Getting Settled In To My Calling of This Season

Hi my blogging friends. It's been awhile since I've had time to sit down and think. To be honest, I really don't have time today but I am taking it anyway. Sometimes you just gotta! The girls are playing happily for the moment. The dog is annoying the guy who is laying carpet in one of the bedrooms. Shaun is off working hard on someone else's house. I am putting aside all my mega tasks that I have on the table at the moment to just sit down and think for a few minutes.

Last week Shaun and I had the privilege of going to the Leadership Summit. Last year I had found it intensely frustrating. We were leaving a great church that we were involved in leadership in a few areas and moving to a church unknown. I was feeling a need to be a leader outside of my home to get away and have a break from motherhood responsibilities. And while I think that is all good and well, one year later I have a bit of a different perspective.

This year as I listened to the various phenomenal speakers I realized that I was mentally applying it to my roles that I do every day, the roles of wife and mother...but mainly mother. We will be homeschooling this year and, I think, for the first time I am settled into being at home and doing these things as opposed to filling in time at home and wanting to be doing the things I spent the pre-mother years doing and that which I am trained to do...my passions. While many of my friendds have managed to do both I, I have come to find out, am an all or nothing girl. Whatever I am doing I am fully engaged and focused on and I cannot do other things well. That is my default. I am learning, slowly, how to work around this...first I had to realize that's how it was for me though. So for me to be at home but longing to be doing other things meant that nothing actually got done well. In a sense I freeze. I don't know what to do b/c I can't do everything with all my strength...so I just stop. You would not be able to tell this by looking at my life. It looks very busy and somewhat productive. But mentally this is what goes on. I am not sure that I am articulating this very well, likely, because this is a new revelation for me and so I have not fully processed nor conquered

Another thing that goes along with this is that I am not a multitasker...yeah I know I'm a woman and that people assume that a woman and a multitasker are one and the same...this is not the case for me. My mom is an amazing multitasker and still doesn't get how I am not. She often looks at me in bewilderment when I just can't multi-task. It is a detrimental thing when you are a mom. The job basically requires it as a starting point. Motherhood is a constant interruption of thoughts and tasks. There are days when I wonder if I will go insane! But by the grace of God the love of my husband and children I do not!

I have to say that over the last year I got SO frustrated with not being content with where I was at that I finally started praying. Imagine that! I prayed that God would give me a passion for all that I needed to be a mother to these precious PRECIOUS gifts that He gave to me for this season. He took me up on this request and slowly and graciously has begun to grow this passion. I know it will be a process but I am encouraged. He has grown it to the point that homeschooling the girls is not an overwhelming burden on my heart but I am actually looking forward too it. I do not know what this year will hold or the next. I am kind of glad about that. It would be overwhelming I think.

If you talk to any mother, who's children are already grown, they will tell you that these years go by so quickly and to cherish each moment. A friend once told me that "the days are long but the years are short". It is a bittersweet thing. On one hand you sort of long for the never ending barrage to end. On the other hand you never want it to end. It's the hardest and best job one could ever have.

I do not want you to think that this is the complete picture of my motherhood experience. For it is not by a looooooong shot. It's just that, at this point in the journey, this is what God is working on in my heart and life. These beautiful girls bring me SO much joy, a fresh perspective, and a river of love that I never knew existed before I had the privilege and joy to be their mother.