I’m making my way through a book titled: Mothers of Influence. It is a collection of stories about the Christian mothers of men and women who have changed the world. Today, I read about Susannah Wesley, mother to John and Charles Wesley, men who brought revival to the Protestant church. Susannah was born in 1669 and lived to 1742. During her lifetime, she bore nineteen children, only nine of which survived to adulthood. She spent at least one hour a day in prayer, often pulling a large apron over her head in her crowded household so her children knew to leave her alone with her Bible. According to her story, Susannah’s disciplined household ran like a finely tuned clock.

After reading about Susannah and a few other amazing moms, I prayed for awhile with tears in my throat. Lately, my household has been running like a haplessly tuned potato gun. For the past two months I’ve simply been happy to make it through the day. When something goes wrong in the house, about the best I can do is launch a potato at it from the couch. Okay, I don’t have a potato gun, but I grew up with one of these and they are quite the contraption.

But really, it feels as if I’ve done little more than lie on the couch for two months, exhausted and nauseated as our boys have bashed the house. Case in point, two days ago our twelve-year-old son washed the family iPod the way you’d wash a dish. We all share this nifty gadget since we cannot afford to purchase one for each child or one for myself. After the drowning of the iPod (he said the screen was dirty), our five-year-old son used a vacuum cleaner rod, which he was wielding as a giant sword, to break the overhead ceiling fan light in the living room. The most expensive light in the house, I might add. Then our two-year-old in potty training pooped his pants without a pull-up on. I’m not proud to say that I remained on the couch until the poop episode unfolded this way: our seventeen-year-old daughter, who was watching her toddler brother for me, employed her twelve-year-old brother (the iPod destroyer) to wrestle Mr. Poopy Pants into the bathroom where the poop fell out of the pants into the tub like a can of soda.

“It’s huge,” yelled my teenage daughter in horror. “Luke get paper towels!”

The twelve-year-old sprinted past me into the kitchen (he plays competitive soccer and is fast as a rabbit) and pulled nearly the whole roll off the spindle. The paper towel trail chased him back to the bathroom like a white coyote tearing down the hall.

“Stop!” I yelled. “It’s poop for crying out loud!” Dizzy with my stomach rolling uncontrollably, I abandoned the couch to intervene in this family freak show. By this time you might be asking where was the daddy of all these darlings… at work, of course. I made it to the bathroom in time to comfort our two-year-old who was on the verge of tears, standing there with his poopy pants around his ankles as his sister screamed. You’d think we had a toxic waste spill for the complete chaos involved in all this.

“You use toilet paper, not paper towels to pick up poop. That way you can just flush it down the toilet.” I demonstrated this action, relieved that the poop stayed in one piece and I didn’t throw up in the midst of moving it.

“What do I do with all these paper towels? Asked the twelve-year-old standing in the doorway. The boy isn’t dense, he gets straight A’s in school, but I still had to bite my tongue so I did not sarcastically call him a genius since I was still upset over him bathing the iPod. We can’t afford another iPod right now and I really enjoyed playing music with it while I cleaned the house.

Which is another failure on my part at the moment: housework. The dust is so thick on the furniture we could get out a hose and go mud bogging in the living room. Washing three loads of laundry a day, along with the dishes, and fixing meals for eight people is about the best I can do in this first trimester of pregnancy.

After the paper towel mess was taken care of, I headed back to the couch after my seventeen-year-old sweetly agreed to give the two-year-old a bath, along with his five and seven-year-old brothers. Within five minutes, the seventeen-year-old was screaming her head off again. The five and seven-year-olds were freaking out too because Garry, the two-year-old, had pooped in the tub.

“It’s on me!” Howled the seven-year-old. As if piranhas were in the tub with their teeth fastened to second grade flesh.

“IT’S POOP!” I yelled in exasperation. “Poop won’t hurt you!” I rose again from the couch as two wet, naked boys streaked down the hall splashing water in all directions.

“Where are your towels?!” I cried.

The boys ignored me.

I made it to the bathroom in time to see my daughter swatting at the poop like she deals with spiders, which she’s deathly afraid of.

Poor little Garry again looked about to cry. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Everybody poops.”

“Not in the bathtub! I have had it,” cried my daughter. “My brothers are making me crazy! Luke ruined the iPod! Joey broke the fanlight! And Garry has pooped on everything tonight! I can’t take anymore!”

Her meltdown made me laugh. I know I shouldn’t have laughed when she was upset, but I did. “I’ll take over,” I told her when I finally got control of myself.

“You are the mother,” she reminded me in a huff.

At least little Garry was still looking at me with love and respect. After drying him off, I gave him a reassuring hug. “You want to wear a pull-up now?” I asked him.

He hugged me back, his fat little fingers tangling lovingly in my hair, then he nodded his head and smiled, as relieved to be offered a diaper as a man offered a parachute on a broken plane. The hug reassured me too.

“We’ll try it again tomorrow,” I said, speaking about his potty-training, and also my mothering ability.

I’m resigned to the fact that A Mother of Influence book will never be written about me. Perhaps they will make a movie, Desperate Mommies, maybe. I’ve never seen Desperate Housewives. We haven’t had TV in our house in years. We do watch DVDs though, which include a lot of I Love Lucy, Laverne and Shirley, and Seventh Heaven. But the bulk of our family entertainment is the crazy way we live.

So after reading about Susannah Wesley, pregnant nineteen times and still praying an hour a day, which makes her magnificent in my eyes, I’m considering getting an apron that fits over my head. Perhaps that will improve my mothering ability. The apron I wear now is small and cute because I want to look fetching in the kitchen when my husband comes home. After seven challenging pregnancies, you’d think I’d rethink this desire to look fetching…

Truthfully, I know what I need right now is to rely more on God. I pray often and read my Bible every day, but since I got pregnant, every normal thing is now a struggle. Nothing is finely tuned in my life. Even the dogs seem to know that I’m not up for yard patrol these days. I used to scold them and lock the pups up when I caught them digging holes in the lawn or chewing on my garden gloves. I’m too worn out to do any of that. I picture them out there on the lawn whispering in their doggy language, “She’s lying on the couch again. Those kids are repelling from the rafters. Let’s dig to China today.”

People ask me at what point were you broken in having kids? Meaning, when did the number of your children overwhelm you? I always tell them three. Three was the number that made me a born again Christian. I’m not joking. Baby number three did me in. I realized then that I needed a higher power in my life. And it seems with every pregnancy, I learn this important lesson all over again. Without God’s abundant grace, I’m just a mother of one, big, fat, out-of-control mess.