Little Victories: #1

Victory #1: Figuring out who I am and what I’m meant to do. At least for one semester.

I went back to work full-time (okay, I worked part-time as a high school Spanish teacher, part-time as a college Spanish teacher, and went back to school as a full-time graduate student). My daughters were cared for by a combination of family and paid babysitters. It was tough. I had to be more disciplined with my time and perseverant than ever before, staying up late to do homework or finish grading even when I was tired; making the time at home with my husband and kids count even when I wanted to zone out and disengage. 

But I loved it. I love teaching Spanish; I love high school kids; I loved the mental challenge of taking classes and found the subject matter very interesting, even though, if I am honest, I did not find all the assignments to be meaningful or practical. 

Enjoying fulfilling days meant coming home happy. Having relatively little time with my daughters made me enjoy (almost) every minute of the time I did have with them. Truly being too busy to clean made me stop feeling guilty about how little I do it. If I am completely honest, I have always felt somewhat like a failure when it comes to household management. I did not finish my days exhausted and defeated, which is how I consistently felt when I was staying at home full time. (I want to write more about this later, because parenting is a challenge that seems infinitely deep and complex to me.)

But the biggest point I want to make now is that I quit comparing myself to other women. I absolutely believe that comparison is the thief of joy, as the quote goes; yet somehow its practical application has eluded me most of my life. After all, Scripture gives general principles about how we should live, but what do the specific details of living a life that honors Christ look like? Looking to others for ideas and inspiration seems like a natural place to start, but I could never keep myself from completely believing that just because someone else was doing something didn’t mean I should at least attempt to do it, or something similar.

That was the true blessing of this time: circumstances, prayer, and counsel had revealed a very specific path for me, different goals from any other woman I knew; a unique set of challenges for my life for the time being. 

I quit bemoaning the fact that I was not living up to their levels of cleanliness, organization, craftiness, success, homeschooling, child stimulation, wifely excellence, fashion or style, intelligence, drive, discipline skills, or creativity. Those were no longer my goals. For the first time in my life, I felt absolutely certain that I was living out who God made me to be—not what I thought other people would want me to be, or the idealized versions of Christian or secular womanhood. My life didn’t seem comparable to anyone’s, exactly, and that prevented me from comparing myself to others. 

But I knew I was doing what God wanted me to do, and I was working at it the best I could. It was so freeing.