Long time no blog!

I realized that I have been dead to my blog site and I thought it would be a good time to take it up again. Recently there has been a LOT Lord has been telling and revealing to me as a stay-at-home Mom, and I think it would be awesome to blog about it and share this blog with my fellow SAH moms and even working Mothers. I think the online community is a good way to communicate and a good way to express ourselves and to always remind each other that we are living out our vocation as SAH Moms. I also welcome newly married, and/ or those who are not Mothers yet and hope to be, and even the guys! All are welcome to read and comment.

So here is what has been on my heart a lot lately and what I have been contemplating in bullet points first:

- Staying at home with my child is a VOCATION not a VACATION.

- Stay at home Mothering is a huge invitation to intercessory prayer and is a prayer form that I am learning more and more everyday.

- Mary's role as Jesus' Mom. Life in Nazareth.

-As children ourselves (of the Lord) we are loved more than we could even imagine.

-Choosing to stay at home and not "work" as in out in the work place, is very counter-cultural and not respected as it should be. This is something I have been turning over and over in my heart.

I will tackle these points one by one and I will only focus on one at a time because then I can go into more depth and not fear this entry going on and on and on. I want this blog to be a discussion and to vocalize these points because I feel as though they are not vocalized enough. Please feel free to add comments, questions and other thoughts!

Staying at home with my child is a VOCATION not a VACATION:

I learned this very quickly and to my surprise it was not discovered after Tommy was born but rather, during the first few months of my pregnancy. I started as a long term substitute teacher at St. Pius X teaching moral theology to juniors. I quickly discovered I was pregnant after taking the job. So there I was newly married, never having worked before and now newly pregnant. I was thrilled to start teaching and was even more thrilled to be expecting my first child. I had always dreamed of being a Mother, and I knew it was my primary vocation, so finding out that a baby was on the way was a dream come true. To make a very long story short I had to make the tough decision to leave Pius and get ready for the birth of my child and the beginning of my life as a stay at home Mother. I chose to leave Pius within the first month after a lot of prayer and discernment and it was one of the most difficult decisions of my life so far. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was the Lords way of preparing my heart... I guess you could call it an Advent of sorts.

For the next 8 months I would be at home as the stay-at-home pregnant wife. At first it was awesome and I enjoyed sleeping as much as I wanted. I had a pretty good pregnancy, but I was definitely fatigued a lot and at times an emotional wreck, so the plentiful rest did me a lot of good. Soon enough though, I became very bored and almost tormented my self in this internal self-blame and self hate. I don't want to say self hate, because I never despised myself or wanted to harm myself in any way, but there was definitely an element of self hatred creeping into my thoughts and view of myself every day life in my home. These thoughts went something like this:

"You are so lazy! What a waste of your life to sit here at home while people are out there contributing to society by working. You're ugly. Look at how your face is all broken out, look at how this pregnancy is making you fat, not just in your belly but everywhere! You're clothes don't fit right and they just make you look worse. You're not ready to be a Mother or good enough. Your too weak to handle this. You don't have any experience. You will fail."

So with these words being whispered to my heart you can imagine it was hard to be motivated! It was hard to pray. It was hard to await the coming of my beautiful child with joy and hopeful anticipation. It wasn't much of an Advent at all because the joy just wasn't always there but more like a purgatory. Now I want to make it clear that I am a very mentally healthy person. I don't struggle with depression and my self esteem is pretty good. Sure, I could be more self confident at times, but these weren't the problems I was confronted with. I also want to make it known that I did have great joy in my pregnancy! I loved being pregnant and feeling Tommy so close to me was beyond precious and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat! I just want to mention the dark side of what I was feeling because I think it's important to my point of discovering my VOCATION as a Mother. What was happening was this: I was growing an amazing little person within my womb that God had created with the help of Tom and I! This little guy is completely unique and needs to be loved more than I could ever love him alone. This is where I went wrong in my thought process. I thought I had to do this on my own and that God's grace was not sufficient enough for me. I began to doubt that the Lord was going to help me. I doubted the grace he was extending to me and I listened to the lies that were whispered in my ear by the evil one. I began attending a Mother's Circle at Church and this helped a GREAT deal with the thoughts I was having. I had lots of time to think and contemplate as I was awaiting Tommy's arrival. Listening to the Mom's at Mother's Circle was a great way to remind me of what I already knew about the Truth of Way of God's love and I was able to more clearly decipher the truth from the lies about Motherhood.

To really flesh out the point now: I was growing in learning that I was called to a radical vocation of LOVE. I was responsible for not only a little ones body, but his beautiful and immortal soul. What a daunting task, I thought. I came to realize after Tommy was born that I am not solely responsible. He was God's little child. Tom and I were so blessed to have been given the opportunity to care for this little one and share in his life...to give him a life, a name, to show him what is means to love and be loved. I realized that this was not an easy thing. As a stay at home Mother I was not on a perpetual VACATION. It was work, and not only physical work which is obvious, but spiritual WORK. The way the Lord revealed this to me was by allowing me to see and experience hardship and even a lack of his presence. He never pulled back from me, he held me tighter, but he allowed me to go through a period of not feeling the sentiments of Love to come to a greater realization of the labor of Love.

Looking back I can see clearly how this was helpful to me and how VITALLY IMPORTANT the Mother's role is in the lives of her children. Not only the lives of her children, but to society. Every person was born of their Mother and was carried under her beating heart for approx. 9 months. Duh right? Well...if we really think about this, this is not trivial. We give our children physical life. But we also give them spiritual life, we provide love. This is our vocation. I do realize that some Moms do need to work to provide for their families. I do not look down on this AT ALL. I realize it is necessary in circumstances so I do not ever want to put down the working mother. As Moms we are very responsible for our Children. I think of Mary and her role as Jesus' Mother. Jesus could have come in any way he wanted. He was God. But he knew in his infinite wisdom that the best way, the ONLY way, he would come to this earth was by hiding himself in his Mother's womb and then being born as a tiny little baby and being raised for most of his life under his Mother's care in Nazareth. Now this is something to contemplate for hours. This, to me, proves that the vocation to be a Mother is one of GREAT significance and is something very natural but yet extends to the supernatural. No wonder the human family and specifically SAH motherhood are attacked so much by the evil one.

As SAH mothers we are living out a VOCATION and not a VACATION. The world will make it seem as though we are on vacation. The lie that we are not contributing to society is such a tempting lie to believe, however this could not be more FALSE. This is precisely how the society is formed..by the family. There is no greater way we can contribute to this world. I also want to remind everyone that I have found the greatest of JOY in living out my vocation so far (and it's only the beginning!) I am learning more and more what Joy is as opposed to happiness. I have found so much happiness in raising Tommy for these past 18 or so months (counting pregnancy). I have found, however, a greater JOY. Joy does not fade away like the happiness. It is anchored in the heart.

I will end the first point here. I realize that this is extremely long and drawn out, but I am writing as my thoughts come. There is no organization to these blogs. I've never been the most organized person or precise for that matter. I do hope these blogs can generate discussion and thought. Thank you so much for listening and reading.