The Universal Struggle of Mother's

As a mom I spend a lot of time self-evaluating, not judging or criticizing my ability to parent, just questioning my methods and myself. I’ve only ever taken one other thing in my life as seriously as motherhood, and that is my marriage. It’s become more and more evident throughout my lifetime that there will not ever be more important work than the work that I do in my family, in my home. I want to be equal to the task and I want to succeed. I am loved and valued by my husband and my children; I am needed and desired, even. They are the people who I hope to get those basic human necessities from. In trying so very hard to succeed I dedicate all of my energy and all of my time to them and their needs. Especially a potty training, suddenly needy two-year-old daughter.

Most days I feel successful. In all honesty the days that most moms describe using the words top-knot, no makeup, lots of coffee, those days are few and far between for me. I enjoy my life and I consider myself to be good at it. I feel there is sanctity in living my life for other people. In the daily giving of myself that is sometimes boundless and tiresome. In my heart, I feel that is my calling.

However, there are also days when even though I’ve had a normal amount of coffee, my hair and make up is done and the kids are smiling and my husband is laughing, that I feel less than the sum of all that I ‘am’ to them. I feel empty of myself and full of someone else. I feel that all I am is the maid, the mender, the cook…

The kicker here is that I know exactly why, and I know exactly how to fix it. The way most of us do when we casually search new job postings in our area or check out the new website for the undergrad program we’ve had our eye on for the least seven years… But I will continually put the feeling and all the thoughts that go along with it away. When they rise to meet me on a raining Monday morning after a night of little sleep and a messy kitchen, I will quietly and gently tuck them away. When they sit on my chest between a feverish baby and me at midnight, I will ignore them. When they linger in the air after a hurtful exchange with my husband, I will wave them away.

I am needed here. In the kitchen with the dirty dishes, in the bed at midnight with a sweaty, curly headed girl, beside my husband no matter how either of us feels at the moment. I am needed here.

Today I’m reminding myself there will be time for all the dreams I dreamt. There will be time for a movie, or a manicure or a job or a class. Those things will wait. These things won’t wait; very soon my little girl won’t need help with a fever or a bad dream, my husband may not need the constant support because he’s taken yet another new job to better our lives. I am needed and in turn that makes me want to be here.

There isn’t love greater than the love I am given or give. There isn’t something I don’t have that will measure up to what I am blessed to have. So I find patience, there aren’t better things waiting for me, it is my hope though that there are equally wonderful things waiting for me, different, but equally wonderful things. 

New seasons…

P.S. Sorry for the weightiness! Here are some smiling faces to lighten up this post a bit :)

Also, I'll just leave this right here!