Why I Had Children

Yesterday, the kids and I were going to make a quick trip to the grocery store.  I asked my daughter if what I had on looked ok.  She said, "Sure.  You look fine."  Then I asked my son.  He said,  "No offense, Mom but if you wear that you're going to look like the people in Walmart."  I knew he was right.  My daughter scolded him.  "Geez, do you want to hurt her feelings?"  This was the farthest thing from his mind.  He was telling the truth as he saw it.  I can count on him to tell me what he really thinks.

My daughter is sunshine and rainbows.  She is naturally kind and positive.  My son is often the exact opposite.  While my daughter builds me up with gracious and socially correct statements, Little Mr. A. helps me face reality head on.  Sometimes it feels like a head-on collision.  Yet, once I've gotten over the daze of impact, I can usually deal with the wreckage in a timely and efficient manner.  When it comes to my children, I got exactly what I ordered and more.  I wanted a boy and a girl.  Little did I know that their very different temperaments would be such a gift. 

To keep things interesting, they occasionally reverse roles.  The polite child has the tantrum.  The pessimist is hopelessly funny.  There is no resting on one's laurels in parenthood, especially with these two.  I'm convinced that parenting is not for the faint of heart.  Having children is the best thing and the worst thing thing I've ever done.  It forever changed my life.  It has broken me and I couldn't be more delighted about being broken.

When my daughter was just a baby, the one thing that I hated most about being a mom was being interrupted while eating.  I was like a crazed dog at a dish, convinced that this meal was my last supper.  I'd never eat again.  In those hard first few months, when lack of sleep and exhaustion was turning me inside out,  I'd sometimes cry with frustration that my child always needed something from me while I was eating.  Now, it is hard for me to imagine this ever bothered me.  As of August 2010, I've been interrupted while eating so many times, I don't even think about it.    Now, I struggle to get used to not being interrupted.  I sometimes forget that we've entered a new phase.  Today, I need to encourage my children to do as much for themselves as possible so they can learn how to take care of their needs on their own.  It's part of my job as a parent.

Actually, parenting is more than a job for me.  It's really my career.  I hesitate to put that in print, lest I be thought strangely old-fashioned or unenlightened.  It is true.  All the jobs I've held over the years, have just been jobs.   They have never been a work that fueled my passion, my imagination, and challenged my endurance the way that being a mom has.  Being a mom is the work of my heart.  I really think it is the work I've always been destined to do.

I don't mean to imply in any way, that I'm a perfect mom.  I'm content if I can just be good enough.  Still, I consider myself a "professional mom" because in motherhood I have found my passion.   Nothing in my life has ever felt as right as having children.  Labor and delivery was a wonderful miracle and I was a part of it. Even in those hard, first few months of infancy, when I struggled to regain some sense of normalcy again, I never doubted that having children was the right thing to do.    How do I know this?  Well, when I want to give up, I do not.  They count on me.  I am their example.  I must put resilience and perseverance into action.  No matter what I may say or write, none of it will mean a thing in their eyes if I fail to live it.  This is the hardest job I've ever had but it is also the most rewarding.

I returned from my Just 10 walk this morning.  I put a roast in the slow cooker, hung up a load of laundry, slipped a pear pie into the oven, directed Dad to help get the boy  to start a load of his own laundry, checked on every ones progress and sat down to write.  Being a mom is the vocation I was meant to live.  It has been filled with sacrifice, frustration and disappointment.  I has also given me the greatest joy and meaning I have ever known.   My children help me keep it real.  I can't thank them enough.