Four years ago this month, I met my husband. I was single, worked successfully as a paralegal, owned my own home, and spent countless hours with friends in church ministry. I was honestly quite happy and content with my life. Four short-long years later, I am a happily married, stay-at-home mom of two little ones, 5,000 miles from my old home, who can barely manage to get to the grocery store once a week. Four years is not very long, but it feels like a lifetime for me right now.
When my husband met me, I had worked unrelentingly to overcome past hurts and bad habits, to learn and believe the truth instead of lies, to follow God wherever He would lead me. I felt confident in who I was and what I was doing. These days, I feel much less confident in myself. I wonder if I am mothering my children as well as I should. I wonder if I am letting my motherhood duties distract me too much from nurturing my marriage. I wonder if I am letting it all distract me too much from God.
The gifts that I identified in myself in my single days are still there, but I have struggled to know how to express them. The desires of my heart to serve God and to spread my passion for prayer are still there, but I have no idea how to have them met. My need for quiet times and creativity is still there, but often it is pushed aside to care for others. I frequently feel confused or overwhelmed or simply tired as I attempt to adjust to an ever-changing "normal."
My mom assures me that this is just a season in my life, that I will once again have time for myself and for other things. I know that my children will not be tiny attention hogs forever. I know that being a mom and living out the calling that God has placed on my life for right now IS serving Him. I know that my daily life is no less holy as I change diapers than when I was praying on prayer teams regularly. I know that. I believe that.
And yet.
I find I struggle with doubts now that I thought were vanquished. I find I struggle with feeling disconnected with God's plan in the world. I find I struggle with feeling like my children take too much energy and attention and I just don't have it to give to them.
We talk a lot about mountain tops and valleys in our spiritual journeys. I think I am in a plain. A flat, even, plain. Nothing terrible. Nothing extraordinary. Just a lot of ordinary struggles on ordinary days. I don't know how to live on the plain, honestly. I have lived the mountain top and thrilled with the ecstasy. I have lived the valley and found God's comfort in the agony. What do I do with the ordinary? What does it look like to walk with God on the flat plain and not let my faith fade?
That is where I am right now. I love God. I love my husband and my children deeply. I love my life, actually. I just don't feel adequate to live it sometimes.
