I had a dream. That one day my children would go to daycare and I would run my practice as a veterinarian. I would balance a career and a family and be able to afford it and be happy in it. Thrilled even. My husband would have his job and we would vacation in the summers and live that white picket fence life.

Turns out marriage is a sacrifice, having babies is a bigger sacrifice, and doing that while supporting the dream of an entrepreneur increases all of that ten-fold. At least for me. Not to mention the guilt and the financial burden of putting said children in said daycare makes you feel like you’re stuck between a sleeping baby’s head and a surface that will surely wake them up should you transfer them to it. All moms know this is way worse than the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Getting married at 18 is a choice I don’t regret. Having my first baby at 21 and second at 25 are choices I don’t regret. Standing steadfast in support of my man who runs his own businesses and chases a dream of making a movie is something I sometimes regret whilst clicking “save for later” on 12 items in my Amazon cart before clicking ‘buy now’ on 1 package of toilet paper…jk, ((WANTS VS NEEDS OKAY)) but I will always encourage his dreams even when they’re crazy to the outside world. All of these things are sometimes a struggle, but they’re not regrets. They have all brought different challenges and changes I wasn’t prepared for. They’ve also brought joys and new passions I never thought I could have. Ones that Brad has had to make his own set of sacrifices to support me in…or at least spend hours telling me I’m at least a decent writer, a great mom, and a continuously improving photographer. (He’s even nicer to me than that, I’m just still in denial about most of it.)

I was feeling sorry for myself today when I was talking to him about how different I thought my life would look. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I wanted a little pity about how he’s on the cusp of something he’s wanted for so long and I left my initial plan in life behind for a life with him and a family we would be starting.

Boo freakin’ hoo. A husband who is crazy about me, two handsome, sweet, thriving boys, dogs who have been with us our whole marriage, a roof over our head?! Cry me a river! Who cares if it doesn’t look like the home decor bloggers I follow? Its our poorly decorated home and I dang sure better remember to be grateful for it and every living thing in it. I even have a car that gets me where we need to go, a few pairs of yoga pants, and dark chocolate in my pantry. What more can a girl ask for?

My plan. I’ve let that sink in my head all day. It was my plan because I thought that would be the only fulfilling thing in my life. Its something I’ve clung to and let partly shade the many blessings the Lord has given me in HIS plan. Its not like it will ever completely leave my mind. I think I’ll always wonder just a little bit. I was so sure from the time I was 5 till the time I walked out of the clinic for “maternity leave” that its almost like a loss I have to/had to grieve because it was so old. That’s dumb. I guess its more like how your husband was awesome at football in high school, its just that the guy he was the backup for is in the NFL now, so its just that he didn’t have a real shot…so he’ll just reminisce about it every now and then. You’ll smile and nod. It’s cool.

I never wanted to be a SAHM. (gasp). I didn’t even know if I wanted one kid for sure, much less more than one. I sort of pictured it as a possibility, but it wasn’t a big deal to me. I know so many of my friends grew up dreaming of having babies and putting smiley faces on pancakes made from scratch and creating handprint crafts to hang on the fridge while signing up for every class party at their kid’s school. They craved the beauty of motherhood and embraced the things-people-never-told-you-about better than I ever did. It even started to sound nice to me toward the end of my pregnancy picturing a specific person, Easton, and how we would choose to raise him, but even still…I wasn’t ready to fully let go.

One of those things that ‘they’ don’t tell you about, even for the ones who reach for the motherhood stars, is that you just kind of lose who you are. Sometimes just for a little while, and sometimes you wrestle with it for years. You go from a successful career woman or even just a member of a cute line up of girlfriends-without-kids with an actual first name, real pants, and a hoppin’ social life…to ‘so and so’s mom’ without a cute bra in sight or anything on the calendar but pediatrician appointments and library story times. Its really not that dramatic for some people, but you get what I’m saying. Everything changes. Especially your boobs (put that on your list of things they don’t tell you about).

As hard as all of these things are and have been for me. As different of a trajectory this life has taken for me. As vastly opposite of an outcome has happened for me because of the things God placed in my life early on…there’s really no place I’d rather be.  I get to be the one to throw the half toasted waffles to my kids on the way out the door to a MOPS meeting. I get to be the one to greet my kids with a bowl of super healthy goldfish when they come home from school. I get to be the one who’s there for all the firsts. I get to be the mom who signs up to bring paper plates instead of decorated cookies to those class parties I so look forward to. I get to be the awesome counterpart to all those moms who are so good at this, yet God made me the mom that I am to the boys that He gave me because I am something special for them, and they me.

The saltiness that I have been struggling with is obviously very specific to our lives, but while talking to one of my sweet friends about it today (because I skipped the whole month of February here on the blog #writersblock #fear #doubt #satan #alsokids), she reminded me that it doesn’t have to just be the fact that I’m raising my kids while supporting my husband in something that most people internally laugh at when I tell them what it is that I’m cheering on. I see your insides cackling, don’t lie…
Multiple businesses ranging from production and marketing, to a coffee company, to “Oh he’s working on a movie called ‘Tough Draw’ that’s basically a sports drama in the bull riding world”. They’re either amazed (its not that glamorous I promise), they stare at me and say “ohhh…interesting”, or [my personal favorite so far] they ask me details about the logistics of the sport…like if the reason bulls buck is because they clamp something on their testicles. Bless.
I digress.

She reminded me of the simple truth that love equals sacrifice. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you wear a power suit and dominate a corporate office at work or just power walk on a Monday morning whilst pushing a stroller and photograph toddlers and families on the weekends. If you’ve got children, a husband, and a household and/or a business to run…you’re making sacrifices somewhere. You’ve shifted priorities, perspective, and pant sizes.

Let me be clear. I’ve sat in the depths of PPD and grief and honestly still struggle with remnants of that to this day. Its not always easy to look up, shift your perspective, and be grateful. I’ll be the first to admit that. Your hurts, feelings, struggles, and cravings are all valid. I’m not shaming you if you aren’t feeling grateful today. I’m just letting you know I see you there in your day 3 dry shampoo’d hair and pj pants as you sip your coffee and dream of what life might look like if you still felt like you had a sliver of identity left. I’m also here to tell you that no matter where your ‘identity’ was placed in before based on that ‘my plan’ mentality, there’s no greater identity than the one you can have in Christ. If you rest in that…in Him…He can show you all these gems He places in your life when you know what to look for.

When you let go of the expectations of your own plan and leave room for God to place a new desire in your heart, the outcome is better than anything you could have created. The opportunity we have as moms is truly substantial…as insignificant as it might feel to us some days or ever seem to someone not in the same position as us. We are raising men and women. We are encouraging our husbands and cultivating relationships with other moms. Its really like this cool, unspoken thing that you’re suddenly welcomed into this club when you birth a human. These other women, they just get it (well, most of them…some of them are judgy and have nothing to give back to you…its fine, love those kinds harder). When you’re at home, you probably have a husband who is working hard for your family, whatever that looks like, and as much as some days make you feel like you want to curse (uhh hello, toddlers?)…the freedom of working in your home and investing in the little souls you’ve been entrusted with will have a bigger impact than you could ever realize.

And I, for one, want my biggest impact to start at home. The ripple effects of that should be more than enough to satisfy my soul. I will fight for that supporting role.