I have been really struggling this year with the idea of going back to work after being at home for 7 years. I love to work. I love to be busy and I have loved my years at home so far. My wrestle has come because of the ever-growing passions in my heart for Ministry yet the age of my kids and the amount of them requires me to stay at home.
I do not want to put them in daycare when I am privileged enough to be able to stay home with them and yet I can’t seem to calm the awakening that has taken place inside my spirit towards full time Ministry. This struggle has been causing stress and anxiety as I have felt like I needed to choose one or the other. I felt as though each choice looked very different from the other and I just couldn’t choose. I couldn’t choose Ministry over staying at home with my kids.
So last week I was talking to my best friend at an obscenely late hour when we really both should have been in bed and I told her my tension again. She looked at me in a way that only a best friend could and said… your life is both. You don’t have to choose… this is your life… she told me emphatically.
I don’t know what was blocking me from seeing it this way before but it hit me like a 2 by 4. This is my life. I am a Minister and I have 4 kids. I don’t have to choose, I can have both. I am both, I do both and for all of time I will do both.
This week has felt very different. Every time I began to talk about Ministry things, every time I thought about Ministry things, every time I sat down to work on Ministry things I didn’t feel the pull that I felt before. When I was at the park with my kids I wasn’t thinking about all the things I had to do when I go home. When I made Monkey and Giraffe crafts with the girls I wasn’t wishing I was doing something else and when I walked with them to their school one evening for the Book Fair Fundraiser, I laughed and played and lavished every second of it.
Ministry is my life and I don’t have to choose. I am so passionate about people and I don’t have to choose. I love being a Mom and I am free to be a great Mom because I don’t have to choose.
Thanks to my Best Friend who just called like she saw it I am free to have both…
It’s AWESOME to have friends who are honest with you. I wish I had more. It makes life soooooo much easier. I pondered this quesion many times. I don’t have a choice to work. I am the main source of income in the family, I also have a full time ministry and 3 kids, and a marriage. Like you Lori, It’s my life I don’t have to choose either. It’s what I do. Really,if I look at it, I really enjoy it. I’m so glad your friend got you through this, what an amazing adventure.
Revelation always comes in perfect time, doesn’t it – at the moment when our hearts are ready and open to accept it.
I am a stay-a-home mom and a pastors wife. We are new to our current church(a little over a year)and I lead kid’s church among other ministries. And I am so struggling with this. Part of me feels like my kids (age 3, 18mo, and one on the way)should be my main ministry right now. And they are, but my mind is always on ministry. I love running kid’s church and I wouldn’t want to give that up, but I feel like maybe I am robbing my own kids of their “whole mother”.
I’ve always believed there are seasons of life, is it possible that right now, just isn’t my season for doing so much at the church? How do you decide when service is just too much? Am I just an un-organized whimp? Will the answers come with age and experience?
Help!!!
Wow, that’s amazing!