It wasn’t until the second time that our toddler smashed his head into my wife’s chin that she began to cry. We were on vacation with family, and our youngest had been resisting sleep with every muscle in his small but surprisingly strong body. No one feels their best at 3:30 in the morning, but after listening to constant screaming and doing everything you can think of to get your son to go to sleep, your already meager endurance begins to wane. I should have said something to her, but I wasn’t sure what to say or how to help, so I just lay there and watched her sob. An hour later, he finally settled down and fell into an exhausted sleep between us.

This was not the first time he had stretched our patience and our sanity to their limits. Throwing objects into the toilet, climbing up onto the kitchen table for the fourth time in five minutes, throwing his spoon onto the floor for no reason and then expecting us to pick it up for the third time. My wife and I both know that he doesn’t necessarily mean anything malicious by his actions, but after a day of climbing on top of everything and making a mess or breaking everything he touches, you start to wonder. Our patience gets strained to the breaking point, and to our shame, it sometimes breaks. We snap at him or one of our other children, wondering why they have the audacity to disobey or to act in such unwise or rash ways. My brain knows their hand-eye coordination and pre-frontal cortexes are not fully developed and won’t be for over a decade, but still, I snap inwardly, “He should have known what was going to happen. He’ll get no pity from me!” The understanding I have doesn’t always result in loving and patient responses.

Raising children is simultaneously one of the most fulfilling and frustrating things I have ever done. Occasionally, one of our boys will say or do something unexpectedly sweet, and I will look over at my wife, and she is looking back at me, her eyes holding within them softness and love. This is what we signed up for.

There are frequent small glimpses of transcendent love and beauty in parenting, but too often it seems to be a gray and grinding endurance race—simply trying to put one foot in front of the other and hoping you don’t drop from exhaustion. A newborn refuses to sleep for much of the night or a toddler throws himself to the middle of the kitchen floor hammering his small fists and feet in defiance at the “No” he was given. Our eyes connect again, and this time I instead see weariness and frustration.

In moments like these, I regularly give in to my selfish impulses and raise my voice or snap at my wife or children. We’re getting ready for church, and our five-year-old has been changing his clothes for the past twenty minutes, yet has managed to only remove a shirt and a single sock. My voice hardens, my wife feels the stress, and now I can feel the tension in our home rising. Like Moses in the wilderness, I have to wonder why I was given such a stubborn and stiff-necked people to govern. “Hear now ye rebels!”

If I’m not careful, I begin feeling like a victim and start asking questions that attempt to remove my responsibility and complicity from the situation. Why do my children have to act in such sinful and selfish ways? Why can’t my wife take care of raising them like she is supposed to? Why can’t my life be simple and filled with ease and comfort? I just want everything to go well without needing to put forth any effort to make it happen, is that asking too much?

It is, and I know it, even if I would rather not admit the reality. Parenting is joyful and fulfilling in many ways, but at times it calls for my wife and I to patiently endure the small sorrows and trials that are part of life on a sinful earth. Sometimes we suffer with screaming children or broken sleep, but often we need to deal with the sin in our hearts. Sin that makes us want to turn away from each other and our children and retreat into our devices instead of turning toward patience, sacrifice, and love.

Our calling as parents is to endure when it’s hard, to be patient when we want to lash out, to sacrifice when we want to be selfish, and to love when we want to feel sorry for ourselves. The small sorrows will come, and they will keep coming through the rest of parenthood and our lives. When we want to run away, we must instead hold fast and be an anchor for each other and our children. It’s human to escape, it’s divine to endure.