Seven-elevens. I and my brother frequented corner gas stations named as such in our youth on a mission to purchase sour-powers, as they were called, or pop a few quarters in whatever video game cabinet, nestled at the back of the store, happened to be available at the time. Many a Saturday were spent biking with friends to one or another of these stations around town in between outdoor play to purge our pockets of coins offered by our parents. So, we exited the house and occupied ourselves elsewhere to while away a warm spring or summer afternoon. Good times.

My paternal grandfather, however, employed this chosen term in a very unique and wholly different way. “Seven-elevens,” by contrast, were, for him, a disparaging reference to contemporary church praise choruses as opposed to the old, traditional four-stanza hymns, to which he was most accustomed for decades during Sunday morning worship service until a younger crowd began to lead the proceedings. “Seven words, repeat it eleven times,” he shared in his brief and to-the-point manner. While such songs certainly have their place, and I wouldn’t begrudge their power to move and inspire, I find I’m cut from similar cloth as my grandfather and often miss and prefer the old hymns, if for no reasons other than their familiarity, having grown up routinely singing them in church, and since I can’t help but observe and appreciate the very meticulous, thoughtful care the songwriters placed in their deliberate choice and arrangement of words. There is as much theology to be gleaned from the verses as one might in a seminary course if you’re paying careful attention. While there are many I could name, “It is Well” is one of my personal favorites. Since we’re on the subject, I wouldn’t object to a four-part acapella harmony of said title at my funeral, though I hope we’re years away from arranging such a somber performance.

I broke with custom at a recent church service, however, and found myself struck poignantly by the opening verse of a familiar tune I’d heard many times before in recent years but never gave a second thought. It opens:

“When all I see is the battle, you see the victory.”

The song continues, themed around the belief that God will tackle our most daunting problems on our behalf, problems that feel insurmountable, providing reassurance for the present moment that things will work out in the end due to his patient yet direct involvement, if only we trust. I was instantly moved by these words as soon as they were sung. As I continued listening, I felt as if my soul reached out desperately to the hope the verses attempted to offer both to encouraged listeners and faithful participants, even finding myself fighting back tears that spoke of the hopelessness I had been feeling regarding parenting, notably one of our trio.

For those who have not yet started a family, there are more than a few loose ideas out there about the most ideal number of children to have. What’s most important to remember however, is that there is indisputably a dynamic that governs the relationships, and it changes and is inseparably related to the number of children in your brood. That being said, while there are many theories, three is often without question, I hear, considered the oddest and most challenging dynamic to manage. “It’s always two against one,” as a sage acquaintance summed it up for us.

I can’t say whether or not this is true, but I personally grew up in a three-kid household, as did my wife, and we are well aware of the noteworthy dynamics of birth order, though both strictly from the vantage point of the oldest in the bunch. I have no doubt this phenomenon plays into the relationships in our own household, often one or another lodging protests regarding alleged favoritism. One of our three, in particular, is most vocal with this grievance, with the added challenge of acting out deep, personal issues stemming from early trauma.

Though we’re only 5-6 years into the adoption experience, the road has been long and hard with our child, and the struggle with this trauma to raise a well-adjusted kid in spite of it wears on you in a way nothing else does. You lose count the number of times you feel like giving up, or at least easing up. If you’re not careful, you can cease to care the way you should, the emotional drain feeling meaningless and far too great to bear.

These concerns tossed and turned in my head that morning the verse was sung, and they were words I longed to hear and believe. Parenting of any given flavor, I have learned, is so unlike anything else one undertakes. It is a long and difficult process with no guarantees, especially with kids who had a rough start, even if you’re doing the best you can with the tools, skills, and resources at your disposal, be they plenty or few. You can easily feel outmatched, as I often do and did that morning, wishing for more than a share of divine assistance. It is, regrettably, never so easy as flipping a switch, pressing a button, or checking a box.

