I'm doing it. I'm staying home. I'm a stay at home mom.
I thought it would be a lot harder to adjust to staying home and not being in school day in and day out. I can assure you, there's nothing "easy" about staying home. For our family, it meant adjusting our budget significantly. It also meant taking a deep breath and letting go of my identity in my career and embracing my identity in Christ as a Christian mom. I have felt called to motherhood for a long time but it doesn't make it "easy".
My baby girl is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself but she's not "easy". She doesn't just fall asleep on command, she doesn't follow a predictable schedule. She certainly can be fussy at times. She is not sleeping for long stretches at any point. BUT what I've found is that you don't need easy to be happy.
My job wasn't easy, being a full time music teacher (and married to another) meant incredibly booked up evenings, especially in December but honestly, there are lots of unpaid extra commitments that continually soak up every last ounce of energy. Having Buddy and teaching for 6 months was SUPER challenging. I really didn't like feeling like I wasn't able to give my best to teaching OR motherhood. When we found out Baby V was coming home, I was so RELIEVED. I anticipated taking a maternity leave and being able to be a more present mom for Buddy even though he would be starting Kindergarten.
Please don't get me wrong- I loved teaching. I really thought of it as a worthwhile, God honoring profession. I felt like I was impacting students in meaningful ways and honestly, I felt like in many ways I had it figured out. I knew how to be an effective music teacher. In a lot of ways, it was so much easier than staying home with our baby. BUT, I would not trade this time for anything!
Being a mom, whether staying home or not, there's a lot of perceived pressure. I feel like I have to prove to the world that I'm making the right choice to be home by being super-mom. I therefore have a ton of guilt/ sense of failure because I am NOT super-mom. I'm a new mom. I can't do it all.
What I've learned so far is that my role as a wife and mother is to put a priority on my family and taking care of them (and our home). Not to say I won't accept a little help from my hubby. He's good to me, he feeds the baby, he washes the pots/pans. But putting priority on them means that if we can do it, I'll stay home. I will spend my energy with them, I will focus my talents on God and his purpose for my life right now. That means putting the pride of being a good teacher and my own satisfaction of my own income out of the way and switching gears.
What now?
I'll pray to be useful for God's purpose. That might be just at home, raising our kids, taking care of our home and working on my Christian walk.
It might be something else.
