Category: Fulfillment

Motherhood shouldn’t just be a drudgery. Find fulfillment in your most important calling–mother.

Categories
Fulfillment Faith

Interview with 5 Minutes for Mom

I was privileged to interview the #1 most popular parent blogger, Janice of 5 Minutes for Mom. 5 Minutes for Mom, maintained by Janice and her twin sister Susan, focuses on bringing moms the best stuff on the Internet—parenting, blogging, shopping, you name it. She was kind enough to answer a few questions about motherhood, blogging and (of course) fulfillment.

How do you define fulfillment?

I guess I will start here – but it is a tough question…

In essence, my fulfillment – any kind of true fulfillment for me – comes from living out what God has created me to do. So my greatest fulfillment comes first from my relationship with God and my salvation through Christ. That is the foundation for any other forms of fulfillment in my life.

Motherhood and work both bring me fulfillment as I live out particular callings and gifts that I believe God has purposely given me.

I am called to be a mother. I prayed for years to be a mom and now that God has blessed me with motherhood, I believe I must treasure and respect that calling. It brings me the greatest joy that I have felt here on earth. The intense love I have for my son allows me to understand more fully how powerfully God loves us, His children.

As for my work, I also believe that God has given me certain gifts and goals. While I need to be careful that I do not put these in front of my role as a mother and wife, I feel that they are integral to my personal fulfillment and the fulfillment of my callings.

How does the fulfillment you find through work differ from that which you find through motherhood?

I am sure every mother would agree that they wouldn’t trade anything for the incredible gift of being a mother. Nothing can touch the joy of loving and raising a child.

But as I am sure most mothers would admit, motherhood is the toughest job out there and some days it is enough to drive a woman crazy!

After a miscarriage, I found I needed to get back to my creative side and start writing again. I love my son desperately, but I needed a distraction from “waiting” to get pregnant again. The daily routines of mothering were not doing it for me! Spiritually and emotionally I needed to write and work. I needed to use my creative gifts. I needed an outlet.

From that place, came our blog. It “saved” me in so many ways from the grief of losing my baby and the months and months of wondering if I was ever going to have another child. That tangible effort – the creation of something – brought me a new form of fulfillment. No it isn’t as powerful as motherhood or as important as my relationship to God, but it is a part of my life for which I am so grateful.

Thanks, Janice. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions, and I really appreciate your thoughts and your testimony of fulfillment in motherhood.

To read more of Janice’s (and her sister Susan’s equally good) thoughts, head on over to 5 Minutes for Mom. Oh, and did I mention that they were ranked #1 on the Popular Parent Bloggers. Yeah, they’re good.

Categories
Faith Fulfillment

Life is rough, and then you die

At the recommendation of a bookstore manager, I picked up a book the other day. I recognized the author’s last name as the maiden name of one of my church youth group leaders. Turns out, not only was the author the mother of my youth group leader, but my former leader had been instrumental in editing that book for publication. I really enjoyed the book and marked several passages to delve into further on MamaBlogga.

How many times have I told my tantruming toddler, “Life is rough—and then you die”? At least a few. But is this something I really want him to internalize?

Marilynne Todd Linford takes aim at this popular teaching in her book We Are Sisters:

To say that life is difficult or suffering or filled with unyielding despair is as erroneous as saying life is easy, carefree, or filled with continual bliss. (132)

Yes, life is rough, but it trivializes all life to say that all of life is suffering. I make no secret that I think that motherhood is difficult. (Frankly, anyone who thinks otherwise is probably crazy or should be having (more) kids, because they’re obviously doing better than I am with my one.) But, like life, motherhood isn’t endless drudgery (at least once a baby can start responding to you, in my opinion) and pain.

Life is not just rough. Unlike C-3PO, we are not made to suffer. While some suffering is our lot in life, it’s not the be-all and end-all of our existence. After all, as the Apostle John quoted Jesus Christ, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Linford continues:

Does it matter, then, if you think life is difficult? Yes, because it is a half-truth, and by acting on a false foundation we build on shifting sands. When you realize that life is not difficult but made up of opposing forces, the precious gift of agency becomes even more crucial. (133)

Yes, life is sometimes rough, but I need to remember that we can choose to look at the positive or dwell on the negative—and dwelling on the negative aspects of life won’t bring happiness. I need to remember to highlight the good things in my son’s life—and mine.

Categories
Fulfillment

Motherhood: Just like a glamorous career!

I’d Rather Be Writing has an interesting post on a recent episode of the NPR show, This American Life:

The point of the show is that glamorous jobs usually turn out to be boring. The cartographer’s story was one of the most interesting:

Charles Preuss … charted the Western Territories with two of American history’s legendary explorers—John Charles Fremont and Kit Carson. The maps Preuss made were best sellers and helped open the Western frontier to settlement. But, as he wrote in the diary he kept while in the wilderness, he hated pretty much every minute of the expedition.

Preuss had to rough the uncharted frontier so he could do what he really wanted to do: make maps. Isn’t life like that?

