I Don't Know What I'm Doing!

Have you ever had thoughts floating around in your head for weeks, but every time the slightest opportunity came to sit down and get them out you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it? Yup, that was me the past few weeks. The truth is, I have been meaning to rekindle my blog for years now, but it really hit me a few weeks ago: I feel ready to do it. Let me explain more.

My life is full of so much joy and so many diapers right now, and I love it! But it’s busy- a word I have come to loathe. Up until last March, it was very busy and fast-paced. I often look back at the 3 years I taught full-time, commuted an hour each way, and took care of a little one and truly wonder how I did it. When I think deeply about it, there were a lot of hard mornings. Mornings where I was choking back tears as I drove down the dark highway to school, exhausted and missing my baby girl, but also excited to see my students and be out of the house. It was such a big adjustment becoming a mom and figuring out how to be a good teacher at the same time, and I can now look back and see that much clearer.

So the busyness of life got to me. But I also felt like I was a very messy work-in-progress as I leapt from one big life stage to another, and I didn’t even know which words to use. Do you know what I mean? Have you had those moments where you look at a situation or stage in life and you feel so filled up with joy and gratitude over it all and you are filled with peace? But then the next day or next month, you look at all of it and everything feels so messy and difficult and unexplainable and you don’t know how this could have ever been your dream? Our words have power and sway over our views of our life. And I didn’t have enough clarity on adjusting to marriage, motherhood, teaching, working while being a mom, shifting from playing for hours every day to an hour a week, to know what to say.

Just a few years down the road, and I’m still very much a walking experiment on how many kids a person can take care of without drinking caffeine, and I don’t have great “quick fixes” or words of advice to offer- which I totally thought I needed for a while. But instead of striving for perfection, especially the appearance of perfection online, I am going for it- fragmented phrases, mushy mom brain and all. I am not a theologian; I am not a scholar or an expert on literally any life topic. But I enjoy writing, and I hope my posts bring you some laughter and a sense of familiarity as you read. And perfection is not what I am striving for in my writing or in life.

Is this just another mom blog- just another lady writing about the joys and difficulties of raising little beings? Or is it a blog about balancing working full-time while having children? Or a blog about my sweet, humor-filled marriage? ...or is it a blog about chasing for something other than the spotlight as a performer? Letting go of perfectionism and running to Jesus’ love? Or about losing my identity in Christ, only to gain it? Or just about fun adventures in my beautiful state?

It is all of those things. I have an extraordinary life that is filled with lots of mundane, beautiful moments. It’s all wrapped together, and that’s the beauty of it.

So whether it’s just Mom and Dad who are reading this, or someone I have yet to meet, welcome and I’m glad you’re here. 

Yes, five-month-old Ethan helped me as I wrote this post...
In other words, I kept pushing the computer farther and farther away
as he grabbed for the keyboard!