I just returned home from a trip to the grocery store sans anyone! It was quick and stress free, which is always nice! On the way home I was listening to some Christian talk radio and they were talking to an author of some Bible Study which I never did catch the name of. She was discussing what us women were designed to do and what we were never intended to do. She talked about the many choices we have before us as women and how fulfilling our purpose will often look very different based on our life situations, our cultural backgrounds, etc. It was overall an interesting discussion on our roles as women.
One of the points she made was concerning the myth that we can have it all at once. The career, the happy husband and kids, the ministry, the size 6 body, the hobbies, etc, etc..... It got me thinking about the choices I have had to make as a woman and how I continue to struggle with some of these choices. (just see the post I made earlier today) I would love to hear about your choices and how that has played out for you. So many of us come from different backgrounds and our choices may differ and I certainly only invite you to share if you can do so without sounding as if someone else's choice was wrong. I just think sometimes it helps to reflect on these moments as well as to gain perspective from the decisions of others.
So please, please leave a comment and share a story regrading the choices you have had to make as a woman striving to fulfill your God designed purpose.
Hey Amy! I just posted on your earlier entry, which I loved. I won't repeat it all, but I love the call to your family. I think that should be first and foremost when you have a family, but how that looks may be different for everyone.
ReplyDeleteI think God calls us and gifts us all uniquely. I think it is probably true that we can not do it all and do it all really well (or perhaps not to the standard that we would like to have). Andy Stanley talks about how you end up "cheating" something - either work or home - and you need to decide what you are going to cheat.
I am currently working more than I have since having my kids. I don't really like this and I try hard not to cheat my family in the process of it (sometimes perhaps, admittedly, not hard enough). However, I sort of justify my extra day a week of work with the fact that I will have summers off now, which I haven't had in the past. There are days when I hate to work at all, but feel blessed to have the option to work. I feel like God's gifted me to do my job really well - to impact lives in a unique way. Work has also given me an opportunity to have contact with people that I would not ever have had the chance to otherwise. This was particularly true when Ken was a pastor and so much of our lives were church related. Because of work, I've naturally been able to witness and share life with people outside my Christian bubble. Keeping that in mind, however, I take my role of a follower of Jesus pretty seriously in the secular work world. I am so conscious about how "I represent" and I pray most days on my way to work that I would do my job well, not only for the good of the people I work with and my reputation, but more so for the glory of God...that He could be seen through me in what I do. I have been privileged to share faith with people in all of my work worlds.
I may not be the best cook. I may not sew tons and create all sorts of beautiful "things" for my home. However, I don't know that I would do this anyway. Ultimately, our calling is to serve God and bring glory to Him no matter what or where we are.
Okay - I have rambled on long enough! Good thinking and posting, Amy!!
See, I think that we are all presented with different spiritual gifts - and some people have multiple gifts and are good at them, and some people have only one or two gifts that they are usually really good at. But God gives us these gifts based on what he has planned for us to use for HIS greater good. I am NOT the woman that has it all. But I'm good at a few things, and when I use them for His good, I do them even better. :) If you can't do it all, just remember that God has given you certain Gifts. If you don't know what they are, check out Network by Bruce Bugbee and Don Cousins to see if you can discover your spiritual gifts and let yourself be good in those areas, and use them for God's glory, and ask Him to let you give up your desire to be good at it all. If he gave us all the gifts required to do it all, we might not have the desire to be better, because we might be content with what we gave. But He wants all of us, whether we are rich in His gifts or we give Him all of the little we have. Anyway, that's my take.
ReplyDeleteAmy, I have enjoyed following your blog and I can relate to the struggle you are facing now. I was raised with a working mom and I grew up believing that it just made sense for a woman to work and contribute to the family funds. However, in the last six months, I have had to face the reality of not working and not contributing financially. It has been very difficult, because it goes against the way I believed growing up. But I will say that as I have gone through this, I've seen the value in my "job" being supporting my husband. In my eyes, the importance of making money has faded away a bit and I've grown in my understanding of what it means to give of myself. I'm still growing and there are still times when this decision is difficult to accept, but I'm excited in the way God is growing me through this.
ReplyDeleteThis is a tough one for me right now. Jeff and I planned from day one that I would stay home with the kids until they were in school and then go back to work. I LOVE working... I miss getting out there and interacting with adults. But it might turn out that this doesn't meet my family's needs and they come first.
ReplyDeleteOne example... I have been slowly weeding out processed foods. I love eating only foods we have prepared from scratch but it takes a LOT of work. I don't know how I would accomodate this if I worked Mon-Fri. Also, Nathan started K this year. It started out great... he really transformed into an outgoing little boy! But now he has gotten bored and is having behavior issues. This is a boy who always tells us, "I love you," runs to the fridge to get us drinks, helps his little brothers clean up their messes, says "May I be excused?" to get up from table, but brings home yellows day after day from K because he puts his fingers in his mouth and spaces out. I am tired of punishing him for not sitting quietly while the teacher is teaching sight words like "cat" and "bat" when at home Nathan is currently reading me the children's edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!
I am not going to let him become a discipline case because he is bored. I am going to give 1st grade a chance, but if his teachers label him as uncooperative because he is reading and doing math at a 4th grade level then I am going to pull him out.
Anyway... this is all so new that I have not sorted it out in my brain. I don't want to homeschool. I always thought it was a great thing to do, but thought it would be enough to keep tabs on what they are learning and supplement the gaps. It never occurred to me that the reason to keep them out was because they would just be too bored!
But back to your topic, if this is what I have to do, then I will do it. I am actually really sick of being domestic. I do it well... I keep a tight budget, I save, I sew curtains and PJs, I build furniture and repurpose items from thrift stores. I cook most everyday from scratch and find educational activities for the kids that are fun. But I am tired. It is a lot to pull together. My mom tells me that she would drop us off at her sisters so she could shop. My grandparents took us every other weekend. We spent a week every summer at my other grandparents in MI. I don't have any of that. There is no community anymore. My neighbors with kids disapear on Fridays and I don't see them again until Monday morning at the bus stop.
We (our society) really screwed up somewhere along the way trying to have it all because now we just have incomplete pieces that won't fit together. I will do what is best for my children and find contentment in my heart because that is how I want to live and model for my family, but it is exhausting.
Debbie said, Well here I am at 57 years old and I am only now beginning to get an answer from the Lord about what he wants me to do as a ministry. I know that I was like you, Amy, and it took me along time to see that my family was my ministry. Alot of mistakes were made, losing a son to Heroin, many job changes, and problems with my marriage. I know now that if I had listened to God instead of going ahead of him, things would have been much better and with many more blessings. Now that I am hearing him more clearly, and have been asked to be on the Church Council at New Hope, I will wait to see where He is working and where he wants me to join him. Praise God. Amy you are at the right place at the right time, may the Lord bless you and your family, wait on Him and listen, no matter how long it takes. Love and miss you.
ReplyDeleteI am so lame! I can't figure out how to respond to individual comments on my own blog! Anyway, THANK YOU for your responses!!! Each one was so heartfelt and personal and I love hearing the different perspectives! No matter who we are or the choices we have had to make it is obvious we have not taken it lightly. I hope to hear from more ladies as I find it so interesting and there is so much to learn from others.
ReplyDeleteOne personal comment on a post...Heather, I love that I have had a chance to see your journey! Even if so much of it has been long distance. I have to say I chuckled when I read your post because I flashed back to the silly girls we were back in college and I am pretty sure the choices we are making today differ from who we thought we would be! I love you, girl!!!
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