My life became a blur of infinitesimal details upon details. I had to manage a dozen different things with precision and care, and all of them were tiny and fragile. I had to focus, concentrate and remember like I never had in my life. I forgot things and made mistakes. I’d measure the formula wrong, miss stuff while cleaning, or forget to write important details on the chart.

 

I was slow and inept at every important task. And I had to do everything through the fog of sleep deprivation. My few sleep breaks were restless, even though I was exhausted. I tossed in bed anxiously awaiting the next sound of a crying baby. I got in the habit of keeping a can of Red Bull on my nightstand. When a baby (or two or three of four) sounded off long enough that I knew it wasn’t a false alarm, I rolled out of bed, downed the caffeinated elixir in three gulps, and staggered off to duty.

 

I might have been able to keep my sanity if I was in my own home, with my own bed and my own stuff, but I was living with Shelley’s parents. Every single comfort and diversion was packed up across the street. I had no privacy or freedom. My waking hours were filled with excruciating attention to detail. Everything that I enjoyed and did well was gone. Replacing it was everything that I hated and did terribly. The end was nowhere in sight because we couldn’t unpack and set up our new home, even though it was less than a hundred feet away. The rare times we weren’t working, we had three options: sleep, shower, or unpack. During the first two weeks after the kids were home, I chose to go unpack only once. I made it for less than 30 minutes before passing out on a bare mattress.

 

The only moments of grace I experienced during in the first month were the times I held my children in my arms and stared into their eyes. The good news is that I did this a lot. Though they were the cause of this hurricane, they were also its eye. When they cooed, coughed and cuddled in my arms, it no longer felt like I was sentenced to prison and hard labor. The thing that still spins my head around is that some of the best moments of my life came during the worst time of my life. Falling asleep on the couch with one of my tiny children tucked into my chest made me feel quiet and full—and quiet and full are tall orders for me. I can remember those times fondly now. At the time, however, they were fleeting moments of relief, glimpses of sunshine through a crack in the prison wall.

 

The worst point came one morning when I had three precious hours to sleep. Within a few seconds of slipping beneath the cool sheet, I was comatose. I floated beneath the sort of deep, paralyzed, open-mouthed, drooling sleep where you can’t even dream. Not a log in the world could’ve competed with me. In the middle of this unconscious bliss, Shelley walks into the room and wakes me up. Dick and Margie, a saintly couple from St. Luke’s, had arrived with a beautiful crib that had belonged to their grandchild. Shelley needed me to get up and help unload it.

 

There’s a particular type of rage that shows up only when someone is roused from deep slumber. It’s primitive. The parts of the brain that inhibit animalistic behavior are still asleep. I don’t remember exactly what I said to Shelley, but I remember how it sounded. I emitted something guttural and monstrous. I was like a hibernating bear roaring at an intruder. Shelley shouted something back at me and stormed out of the room. A couple of minutes later, the rest of my brain, yawned, stretched, blinked, and told me: “They can’t unload that crib without you, jerk. Stop being so selfish and go help.”

 

I downed my reserve can of Red Bull and tossed myself out of bed. My mother-in-law was standing in the living room.

 

“Where’s Shelley?” I asked.

 

“She went to help with the crib,” she said, deadpan. “She was crying.”

 

I didn’t say anything and stormed out the front door. As I staggered across the street, I felt something terrible and overwhelming. The intensity of it halted me in the middle of the street.

I’m in hell, I thought. I’m not allowed to sleep and my life is filled with mind-numbing tasks that I’m terrible at. I have no home of my own. The private conflicts of my marriage are laid bare for my mother-in-law to witness. I’m trapped and there’s nothing I can do. There is no peace, no rest and certainly no fun. God, you have to do something.

 

I don’t hear God talk very often and, when I do, I never know if it’s Him or my unconscious mind belching up what I want to hear. But this, time, I’m pretty sure God was talking.

 

“Why don’t you do something,” He said. “The only reason it feels like you’re in prison is that you haven’t bothered to look for the keys. You’re not the prisoner—you just think everyone else is your warden—Shelley, Vickie, even the babies. Maybe you need to stop acting like a victim and do something about this.”

 

Existentialists say that a man does not know who he is until he looks into the abyss. When he reaches the point where he loses hope, he has only two choices: despair or responsibility. Standing in the middle of that street in my wrinkled, stinky clothes, I looked into the abyss. I considered despair for a long time. I thought about ways I could give up and escape. Only after I cried out to God did I see responsibility as an option. Even though I had children, I wasn’t a father yet. I had not made this burden my own. I behaved like it was somebody else’s burden that I’d been forced to carry at gunpoint. When I asked God for help, he did not rescue me. He told me I had a job to do.

 

A couple of nights later, between feedings, three babies started crying at once. Actually, howling is more like it. It was my shift, but usually someone woke up and helped when they heard this kind of commotion. So I waited, listening for footsteps. Nothing. My first response was aggravation. Why wasn’t anybody getting up to help? Then, the one molecule of altruism left in my brain sputtered to life. Maybe I could handle this and give my exhausted wife and mother-in-law a break. I tried singing and cooing to the babies, but they kept screaming until my ears rang. I had no choice but to rock them back to sleep.

 

I put one baby over a shoulder and scooped the other two into my forearms. I eased into a rocking chair, terrified that I’d drop one and disable them for life. When I made it to a sitting position, I nestled a baby in each arm. Then I crossed my legs and cradled the third in the crook of my knee. I started rocking. In a few minutes, everybody was asleep. I felt proud of myself until I realized that I’d overlooked a minor problem—I couldn’t get up. Any attempt would wake them.

 

The feeling of being in prison returned, but I decided to dam the flood of self-pity for a change. I looked at the children adorning my body. Soft, tiny pillows of warmth covered me. They were beautiful. More than that, they were alive. And I was caring for them by myself. I felt like a competent father for the first time. I’d had nice paternal moments with them individually, but this was the first time I felt like a man caring for his children. I smiled as my fatigue and aggravation dissipated. I was glad that no one else had gotten out of bed. If they had, I wouldn’t have forced myself to rock three at once. I wouldn’t have had this moment of grace and quiet with my kids. When Shelley came in the room a while later, she consecrated the moment with five words.

 

“Wow. Look at you, Superdad.”

 

I smiled at her. We shared our first nice moment in a long time. Then I said, “I have to go to the bathroom” and she helped me put the kids in their cribs.

 

Taken from Assaulted by Joy: The Redemption of a Cynic by Stephen Simpson, copyright 2008. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. No part of this original publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the publisher. To order the book, click here.