i had to go back and add a few things on my about me.
i am no longer only a daughter, sister and friend.
i can now add to that list wife and mother.
and wow!! what an addition those two things are!
ever since i was a little, bitty girl i have dreamed of being those two things. a wife and mom. sure there are gazillions of them through out history. none of us would be here if it were not were for them. but for me it seemed still, to be a noble calling.
there are some women in history who have blazed the trail for us girls in many wondeful ways and i am thankful for them!
women like susan b. anthony who i have thought about in these last few weeks when i exercised my right to voice my opinions and vote.
and others like florence nightengale, annie oakley,and eudora welty.
all who dared to strecth the boundries of what it means to be a woman.
the list goes on and on.
but not many women in history are known or remembered for being a mom!
i think that Mary is just about one of the only women in history i can think of who was famous for just being a mom!
and yet, that has always been my hearts one true desire!
in history (and still in the south!! ha ha!!) thirty two is quite old for a first time mommy to set out on an adventure with her new little one. but i am doing my best, and learning as i go. it was hard to break my "singles habits" in the first year of marriage and harder still to adapt to being mommy so quickly after adapting to being wife! but i am getting there!
i am so blessed to have an absolutley wonderful husband who has played "mr mom" in the mornings while i am at work. since he is at school part time and works part time as he earns his degree i had been the primary bread winner for us and we have had to continue this even after the baby came along. he was almost forced by our finances into a role that he never dremaed he wanted. its funny. i always wanted to be a stay at home mom, and up until a few years ago he never even wanted kids, but God, in his infinate wisdom, had plans for us bigger still than we could imagine! i have been blessed watching cliff and campbell bond and i know even through the fussiness and dirty diapers, cliff has been blessed too, by this time together with his son that most daddies don't get.
but where this has left me has been hard to say the least.
i have dealt with feeling like i abandoned my baby for work. even though that work was necessary for the financial success of our family.
i have let our house suffer because i am having a hard time juggling work and household chores..
i have probably led to the beginning of some spoiling behaviors in our son because when i get home all i want to do is hold him.
i have said that i feel like that olympian who has trained their entire lives for an event only to be told that they must stand on th sidelines and cheer for another team mate as they go for the gold. like gabby douglas and jordyn weiber.
but i have learned something in the process.
i do not take my time with my son for granted, thats for sure. but also i have learned that sometimes the things we are called to do, do not come easy. and only when it is a true calling will we work to accomplish it no matter what!
daddy reminded me recently in his blog on veterens day of my great aunt evie. he lamented how the old maid we all knew and loved may have perhaps been not the picky spinster, but rather, the broken heart whose soldier never came home.
her calling was interupted when her dreams of being wife and mommy were shattered somewhere on the foreign soil of war.
but she picked up the pieces and became a "mommy" still.
she placed herself so dearly in our lives that my dad and his siblings referred to her as their "other mother" and us grandkids thought of her like another grandmother too.
she taught sunday school and trained teachers to teach sunday school for probabaly fifty plus years in the baptist churches in mississippi. she was one of the first women to be a minister in our state and she pioneered in many ways what we now know as how to love a child at church.
i think also of Mary, who i mentioned earlier. bless her precious, young heart. what dreams did she have that changed so quickly that day that the angel appeared to her? i can only imagine that given her culture and the fact that she was chosen, she must have dreamed of being a mother one day. but not in the way in which it happened. not so soon. not before she was wed or before she felt, im sure that she was ready.
sometimes the things that we are called to do happen all too quickly it seems, before we even feel prepared. sometimes they happen in all together unexpected ways. and sometimes they take so long to happen that when they do we are different people than we thought we would be.
i never dreamed i would be the working mom.
but for now.
for today.
i am.
and i know that this is ok, too. one day i will look back at these days that i watched my baby boy grow...
...closer to his daddy who somehow found the instinct he never dreamed he had
...closer to his mommy who learned letting go just a bit rewards exponentially
...closer to becoming the man that i know i was called to raise.
