I’ve been away from the blogosphere for the last couple of weeks, between traveling to Dallas and packing up the flu in my suitcase to bring home as a souvenir. Perhaps I should’ve opted for a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt from the airport. At any rate, I’m better, and venturing back to catch up on my favorite blogs. This, of course, means that I had to head over to my friend Amy’s blog.
Amy is a young mom of two adorable little girls. She recently posted a story about a mom who was dealing with “losing” herself in the midst of raising her kids. If you’re a mom, and you haven’t already, you will eventually understand this phenomenon. Somewhere between being the wife and the mommy and the room-mother, the chauffeur and the laundress and the chef, the nurse and the Sunday School teacher and the cheerleader, you kind of forget who YOU are. As a mom at the other end of “mommying”, let me help you look at this in a different light.
Imagine for a moment that all the best pieces of you are like currency, waiting to be invested. That talent you possess as an artist that you imagined might bring you notoriety, or the penchant you have for being a good friend and listener, or maybe you love to read and toyed with the idea of writing a novel one day. All those things that make you…YOU. Imagine they are coins in your pocket. Your children are accounts at the bank. You opened them, together with your husband, on the day of their birth, both making an initial deposit with high hopes for a big yield in the end.
Through the years of runny noses, and science projects and cuddles and prayers at bedtime, you faithfully deposited your coins. Sometimes you felt you had given so much that the real YOU ceased to exist. But, you pressed on, managing to continue to make deposits, even if they were only extra coins stuck in pockets on laundry day or found in the sofa.
One day, your child is grown and sends you an invitation to his opening at a local art gallery, or to her birthday party given by her closest friends who want to honor her loyalty, or to the bookstore signing at the release of his first novel. You realize, with wonder, that YOU were never lost at all. The return on your investment is only beginning. It’s YOU multiplied. It’s YOU, only better.
Keep investing those pieces of you, sweet Amy…you may feel like you’re down to your last dime at times, but it’s a sound investment you’ll never regret.
I am crying as I finish reading that post. Thank you SO much for investing in me. I do think that friends who had children before Mark & I, DID try to give me full-disclosure about all of this parenting stuff, but, well, like so many other happily married couples before us, we thought we would be different…that we could ‘do it better’. But on the days when I am not feeling totally overwhelmed by my current life, I realize how much more dynamic my life is WITH children than it ever could have been without them.
I guess my next question for you, oh wise friend, is…
where is the line between ‘investing’ who I am into my children, and living vicariously through them???
How do I invest in them with who I am, and at the same time, fully allow them to become who God intended them to be???
I think your answer might deserve its own post:)
You know, there is a house for sale on Silverado Trail…you could move back to the neighborhood anytime…
I miss you, my friend!