On Motherhood

My wonderful roommate sent me this article today that has been jumping around my brain for the past hour, and I just need to get some thoughts out.  They aren't perfectly developed or very well articulated, but it's where I'm at right now.  This is something I'm still very much developing my feelings toward, and I find that writing out how I feel helps me understand things a little better.  So here goes.

It's not that I don't want to be a mother- I do.  I long for the days of playing with my children- long hours of make believe plays and stories, tedious moments of fingernail painting, and arduous hours of shoelace tying and bike riding attempts.  And not just the fun parts, I want all* of it.  The knock on the door just as I'm falling asleep from the little one plagued by nightmares, the struggling to learn algebra, the parent newsletters from school, the scraped knees and hurt feelings and temper tantrums and runny noses and dirty diapers.  The fights with teenagers and long nights praying for their safe return home.

It's not that I don't want all that.  I want it so much.  That's precisely the problem.  I want it so much that I'm afraid to want it.  I want it to be the mother that children look back on and remember with fondness and laughter.  I want to be my children's confidant, advisor, and friend.  But I am so afraid I won't be able to.

My life has not followed the conventional method thus far.  Growing up, my home was often not the way it ought to have been.  My life has seen it's fair share of struggles and setbacks, many in ways that make me believe I can't have the traditional family I so strongly desire.

And so my recent emphasis has been on education.  Because that, I can control.  I can push forward and prepare myself to enter a challenging doctoral study program- I can network and maintain great grades and work way too many hours a week.  But I don't really want it.  Don't get me wrong- I want to have an impact on the world.  I want to learn more and influence others- but I could do that in much easier ways than the one I've chosen.  I'm not doing it because it's the easy way out, I'm doing it because I feel like that's what I'm supposed to be doing.  Because I don't think God would give me all these opportunities unless he intended for me to use them.  And because I don't know exactly how I'm supposed to use them yet, I'm working as hard as I can to open as many doors as possible.  My hope is that in opening those doors, I'm not unintentionally blocking off access to other, more important ones.

*One important caveat: I don't particularly want to endure childbirth.  Pregnancy, sure.  Raising children, you bet.  But the 24+ hours spent actually delivering said child, that I'm not looking forward to.  That said, I recognize that childbirth is a necessary component of the whole process, so I'm willing to overlook it for the moment.  But I should mention that I reserve the right to change my stance on that at any moment during the labor itself.