stay-at-home mom

since staying at home, i have loved every single second of it. even the crazy parts. i have had one huge issue though. i have felt this whole time like i am not doing enough and as if everyone around thinks i am not either. i even went so far this week as to keep a detailed list of everything i do during the day. it was long and it was alot. still i felt like i was falling short.

you know there are moments that i am just sitting on the floor playing with lucas. or i spend alot of time patting summer grace's head cause she is a puppy not a person. but when i signed up for being a stay-at-home mom, isn't that what i expected? isn't that what i wanted? if i was a daycare worker, that is what i would be doing with other people's kids. if my kids were in daycare, that is what their teachers would be doing with them.

but i am not taking care of someone elses kids and someone else is not taking care of my kids. it is my job 24 hours a day for 7 days a week to do what i do.....and i am glad for that....no i am more than glad. i am so blessed by God to be doing the ONE job i have always craved.

There are women in the bible who worked a business and still excelled at raising a family. Then there are women of the bible that excelled at just raising their family. Both women loved their families and both women did as God directed. I happen to fall in category #2. I can not raise kids well and work at the same time. I always feel guilty at work for not being at home with my kids. But i never felt guilty at home for being away from work.

the other day i dreamed about my old job. it was an awful dream. in the dream i had the same feelings of inadequacies, felt ridiculed, never lived up to the expected potential, had low self-confidence, and just a big ugly feeling inside. when i woke up, i carried that feeling with me for awhile. then i remembered to be thankful that i no longer have to work in that kind of environment. i truly think that the last 1 or 2 years that i worked, i was meant to be there for only 2 reasons. 1. to realize that i wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and 2. to make enough money in the needed time frame in order to get all mine and Joseph's debt paid off so i could stay at home.

we have a limited budget and we struggle alot with learning to live on this new tight budget. but i would not trade this job for a billion bucks. i want to stay at home with my kids. i want to imagine with them and teach them to count and all the letters of the alphabet and the different sounds they make. i want to be here when they get home from school. i want to make sure they stay out of too much trouble when they are teenagers.

i figured out today that i have been holding myself back from being fully happy with my new "job" by thinking i am not doing enough. i am doing plenty and i am doing exactly what i need to be doing to raise my family right. before i was a stay-at-home mom, i had such a high-end, demanding job. so now as i sit on the floor with lucas crawling all over me and summer grace showing me her new puppet show, and as I make sure kamryn gets her homework done and ask her about her day at school, I will remember that just because i am not working my brain to bits does not mean that i do not have, for me, the best and most important job in the world.

I do not have to make alot of dollars or finish a spreadsheet by 5pm or balance a budget to be important. my only job of being a mom to my 3 children is important enough for me.