My blogging has slowed and all of a sudden in reading a book given to me by a friend I realize exactly why. I couldn't put my finger on it before other than the feeling that being pregnant and re-submerged in a world of diapers and feedings somehow made my mission with this blog impossible to maintain. But at this moment as I lay on my couch with a sleeping baby on one arm and my Kindle book in the other, I have the sting of tears in my eyes and lump in my throat that can only mean the words on the page have reached in and found a tender spot in my heart. The root cause of which I only felt the symptoms of. You see, being a mom is the most important, special, meaningful thing I have ever and will ever do. I've accepted my new job title, embraced it fully, and no longer feel ashamed to say "I'm just a mom" when people ask what I do. In fact, now intake the “just” out of the sentence and smile as I answer “I am a mom”. It's the most challenging thing I have done and I take pride in the fact that I am molding 2 precious lives. So what is the worry in the back of my mind when I think about my future? What is that uneasy emotion I try to ignore because I can't describe it or because I know it is riddled with a lack of faith in Gods plan for me? I finally know what it is because the raw emotion filling my being tells me I uncovered and exposed something real. I'm afraid at the end of this amazing chapter in life--after I watch my kids go to high school, graduate, go to college, get married--I'll be lost. Its recent enough now for me to remember what it felt like to have a career and goals for my education and future career. But where will I be when this chapter is over? Who will I be? Will I be relevant? Will I just be a used up, tired mom who forgot what it was like to have dreams and goals and purpose outside of tiny, needy hands and feet? Will I look in the mirror when my last is in kindergarten or graduating high school and find a blank stare and a terrified "now what? " How can you not lose your identity when everything in your nature says my identity IS my kids right now? How can I look into their little faces and not want to live each day for them? I can't even want to live for myself or even peel myself off the couch to go to the restroom when my 7 week old is asleep on my arm.
Every time I think about it, I hold on to the feeling inside that tells me God has plans for me. Plans that may include motherhood but don't end with it. Faith that this season in life is also molding and shaping me for a fulfilling and meaningful one when my kids are independent. But the reality is there is fear and shortcoming in my faith when I think about my future as my kids grow up. Fear that the working world will have moved on without me. That I will no longer have a place in careers that are moving forward and making a difference. That maybe at best I will find a way to make money but that my youthful dreams of touching lives and being satisfied by a job will not be achievable. That I will float through the rest of my life never finding that place I spent my entire 20s preparing myself for. Will the answers come when I walk through it? Will I start with a new chapter of a new book just as this one is ending? Or will this time somehow be my training ground and be seamlessly intertwined with the next? Will it be a long, bumpy path straight up a mountain or will I not even notice the slow transition from daily motherhood monotony to His intentions for my future?
So many questions I don't have the answer to right now. Questions I didn't anticipate having at 30 years old. But I wont stop praying that I live according to His will and recognize divine opportunities that are sometimes hidden in the everyday.
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