When I left my full time job as a Human Resources Director to be a full-time mom and better care for our foster children, I was given the opportunity to take a job coordinating TEC retreats for our diocese. It was just a few hours a week, mostly from home but with some travel. It worked well for me at the time and it was a blessing to get to be a part of the good work. I have just discerned that it is time for me to leave the position. It's difficult to walk away from something that is so good, but as following God always does, the decision, although difficult, has brought me a lot of peace that I know I am right where I am supposed to be. With 5 children so little, a very little amount of sleep and it being very difficult to be gone for long periods of time, I wasn't doing the job well and I was also not giving my family the time they needed.
So even though I have considered myself a full-time stay-at-home mom in the past, now, leaving the job, I will finally be JUST a mom. No title behind my name, no other accomplishments to make me feel good, all that I am and all that I do will be defined by my role as wife and mother.
This is wonderful and also somewhat scary. It's really great work, it's the best work there is I think. And yet how many days do I just try to make it through to bed-time? And how many days have I wondered if I have completely lost myself? That I don't recognize who I am anymore and that this life of changing diapers and making meals and breaking up fights and folding load after load of laundry just doesn't always seem to be the best use of my talents. And wasn't life easier when I was a youth minister? I was really good at that job, I never yelled at those kids... Absolutely I would feel more important if there was a title behind my name, or if I felt I was contributing anything else to society, but He has called me here to wait for that.
But this wait is different.
This time, I am not merely waiting. This time I realize that the wait is probably the most important part of my life.
Earlier this week I read a reflection on the period between the ascension of Jesus and Pentecost, when the risen Jesus left the earth and told the disciples to wait for the coming of the spirit. The author spoke about how the disciples must have been scared and even felt abandoned. They must have wanted to DO something, fill their time, even return to their former jobs, because for a long time, nothing was happening. Here are the lines I really loved:
"This is a period of blessed communal waiting in trust and obedience, a period that appears empty, a great holding of the breath, but also a period that in fact is the time of greatest divine activity within the disciples' souls, a period of radical internalization when nothing appears to be happening only because they are doing very little." Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, The Way of the Disciple
Now, I don't mean to say that stay-at-home moms do very little. This is by far, the most exhausting job I've ever had. But we often feel we are accomplishing very little. This period of motherhood often feels like waiting, like our lives are on hold. I was struck by this paragraph because it was so fitting for this time of motherhood. Trust and obedience. We've been asked to serve in this way, and it is often lonely, and sometimes feels empty, and in those moments there can be a temptation to run from that. To fill the empty with other things, to seek out something different when every day is the same. But as the disciples were asked to wait and they obediently did so because they trusted Jesus, we are asked to give the same trust. And if we do, this period that seems like nothing is happening, might actually be when our hearts are changed the most. I think about my last four years at home with my children, and I have not had the opportunities to worship the way I used to, I have not had the chance to be immersed in the community the way I used to, I have not had the chance to attend big seminars or long retreats, it has been the least amount of public ministry I have ever done, and yet I can see the way my heart has grown more than it ever has before.
We may feel we are doing very little professionally, very little in the community, even very little in our spiritual lives, but daily we are given the opportunity to place another before ourselves. Every minute we are asked to make a choice who we will serve. And each time I choose to let go of a little more of myself, my heart becomes more like His, and isn't that our prayer? It's quite alright, I decided, if I lose myself, if I can hardly recognize the me I used to be, as long as my heart looks more like the heart of Jesus. And here in this "wait" He is doing the greatest work on my heart that He's ever done. And here in this wait, I might find I am right where I am meant to be, right where Jesus meets me each day in tiny toddlers snuggling on my lap to read a book, in school-age children who forgive my daily failings and still love me unconditionally, in the perfect-love gaze of a six month old baby.
Maybe your wait is for a new job, a baby, a new house, the end of an illness, maybe even the end of this life. But maybe your wait isn't really a wait at all, but exactly where you are supposed to be, for the best part of your life, for the time of "greatest divine activity" in your soul.
Thank you God that I can hardly recognize myself. Please keep doing your good work on my heart until they can't see me at all, but only You.
