Where am I?

Sometimes the past comes back to haunt you, sometimes it comes back to encourage you, and sometimes it comes back and simply makes you ponder where you are and where you are going.

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.