarrassing, and I find myself running interference frequently.

In my few short years parenting, I notice there are highs and lows throughout the year. Right now I feel like I'm experiencing a bit of a parental low, my own existential doubt. How can I do this job adequately? Are we making any progress? Why does it have to be so hard? I am coming to see little by little that parenting is not in the first instance about me rearing my wee ones, but it is about God refining me. As angry and disappointed as my children can make me at times, how much more do I do the same to God every day. Disciplining my boys shows me in a most uncomfortable way how undisciplined I am, how faithless, how stubborn and foolish. I do the same sinful things over and over again. When I say to Trey, "When will he stop doing (fill in the blank)," I wonder how ironic those words must sound to God coming from someone who struggles with the same sin patterns year after year.

Just as with Addison, I'm not sure I have answers to these questions. Hopefully, they will come with time or perhaps on the other side of glory. In the meantime, I do have one why question of my own. Why don't children come with a mute button???