When we found out our youngest child was a girl, I was more than a bit shocked. I don't really know anything about being a girl. Sure, I am one, but on the girly scale I pretty much rank near the bottom. The only thing that keeps me from the depths of the bottom is my very girly fear of anything resembling a spider. Oh, and my total inability to open any jar from the shelf.
How was I supposed to raise a girl? I had two boys already, and I was even beginning to handle the occasional spider sighting. This was not something I had prepared myself for.
I used to have a career. I used to say I wanted to be a college president in the future. I was pretty driven.
Then, my husband and I decided it was the best thing for our family if I stayed home. And when I say "my husband and I," I do mean it. There was no force from him. There was no pushing. I went willingly - very willingly. I had been away from my young children too much already. I desired to be with them and to make our lives more manageable. (Albeit, less lucrative.)
So, one day I went to work, wrote my letter of resignation, and came home at 10 AM. I picked my kids up, and we went home. Just like that, I was a homemaker. That evening, I celebrated with a toast and a margarita with my stay-at-home-mom friends. I knew I was going to kick butt at this mommying thing.
I had spent many years in college pursuing a bachelor's and a master's and working in assistantships. Then I ventured onto a post-graduate career for four years. All of those things were leading me down a path.
This was not that path. I soon learned - I didn't know how to do this.
Has anyone ever told you that you actually have to learn how to be a homemaker? Provocative, I know. I have never been one to judge stay-at-home-moms as being unintelligent or lazy, but I also didn't know how smart you needed to be. You just had to be smart in things I wasn't smart in.
Like most women my age, I grew up in a generation that only added an egg to a box to get a cake. Quite frankly, the lack of an egg in my refrigerator was usually the cause of a considerable amount of frustration for me. "Why don't they come up with a mix that doesn't need an egg?" I have said that phrase many times.
Women my age have always known we could be anything. We have always seen women in the workforce. We have not known a world where women made homes; we have known a world where women made careers (and tried to make a home after work). We have upon us the cultural guilt of a former generation of women who say, "We fought for your rights to do this. Now go do it." When we choose not to do it, we seem ungrateful or held down by old fashioned men or worse - seem old fashioned ourselves. We live in a culture which preaches its own awesomeness at standing up for the next generation, when in reality, we are only awesome at standing up for ourselves and our own interests. Being a parent forces you into a life of putting someone else before yourself. Being a stay-at-home-mom puts you in that life full-time.
Not that being a stay-at-home-mom is the most godly vocation of them all (as I fail daily and much and every vocation given by God is inherently godly), but it is one where the entire job description is about the next generation and their interests. There are no awards. No pomp. There are very few self-esteem building moments (aside from your child using the potty correctly for the first time). However, there are plenty of moments, hours, days, weeks, and years to raise God-fearing, repentant sinners.
All of this is not a statement against working women. I understand the desire. I understand the need in certain circumstances. I fully recognize there are situations in the world when women choose to work AS a sacrifice for their children. But those situations should not be our points of argument. My heart hurts for women who must work against their own desires to be with their children. I was a working woman, and I don't totally rule out being one of you again someday. This is a statement against the world (and quite frankly, usually women) saying making a home isn't enough - either by blatantly saying it to another or by saying something like - "I just couldn't do that...I need to be out working and doing more." The implication of those statements is that staying home is less important.
When the ultrasound tech said "girl," I knew if God chose to bless my daughter with a husband and children someday, I didn't want her thinking she HAD to do more than JUST be a wife or JUST be a mother.
Perhaps the greatest commandment we have as parents is given to us by God in Deuteronomy 6:4-9.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." [ESV]
Those are the words I hope my daughter knows she HAS to do.
Those are the words I pray about doing each day.
When I say these are confessions from a career unfinished, I don't mean the career I had a lifetime ago.
I am talking about the one left unfinished each day here with my husband and my children.
That is my career unfinished.