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I’ve remarked before that my wife and I have more than a bit of the achiever bent in each of us, which plays well into our firstborn birth order placement. This is manifested best in the pleasure we take in checklists; rather, I should say the delight we take in crossing out a task on our various to-do lists. There’s nothing quite like it for its simplicity and satisfaction.

Recently, we embarked on one of my ambitious wife’s many life goals to invest in real estate, specifically in the short-term vacation rental game. We have stayed in quite a few “Airbnb” homes over the years with both family and just the two of us, and we find the experience both pleasant and preferable to a hotel stay. While the cost can be slightly steeper than standard lodging, you’re offered more of an experience, many homes tailored to the community in which they are found.

Staying, however, is hardly identical to staging. Seated on the opposite side of a property experience is a mortgage, repairs, renovation, furnishing, and amenities — less to be enjoyed by you than by guests hopefully charmed by the photographs you’ve provided online of your special getaway. After a long year or two of searching, we found ours in the comfy, historic, and amiable town of Brenham, famed home of Blue Bell ice cream. After minor wrangling with the sellers over a month or so via our respective agents, we signed the papers, and the newly-renovated, 60s-era 3-bedroom 2-bath was ours. Check.

Supplies, maintenance, upgrades, and furnishings all make the list, and the expenses begin to mount. “You have to spend money to make money,” they say, and it’s true, though as of this writing, we remain in anticipation of the “making” part, only days since our project was made available for rent. In any event, the “to-do” list is as long as a CVS receipt and is frequently updated and altered. If you’ve watched any home-improvement show, you should be aware of those unforeseen and unwelcome problems that crop-up (cue dramatic background music and carefully edited clips of pained facial expressions), be it rotted flooring, corroded pipes in the walls, outdated electrical, termites, etc. We were fortunate not to have too many heart-stopping surprises, the flippers previous to us handling the majority of the big stuff, though first on our list was the outdated AC condenser, replaced by a genial, salt-of-the-earth local professional very well-connected to this humble town and who was a friendly and helpful first-contact, providing me additionally with the opportunity to use with frequency thereafter the saying, “I’ve got a guy.” Check.

You wouldn’t think it, but installing blinds on windows can take the better part of a day, though one can become a quick study of such a repetitive task. This was first on the list of personal jobs I could handle on my own around the place and considered essential since it “blinded” any potential peeping-toms from all that thereafter took place inside. Next came bedframe and box spring assembly in the bedrooms, unpacking mattresses, putting together anything that arrived in a box, and then moving the big stuff in a Uhaul on a designated Saturday. My lovely wife did an outstanding job of acquiring innumerable furnishings and appliances via auctions stationed at every corner of the sprawling metropolis of Houston, allowing us to purchase at bargain prices otherwise new items, given one’s willingness to sustain the chance of a minor ding here or there. Our favorite story among these was a new Ashley Furniture sleeper sofa that we acquired for a ridiculously low price, only to discover after we brought it home that it was missing two cushions — our mistake for failing to read the fine-print. No matter, however, as we discovered. After identifying and contacting the furniture retailer’s repair line, they asked only for the serial number and our mailing address and shipped replacements free-of-charge, in spite of the fact that we admittedly did not purchase it new in-store. They arrived in time for moving day, as we hauled everything up and into the new home. Check, check, check, all the way to our eventual listing of the property a full month later.

How rewarding it is to finish a job, to mark off a task, to bring closure to something through honest hard-work and effort. Study for the test, submit your answers, and get the “A”; turn the screw, one after another, and assemble the bedframe; think your thoughts, type the words, and post your blog. Check, check, check. The task may take time, but it’s straightforward and unequivocal: your will to work is likely the only thing standing between you and the satisfaction of completion.

