My life oozes childhood.
I hear it in the whoosh of a hundred legos streaming onto my no longer clean floor and the laundry machine thumps with the constant beat of never finished. Laundry doesn't fold itself, and in the petrie dish of the living room couch, it multiplies. 
I dream a dream of a spotless clean. Pillows in a row, and actually on the couch. Instead they make a cocoon for a boy who really is a very hungry caterpillar. I sit and race matchbox cars and see the trees outside, and try not to die of boredom. I wait for something more.
I hear it in my head, quietly repeating. I don't analyze it, I accept it, because it's there all the time, like an old friend, and who believes in spiritual battles anymore?
All around me are signs of a half lived life. The weeds in the flower bed testify to projects started and maintenance left to rain and nature. Did I mention clothes don't fold themselves?
"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it." -Blaise Pascal
Truth is love. Love is changing wet pants three times in thirty minutes. Love is feeding someone. Love is answering a million whys. Love is wiping up poop and vomit and all the other opposites of celebrity. Love is not often glamorous, but dirty, faithful, and persistent. Sometimes love can be a little boring. The truth is, sometimes I don't want to love.
Sometimes I don't love the truth.
Don't let me see my selfishness! Instead I catch myself clinging to half-thought thoughts. The abstract dreams of something more. I don't see gifts, I just see holes.
A clean house can be an empty house. Do I really want "me time"?
Let the little children come unto me.
I want to see the piles of toys and the piles of dirt. I want crusty corners and crusty eyes and I mourn over my crusty heart. He makes all things new.
I draw a chalk figure while I doodle with tomorrows and a small voice breaks through, "Draw a mommy for that boy". And I receive the truth, I pray, and I learn to love again, and I draw a mommy for that boy.
"He gently leads those that have young." -Isaiah 40:10
For more truthful thoughts on parenting:
and on Redemption