I was scrunched into that position I find when I can no longer keep my lids open. When I’ve read enough words and my muscles jerk belligerently at me that it’s time to just call it a night already. 
That’s when I heard the shredding screams from somewhere close. The street maybe, or a neighbor’s house. Neither Chase nor I could be sure. Over and over, a small someone’s voice pierced through our window screens and I thought, Even if I have to use these pillows as nunchucks, I will defend this child.  

But then came other young voices, ones like siblings fighting or sleepover friends annoyed that they invited the one kid who can’t keep it down. “Stop it!” 
Without filter I started speaking octaves lower than my normal voice. “Punk kids. It’s 12:45 a.m., where in heaven’s name are their parents? I’m going to karate chop their twerpy little heads.”

I sank back into my spot with clenched teeth, my own internal screaming of the last few days beginning again. The thoughts seemed to come faster in the suddenly hushed darkness of our bedroom.

God, you don’t make sense right now. I am weary of this story and frankly, I don’t want to do it anymore because, well, I don’t know if I can. It’s all just so…hard.

Grooves in the plastic guard on my lower molars grew deeper as I wrestled with my list of injustices. Shut up, you wind. Still yourself, rattling door. Eventually, I fell asleep grateful for the escape.

Now in the brightness of 7 a.m., with the fog of my daughter’s morning breath clouding me, I am frantic for coffee. Sugar hits ceramic, half and half makes all things creamy, and I know where I will go when cartoons and cereal bowls ease demands.

I go to the front porch where the breeze muffles fake laughter on the screen and real laughter from my three. Where I can imagine His knuckle under my chin so that my only choice is to hold my head a little higher into the safety of His face. Where my temper tantrum calms and all the pain I’ve ever known shows up in His own eyes. I heal as He gently asks,

“Have you ever in your life commanded the morning,
And caused the dawn to know its place,
that it might take hold of the end of the earth…?”

Have you entered into the springs of the sea
Or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you understood the expanse of the earth?”   -Job 38:12-13a; 16-17

It is with the man covered in sores and constant pain, whose voice echoes in the voids of lost children and empty bank accounts, that I declare a repentance deep enough to find a well of trust.
If the I AM of the galaxies can tell waves as they reach for beaches,

“Thus far you shall come, but no farther;”  -Job 38:11

put His Own in front of betrayal and loneliness and unparalleled suffering so I don’t have to, and promise to never leave me, then all right. I can do another day.

“And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning, or crying or pain…”  -Revelation 21:4

And our screaming will cease.