This works best against things in life that have no clear will of their own. I failed to observe this until children came along. In this, I was woefully unprepared, in spite of training. It was rapidly apparent and unmistakable to me that one of the chief aspects that was going to make parenting so challenging was the fact that I couldn’t address them like a task on a to-do list. They have little wills and emotions of their own, perhaps more potent than you might imagine, driven sometimes by issues that they cannot fully understand or explain. The dryer doesn’t skitter away from you when you step into the laundry room, refusing to do its one and only chore by accepting the wet clothes. A nail doesn’t scream in pain, shedding bitter tears, screaming “No!” at you when you strike it with a hammer. No, these objects are indifferent to the job and allow you to edge ever closer to that “check,” as long as you move your own will. You and maybe the static, dispassionate laws of the physical universe and/or mother nature are your only obstacle.

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Bathtime was a traumatic experience both for our youngest and my wife and me soon after he arrived with his oldest sister. The first time, when they were simply paying us a visit for the weekend, he was too shy and uncertain of us to choose to resist with any measurable effort. Thereafter, once they moved in permanently, you would think it was pure primal torture for all involved. You wouldn’t expect a 2-year-old to be the cause of so much fear and uncertainty in a couple of seemingly mature and responsible adults, but it was as if we were coaxing him to step into a puddle of acid. Wiry and unmanageable as he could choose to be with his chunky toddler frame, we gave up and tried a wet, soapy rag outside of the bathtub, which proved just as Sisyphean of a task. We nearly resigned ourselves to the possibility that failure to properly bathe this child might do us in and disqualify us as adoptive parents, until we were offered the down-home advice from seasoned child-wranglers, “You just gotta do it.” So, we dug deep and, with time and tough-love, powered-through until getting our toddler clean was no longer an unpleasant chore for either party.

I could say that we eventually checked this challenge off of a list, but it didn’t feel quite so simple as that, not in the least. Here we were, two adults running headlong into the will of another, diminutive as he may be, and we initially couldn’t get it done. Enveloped protectively around this will were emotions, experiences, and fears, and suddenly a “simple” task felt like the delicate and dangerous art of brain surgery. We didn’t want to further damage this child, but it felt as if we were. The visceral resistance genuinely baffled us and was a job unworthy of placement on a casual, dispensable checklist.

Raising children, certainly adopted children, doesn’t transpire with an easy checklist. It didn’t take long at all for me to figure this out and feel a claustrophobic unease of realizing the job would stretch out in duration much further and was more complex than I anticipated. On the flip side, the brand of satisfaction one experiences where kids and “completion” of parenting jobs is involved is less a “check,” I find, than seamless movement past an obstacle. It’s more often just progress as you continue traveling past the next mile marker, and the next, etc.

And sometimes, maybe more frequently than we’d like, it’s also, “Didn’t we just pass this way?” or, “Are we going in circles?” More often than I’d like to admit, this is where I feel like we are with our child, whose challenges rolled through my head that morning in church as we sang of such battles that belong to God, whose confident perspective I wish I was more prone to seeing.

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As we left the morning doctor appointment, something I was able to mark off the day’s to-do list, our youngest fretted in the back seat, concerned that I would not return him to school in time for P.E., his favorite “class” of the day. Multiple times he questioned me, in spite of my assurances that we would arrive ahead of schedule. It gave me pause, prompting me to consider how often I feel hopeless in spite of received promises and reassurances offered by God regarding circumstances, in our case, seemingly endless frustrations with our child. I just want to be done and finished with it, to mark it off the list.

Instead, I hear, and have heard more than once, “My grace is sufficient for you . . .” Unwelcome words, I confess. But there you have it. Parenting, especially parenting with the additional challenges of adoption, is rarely a simple, emotionless daily task to be completed. It’s a slog sometimes, a battle, as the song mentions. The victory promised feels long in coming. Will it ever arrive?

I certainly hope it will. And that often may, in fact, be the sole “task” I need to place on the list, after all, each morning as the day begins again. In that respect, all that is left “to do” may be more simple and straightforward than I imagine, but nonetheless motivating. Maybe I can’t change my kid right now, but I can certainly try and, if all else fails, today pencil-in only “hope” at the top of the list.

Check.