Before I had kids, I had this goal: find work I can do at home so I can both be with my kids and work.
I have gone on many ups and downs in this journey. I started a sewing business at home while I was still working as a Physical Therapist Assistant. I eventually left that job and worked on building a sewing business.
I found my sweet spot selling wallets that complimented the Dave Ramsey plan. I did that for awhile. Then shortly after my first daughter was born I found I loved sewing clothes. That love lead to me sewing bridal attire for people.
As that business grew, I wrestled with deadlines and my ability to be a kind mom. As hard as it was, I knew I needed to step away from it for a couple months and see where God would take me.
I wrestled feeling like I didn’t have purpose without a “thing” I was doing. I wrestled with feeling like an awful mom for not wanting to be solely a mom. I prayed God would take off of my heart the desire to do something else.
He didn’t. Instead He lead me to make a prayer journal. I loved designing it, I loved not having deadlines. It felt like a good mix. That eventually lead to me taking over the Bible Study site from Trudie Schar, Girls in God’s word. I started Hello Jesus Company and ran that for awhile.
The tension was back. How to be a mom and a lady who works from home under deadlines. I felt guilty that I wasn’t with my kids more. I burned out again and knew God was leading me away from the deadlines..yet again.
I was frustrated, I felt I was back to square one. Why did I keep finding things to do but never able to balance both well? I concluded I was meant to kill the dreams in my heart and focus only on being a mom.
But the wrestle with purposelessness was intense. After awhile of wrestling, I knew God was leading me to write historical fiction. I was a bit angry at first. Why can’t He take these desires off my heart? I obviously can’t handle them both. I need to choose one. Homeschool my kids and be a homemaker, OR send them to school and pursue work during the day. This is the ultimatum I had come to believe and shame myself with on hard days. I believed, it’s one or the other, not both.
But the problem with pushing against Gods path is, it never works well for me. So after wrestling for 5 months I began to pursue learning how to write fiction.
Here I am again, back in the middle of “momming” and following God-given dreams. I still wrestle often with this ultimatum. I tell myself things like “if you picked one you would be enough in that thing, but if you do both you will fail at both.”
But the thought hit me recently as I was hashing this over and over in my mind. No matter what you pick, there will always be more to do. You will never feel enough. Doing something slowly– giving what you can–is better than quitting completely.
Whenever we follow God, there will be a tension. But in that tension, we lean on Him. When we lean on Him, we grow. As I walked (and struggled) on the paths He had for me, I learned so many things.
I am learning, I need to trust. I need to simply follow and trust HIM not me. I will trust Him for the enough that comes, not me. I don’t need to grip things so tightly, I can hold them loosely and enjoy the journey. I can trust He will lead and provide my needs (and my family’s) for today, and for the future.
I have found, it is not in telling God what I think should happen, it’s in trusting His plan. For now that means me doing both. That means I need to stop telling myself things would be “rosier” if I picked one.
For each of us it looks different. Instead of comparing my calling to yours and vice versa, we fix our eyes on the One who created us and created a purpose for us.
Follow God. He won’t lead us astray and He won’t ask us to do something that is detrimental to our family. We need to be making our relationship with Him our priority, then trust His leading. Then in our mistakes, the ones that tell us we will never be enough, we can face them and say: that doesn’t mean I am not enough, it just means I am learning.
When we follow Him, trusting Him to provide, we can be at peace– even in the tension.
