Shall I pull an Antony? Drop my kids off with the nuns and head to a desert? As appealing as that might sound at certain moments, I doubt God is calling me to abandon my children en route to holiness. Any transformation will have to happen in the context of the life I’m living, responsibilities and all.

But without solitude and silence to chisel away the false self that resents my children’s interruptions, how do I become the kind of person who no longer snaps at her children when they interrupt her solitude and silence? How do I – in my shoes, not Antony’s – pursue God in the desert? It took Antony nearly twenty years with no kids. Sometimes I can’t even get twenty minutes alone.

I guess Alanis Morrissette was talking to someone else.