I always just assumed I would be a mom who worked outside the home, probably because I grew up with a mom who worked outside the home. It’s fun, isn’t it, how the plans we make for ourselves can be so rooted in the legacy our parents leave for us? For the first 30 years of my life, my dreams and goals were all centered around my career. Very much like Lisa-Jo shares about her own story in “Surprised by Motherhood,” motherhood, for me, wasn’t even a consideration. I focused on not needing to rely on anyone, working hard to do what it took to get a business card with a fancy title and everything that came with it I thought equaled success.
You know what happened?
I did it.
I earned a masters degree from Villanova University. I married my high school sweetheart. We even had a gorgeous daughter after God softened our hearts toward parenthood in an unexpected and drastic way. I became an Assistant Vice President, worked on important projects and – from the outside? It looked like all we were missing was the white picket fence. But I was miserable.
And so, last year, God began to close doors and prepare my heart to receive a blessing I never knew I wanted. I was fired from the only career I’d ever known. Suddenly life was chaotic and fearful. I didn’t know why I was being asked to walk this road.
But God had a better plan.
Over the last year every idol I’d had in my life that dealt with my identity as a working mom has been stripped away. When I first became a mother, I grieved deeply the transition from my old life to the new. I tried desperately to keep one foot in the life we had before and one foot in this new motherhood territory, and it was exhausting and impossible. For the first time in my life I was doing something I wasn’t any good at – and I was learning that in the trial and error of motherhood, I was more likely to end up on the side of “error.” The identity I had wrapped up in my career was the final piece that needed stripped away to push me into embracing life as the mother of a daughter.
Keep reading the rest at Mother’s of Daughters today? I’d love to see you there!
