Finding “Me” in Motherhood
I don’t know about the rest of you mommas with littles, but I feel like I’m wearing so many hats these days! (Mom, wife, part-time teacher, sporadic photographer, reader/writer, house renovator, homemaker, church attendee, perpetual vacuumer and toddler referee [man, those tiny humans can really duke it out]). My days are usually broken up into 3 shifts (1. Daytime with kids, 2. Evening with the newborn, and 3. Middle of the night for everything else). So these day, it’s not until that third and final slot (bedtime and beyond), that I can give my undivided attention to those various side jobs and hobbies.
I know that this is the season I’m in, and I am daily grateful I get to be home with my littles before they’re not little anymore. But I also find myself struggling to juggle the many sides of myself without forgoing sleep altogether for the indefinite future (although with coffee, it can probably be done)!
I also feel like my current interests are so varied that my brain has become some kind of intellectual junk drawer, stuffed with odds and ends and devoid of sense or order. I’m not sure which passions to intentionally pursue with the limited time I have or which ones describe “me” these days. When I was a literature student or a working professional, I was known by those things. These days I am abundantly blessed to be known as “mama” – a mama with many hobbies and responsibilities who is trying to carve out slivers of time for them somehow (isn’t that ALL of us?). I think we try to make sense of these many aspects of ourselves because we like our interior lives to be as neat and tidy as our exterior ones, but neither lives are remotely tidy when you’re raising young children! (My scribbled walls and crumb-laden carpets are proof enough of that :D).
I guess that’s also what humbles us about motherhood – we have to roll with the unknowns and make peace with the in-betweens; to accept the sense of waiting that we sometimes feel as we pour ourselves into these formative early years (and mama, they are such important years!). And through that we can realize that being “mom” isn’t separate from that other “you,” but the central and most important part of it. Because in it we are doing our most important work, and becoming the people we’re meant to be (more like Christ).
And those other sides of ourselves (that make us unique, or gifted, or that give us recreational joy) are not meaningless just because they’re temporarily getting lost in the shuffle. They point to the wonders that make the world worth exploring for children, and they are the passions that we pass onto them as they grow into humans with various interests of their own.
So yes, I’m wearing many hats these days, but I’m hoping this space can be a place to hang them while they all get sorted out. And in the meantime, I’ll give thanks that we don’t “find ourselves” in spite of motherhood, but in the midst of it.
