Mamas in Faith

Women are constantly being told that they can have it all and do it all, which leads to them being expected to have it all and do it all. When the world becomes so loud with this specific stance many women find themselves ensnared in this trap. The illusion that you can truly do it all is just that an illusion. Something ends up getting neglected. We get so caught up in being the best at our work that we neglect our homes, husbands, children and even ourselves.

When I was in my early teen years I can remember hearing the world loud and clear that being a successful woman meant being hyper-independent, not needing a man for anything. Anything was possible, I could be and do anything. Women were “finally” breaking that proverbial bal “glass ceiling”. Women were on the rise and the way of the future was female. I truly believed that women were better than men and a successful life would mean me finding a job, doing extremely well at it, being one of “the guys”, in fact I had made up my mind that if I were going to be in “a man’s world” that I would be better and do better than every man. This of course seemed crazy to attain, I was the daughter of a hard working man, whose mother for the majority of my childhood was a stay at home mom. I remember a time when she did work some but it was not our normal for our home. I used to think it was odd that she was not working outside of the home when it seemed like everyone I knew had both parents working outside of the home. But yet I still let the world be loud and lead me to believe that having a career was more important than being tied down by a husband and children. A successful career was THE goal in life, it was the way to be happy, and live a life worth living.

Little did I know a successful career does not define how fulfilling your life is, and it for sure does not mean you are doing life quote on quote correctly. And yes there is a small bit of irony that I am sitting at my desk in my micro-closet office typing away as my littles are sleeping.

I was truly determined to have that kind of life, I went off the college to be a nurse. I got this wild idea that I would get strong enough and fast enough to meet at least the minimum requirements for my male counterparts so they couldn’t say I wasn’t one of them. My wild ideas continued to me setting my goals of being a Navy flight nurse, looking at one day getting the one of one billet in Bahrain. If I was going to live up to what I thought successful was I was going ALL IN. I had made it a point that I wanted nothing to do with children because they would just ruin my body and a family like that would just get in the way of the goals I had made up for myself.

My views started changing when I had my clinicals for emergency medicine and pediatrics. It began apparent to me rather quickly that I did not like emergency medicine, it always felt like high stress and left me feeling anxious and completely drained at the end. Which looking back is wild because those clinicals were not even full twelve hour shifts. I got to pediatrics and it felt better, even though there were still stressful parts of the day I did not feel zapped in the same way that emergency medicine left me.

Then a day that I am almost sure I will never forget, our nursing instructor walked us over to the NICU. Never in my entire life had I ever seen such tragedy and hope wrapped up in tiny little bundles before. I just KNEW this is what kind of nursing I wanted for the REST of my life. I was sucked in, hooked, in complete awe. I got to shadow a couple times and even got to hold one of the feeder growers for a short time that semester. When it came time for our final rotation I had the honor of being selected for a spot in the NICU. Those final clinical hours of my college nursing experience changed my life. I was still recently married (which in itself is a story for another day). You see the girl who had her heart set out for singleness had already changed so much, but it was only the beginning. It was late March of 2014, I had spent my final spring break with my husband out in San Diego, I was about to be 21, I was about to be a commissioned officer in the world’s greatest Navy and I had my heart set out for being a NICU nurse. I truly fell in love with taking care of babies in those few weeks, I loved getting to hold them, change diapers, help support them to grow, measure out feedings, see the miracle of nourishment straight from mothers. I was enamored, what I did not realize is that I was witnessing God’s hands on every single life that was present in that space. Including my own. One morning I realized that my cycle was late… by more than just a couple days, which happened often for me I had had an ovarian tumor removed about a year prior and had never truly had what is called a regular cycle so I did not think much of it. Until I wanted to be sure because I while I loved taking care of babies it was NOT the right time to conceive one. I took the test… and it came back positive. I was scared to death but also excited, I told my husband and NO ONE else. If anyone found out it could have meant my career was over before it even began, I would owe hundreds of thousands of dollars back. I thought so many people would be disappointed in me. My head was filled with every thought possible, but at the end of the day me and my husband knew we loved the time human that had begun to grow. Before I ever worked up the courage to tell my parents, or even try to figure out how I could have an appointment to confirm what the test said, our little one was no more. I had arrived to my clinicals and before lunch had the most excruciating pains and lost our baby, for months it was only me, my husband, my professor and my nurse preceptor who knew about our miscarriage. I continued on with gaping hole in my heart, with a heavy secret that felt full of shame.

As the months went on, I finished my clinical hours, I loved on the babies in the NICU, I got the dream job offer which had to be turned down because I had already committed my next few years to the Navy, I got my commission, I moved out to San Diego to be with my husband to truly start out our married life and my first big girl job. I was a pediatric nurse out there and would occasionally float up to the NICU but never got to work up there fully. We had our first baby, and then our second about 18 months later. I had no choice but to put time in to my career, I had not yet met my minimum pay back time. Yet I was feeling the pull to be home with them. We moved back to Florida, my heart yearned to be with my children but having a stable job was still the highest priority. A lot more life happened, I had submitted my paperwork for resignation because I knew deep in my soul that I needed to be with them, even if me and my husband were not on the same page. Then we found out our third was on the way, there were so many things I wish I would have done differently during her pregnancy but I was still putting work before my own health and hers. We ended up in the hospital in pre term labor (for the second time) I was taking phone calls between sporadic contractions. I may have spent my final couple of months in the Navy on maternity leave but I may not have had a preterm birth if it would not have been from the stress of that job that I put over just about everything.

So picture this a new mom of three babies, a couple months old, a two year old and an almost four year old already trying to think of how she was going to work from home. Not thinking about how she could be a better mom, not thinking about how her children would know God, not thinking about holding onto her marriage in the midst of having three children. Just the thought of losing the baby weight and making some money.

It was seriously not a good place to be in… a lot more stressors happened, my husbands work life changed, and then a few months later the entire world was turned upside down… march of 2020 dramatically changed everything and then our lives would continue to be in a spiral for the next few years. My husband went away for work, shortly after we found out we were going to add our fourth kiddo into our family.

Everything that was happening in my life I kept pursuing, what I can see now as not the right things, were really signals that I needed to slow down and change my focus. An early baby with a brain bleed, a husband who was going to be long distance for an extended time and then a full blown autoimmune flare and progression of the disease leading to a whole new view of what health meant.

While some people on social media may portray this idea of having it all, I truly do not think that you can “have it all” and “do it all” someone or something is missing out on importance. All the choices you make lead to the next decisions that are placed in front of you. Far too many people are claiming to be Christians without bearing the fruit, far too many are claiming Christ without having a stable Biblical worldview, too many people are falling prey to others telling them the ways of the world will lead them to ultimate success. Slowing moving closer to the ways of the world without realizing they are distancing themselves from the Lord with one main cause. They are lead to believe they can have and do it all because “health, wealth and prosperity” are what is preached to them. Without ever opening their Bibles for themselves, our church as a whole is lacking discernment because of Biblical illiteracy.

I share some of my story because I don’t what others to feel alone in their brokeness, but I also do not want you to think that you have to stay in your brokeness either.

So no I do not think you can truly “have it all” in the way the world screams at us like we can. But with deligent obedience to God’s word we can seek after what truly matters. Christ is the Savior that God sent down from Heaven to be the redeemer for the sins of His people.