Maybe I just follow too many fans of the Catholic Register (or just Jen at Conversion Diary), but I’ve heard such good things about Simcha Fisher. However, I don’t think I’d read anything by her until my dad sent me a link to her article “The Time to Thrive Is Now“:
Certainly the “trenches” of motherhood are a time of sacrifice, and a woman in that phase of life can drive both herself and her family crazy by trying to have the same lifestyle as her neighbor whose youngest child is 12. It would be hard for, say, a mom with a baby and a toddler to do everything on the list above. But I think we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, and in many cases the message has morphed from “you shouldn’t try to do too much when you have young children,” to “you shouldn’t try to do anything when you have young children.” And I think that that’s a problem.
It’s definitely true that raising children is a bit time consuming 😉 . But I think Simcha is right—there perception in popular culture has shifted from “time consuming” to “all consuming.”
I am a mother. 24/7, always on call, never get a vacation mom.
But while my children are so much of my life—figurative and literally—I am still a person. I have three small kids, but I can do more than just change diapers, ready preschool books and sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” (It’s a fave.)
I have dreams—the big one of writing, of course. In the last four and a half years, I’ve written seven novels (hoping to make that eight soon). While having one two three kids at home full time or nearly so. Some of my dreams will have to wait until my children are older—but my whole life doesn’t have to wait.
What are you doing to capture your dreams today?