I’d have to agree. But I also have to say that the drudgery of every day life—whether you’re an astronaut (another person profiled in the story), a cartographer or a mother, you have to learn to find joy every day in the small things. The day-to-day, whether it be roughing the frontier, stultifying meetings or endlessly keeping your son from playing in the garbage, can seem to be more than you can bear.

If you haven’t learned this yet, let me tell you: you can bear a lot, and probably more than you know. But who wants to just bear his or her entire life? The big rewards (space walks, drawing maps, the perfect day with your kids) are incredible, but you have to get by between them—and they may be few and far between.

I invite you to find joy in the every day today.

Categories
Fulfillment

Toy Story and Fulfillment

I was thinking about Toy Story the other day. If you’ll recall, Buzz Lightyear is a toy. He thinks he’s an astronaut. Everyone around him knows that he’s a toy, but only Woody really attempts to correct him (and not kindly).

Eventually, Buzz discovers that he is, in fact, a toy. Although quite upset initially, by the end of the movie Buzz accepts that he is a toy—and being a toy is actually a good thing.

I am not a toy (I don’t think), but I’m still in the process of accepting that what I really am is a good thing (and not just during the fun times chasing my son around the couch).

I think that to be fulfilled you must, as the ancient Greeks would say, know thyself. I’m not saying that you have to spend a year backpacking through Asia or join the Peace Corps to “find yourself.” As André Gide said, “Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.”

But to know who you really are—and accept it—is key to being fulfilled. Once you know who you really are, then you can decide if you are who you want to be, and grow and change in the direction of what you want to become.

How do I want to grow? I want to become more patient, more attentive and engaged with my son, and more kind toward my husband (and everyone else, too, I guess). I am a wife, a mother and a writer—all of which allow me to continue to grow and be fulfilled as a person.

Categories
Fulfillment

Making time for myself

A couple weeks ago, I read an article in PARADE on making time for yourself (okay, I devoured it, I’m a working-stay-at-home-mom and I have nearly no time for myself). The article featured a list of suggestions on how to find more time for yourself.

Track where your time goes. “For several days, jot down what you’re doing every half-hour,” suggests the therapist Leslie Godwin, author of From Burned Out to Fired Up. Look for time-devouring sinkholes like reading blogs [although that’s a huge part of my job, so it’s actually work. No, really, I promise…] or flicking through TV channels. Ask yourself, “Is this the best way I should be spending my time right now?”

Identify what you like to do. Make a list of your activities over recent months. “Put a plus sign next to those that energized or excited you and a minus sign next to those that drained you,” recommends Dr. Mark Goulston, a Los Angeles psychiatrist. “Use your past to plan your future by putting more plus activities on your calendar.”

If I look at my recent activities, things that made me feel good were spending time with family and friends (too bad my parents are almost 2000 miles away now) and doing things for myself (getting a haircut, going to the gym, reading).

But what would I put a “-” next to? Cleaning? Tending a grumpy, tantruming baby? As rare as those things both are, I’m not sure they even count. I think the biggest drain on my time and energy is things like random Internet surfing (Did you know that Natchitoches, Louisiana, is pronounced NACK-uh-tish?) and television.

I doubt I’ll be scheduling tons of haircuts in the next few weeks (I only have so much hair!), but I think it’s good to realize where your time is really going and the things you’d rather be spending your free time on. ‘Scuse me—Law & Order is on (and that’s definitely a “+”!).

Categories
Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

Yeah, I’ve been working out…

How often do you get to say that? While they were all here, my sisters said something about me losing weight, and I realized that it would probably be the only time I could ever get away with saying, “Yeah, I’ve been working out…” I guess that makes twice now.

So I was there today working out and another mom came to the machine next to me with her infant daughter in a stroller. She was talking to another gym patron and mentioned that her daughter was the reason she was there in the first place—but it was worth it.

Every time I hear a parent say that about their children, I immediately begin to wonder if I could claim the same and really mean it.

Don’t get me wrong—I love Hayden very much. Just the other day, I was thinking about how sweet and adorable he is—and I was amazed to be able to say that I was his mother. I feel very blessed (or lucky, if you prefer) to be his mother, the one that he will run to to make everything all better for years to come.

Hayden and Nana Diana.pngBut so often I focus on how hard motherhood is. My parents and youngest sister went home yesterday after a nine day visit, and I was scared to be alone with Hayden this week. How would he readjust to having only me around after growing so accustomed to being held, played with and fawned over all the time for more than a week?

Just fine, of course. He’s still got his mommy. Today Hayden was sitting on the floor, reclining against a pair of Ryan’s boots. I crawled over and took the boots away from behind him. He balanced there, leaning back, for a moment. He glanced back to see me and then gently let himself fall into my outstretched arms.

What complete trust. He didn’t see my arms behind him, but he knew I was there and I wouldn’t let him fall.

Is that kind of trust and love worth all the work? Today I can say yes. Although the work is sometimes a drudgery, if nothing else, that service increases my love and affection for my son.

And I’d like to think that my heart has grown a bit more than my biceps in the last year.