Motherhood Is A Work in Progress
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Homemaking on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 3:35 PM
Procrastinate enough and one of your blog-friends will post what you wanted to say, and say it better than you could have.
After posting about perceptions of stay-at-home moms, I promised a follow-up about women and work.
I still want to say a little more, but in the meanwhile, read this lovely post from Hallie Lord!
In a post I hope you’ll click over and read, she writes about how meaningful—and intellectually stimulating—it is to be a full-time mom, full stop. No apologies.
At the same time, she also chronicles her own journey towards greater mastery of her vocation, and how that growth in experience has opened up new possibilities for her.
At first I struggled with the fear that these desires I had for further stimulation betrayed my young idealistic self. Had I become jaded; lost that selflessness that new mothers are so rich in; or been mistaken in my belief that a woman can be perpetually fulfilled by keeping the home fires burning?
Not at all — I was simply a woman who’d gained greater mastery over her vocation and was left with more time and mental energy to devote to other interests. I was entering a new, strange phase of life — one I’d not anticipated.
We’ve all heard the expression “God is not outdone in generosity,’ and Hallie also shows how the Lord does not give us gifts simply so that we can sacrifice or suppress them, but rather, when we surrender to his will for us, “all these things shall be added.”
God began to open doors I’d not even known to knock on; fulfilling dreams I’d long since abandoned. I won’t lie — at first those doors looked forbidding and those dreams seemed no longer to fit but over time my heart opened up to these new paths and I was able to see them for the gifts they were.
What did I learn from this? I learned not to put limitations on a God who is not bound by such mortal constructs and to not speak of that which I do not intimately know. I discovered that our God is a God of wondrous surprises. The dream I’d long since forgotten — that daring dream of being a writer — had been kept safe for me. God had quietly tucked it away so that when the time was right He could pull it out of His pocket and present it to delight me as a gift of love.
Hallie gets at something very important: namely, that our lives are not static, and God is faithful.
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