Monday, October 1, 2012

Reinventing Myself

There has been a couple of times in my life that I've had to change who I am.  The summer I met Ryan was one of these times.  God changed my heart and my goals that summer.  Six years later, He's changing me again.  He's asking that I take a good look at my priorities, my goals, and my ideas of success.

It's been about 2 months since I quit my job.  To say that it has been an adjustment being at home full-time would be a huge understatement.  Watching Layla all day is hard.  I have more respect for my stay-at-home mom friends than I ever had before.  The kicker is that Layla is great kid.  She's easy.  She's almost always in a good mood and she plays by herself pretty well.  She's not a picky eater and is pretty easily entertained.  All this to say: I have it good.  I love hanging out with her and seeing her learning new stuff all the time.

There's a lot of really fabulous perks to staying at home.  It's not all fun and games though.  I've been sick a lot lately (more info on this TBA in a couple of weeks.) There are days when Ryan gets home from work and dinner isn't cooked and I'm wanting to beat my head against the wall because our apartment looks like a I haven't cleaned it in weeks and I swear that I vacuumed and picked up the whole place less than an hour ago.  Let's be honest: I don't clean the floors because Maddox has knocked something over or shed too much.  I clean the floors because Layla dumped an entire box of rice and/or Goldfish on the floor and tried to eat/crunch them up into tiny pieces.

Every day is similar to the days before.  Wake up when Layla decides to wake up; make and eat breakfast; play and go for a walk; decide it's naptime; take nap while she naps; wake up when she wakes up; make and eat lunch; play; decide it's naptime; clean up while Layla naps; attempt to make dinner.

Some days we go places.  Some days I take two naps.  Some days I turn on Dinosaur Train (only a select few people will even know what this is.)  Some days I go to bed wondering what it is that I've done all day.

The brutal truth is that these days don't feel like much of a success to me most of the time.  I'm not used to measuring how well I'm doing by how many times I didn't raise my voice at Layla and how much time I spent actually playing with her and showing her love vs letting her watch TV.  Up until 2 months ago I knew how well I was doing by my school grades and how many cases I could get through at work.  Success was tangible and my hard work always paid off quickly.  These days I'm not even sure what success looks like for me.

The weird thing is that this whole thing reminds me a lot of my personal walk with God.  It's so easy for me to base my identity and success as a Christian on how much I'm doing.  When all the stuff that I'm doing gets taken away and I no longer have all my "works" to remind me who I am, I have nothing left but Christ as my identity.  So I'm reinventing myself.  I'll be the first to admit that I honestly have no idea what I'm doing as a stay-at-home mom and I have a TON of learning to do.  But I'm trying to take it one day at a time and find little victories throughout the day.  Obviously, ANY advice is greatly appreciated!