Today my husband went back to work after his time off in July. Like a record needle clicking into place, we found the schedule groove quickly, and without fuss. I packed him a lunch and a thermos of coffee. We traded off baby holding while the eggs were poaching and the smell of toasted bread filled the kitchen. And then he kissed the three of us who were awake before heading out into the cool summer morning.

At Griffin’s first weigh-in, our nurse gave me a side glance and asked a question that’s stuck with me ever since. “So Rach, what are you going to do with four kids?” (Four kids, age five and under.)

Can I be honest?

I don’t know.

I don’t know what our days will look like. I don’t know how I’ll get a cup of milk (no mom, I want the mermaid cup!) for one child and a snack for another while someone else needs help wiping in the bathroom and the baby is hangry and crying in the bouncer.

But today we’ll find out. And I have the feeling it will be a little like this morning’s breakfast – mostly normal, with a few new ingredients to incorporate… and the occasional bio hazard bodily fluid spill to clean up. (Before 10:30 am, I stripped toddler bed sheets, cleaned up one infant pooplosion, and managed an epic three-hurl milk vomit that covered me, the baby, and a two foot splatter radius on the kitchen floor.)

My prayer today sounds a little like this: God, if your strength is made perfect in weakness, I’m all in. I have nothing here but weakness.

But in case you and I are tempted to forget, there’s this thing about weakness. It doesn’t have to be permanent.

Take my stomach muscles. When I’m lying on my back, my stomach is as soft and wobbly as the jello my five year old insists will NEVER set. But then I pull myself to standing. And I do it over and over. I walk. I bend. I lift. And in time, those muscles will knit themselves back together.

Likewise, morning after morning, my family will wake up. And whatever the days starts out with is where we’ll work from. Some days will run smooth as a canoe across an August evening’s lake. Others will chop and blow. Inevitably, there will be outbursts and frustration and noise, noise, noise as we navigate our new normal. That’s okay.

We too are knitting a new, bigger version of our family together. Every day we’ll have to learn to make time for one another, to help one another, to wait for one another. My hope is that each of these moments will build into a practice, one that acknowledges our weakness but aims for strength anyway.

Maybe you’re here too, staring at your weakness in the mirror. Take heart. Start where you are, and ask Grace step in alongside you, task after task, situation after situation.

Strength will inevitably follow.