A Road Less Travelled

I just wrote a post about long term goals, so it seems that I shouldn’t have a post about short term impatience coming right after it. But I do.

I understand that fairy tale endings aren’t realistic. Maybe I don’t completely understand it at this point in my life, but I do live in a house with five children. I’ve fed them, dressed them, and cleaned up after them. I know there’s a certain amount of work involved in being a wife and mother.

But I also live in a house with two very married people. I’ve seen the stressful days, but I’ve also seen the look that James gives Theresa. I’ve seen the same look on Seth’s face when he looks at Crystal. Seth and James are two very different people, but each of them has exactly the same look that is only for his wife. It’s a look that makes the big romantic scenes in movies look fake. I noticed this while watching Armaggedon. Liv Tyler, soft music (no children screaming in the background…), romantic dialogue–and I’m just sitting there thinking, “They’re supposed to look like they’re in love? Come on, it just looks fake.”

So I’m waiting. I know I have to so many things to do with my time, things I won’t have time for after I’m married. But there’s a part of me that’s ‘being patient and getting tired of it’. Elsie is learning to read, and I’m excited about it, but part of my mind wants to know how long until I have a little girl learning to read. How long until I’m in charge of dinner for my husband and children.

I don’t have a neat little ending for this post. I know the right answers. Part of it was in my post on long term benefits. Part of was in Gabrielle’s post On Careers. Part of it is waiting on God’s timing and being content where I am. I know what I’m waiting for, and I know it’s worth it. But sometimes it’s still just hard.

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Career : a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling

Career : What you plan to do for the rest of your life.

I was recently asked a question I found insightful. In one of the comments on this blog a friend asked Raquel and I if we were prepared for the fact that we might not get jobs in the occupation we are training for. It was a question I had thought of before, but not in the terms that it was stated. And the question got me thinking about jobs and careers.

What is a career? A career is something you want to do for the rest of your life. You invest time and money into training for it and you invest part of yourself into it and you become known to some extent by what your career is. My brother has said that he does not have a career. He has a job that he enjoys very much and puts time and energy into, but he does not think he will be doing that for the rest of his life. Crystal, on the other hand, has a career. She is a wife and she is a mother and these jobs affect her differently than being a husband and father affect Seth. Crystal has a career. She expects this phase of her career to end sometime, but it will really only adjust to her season of life. It will never end. At times I have almost envied Crystal because she is doing what she wants to do for the rest of her life. And I was only training for it. But that is very dangerous thinking.

What is training? Training is getting the skills necessary for what you want to do. Training looks down the road at something you want to do in the future. But I don’t want to live in the future. I don’t want to sink what could very well be years of my life only looking forward. That makes no sense. God didn’t put me here in Peoria just to get ready for my life to start. He put me here to work. I am not in training; I am on the job. I am starting on my career. I am starting on something I could do for the rest of my life. Now, I don’t really want to do this for the rest of my life. I want a job like Crystal’s. I pray to that end every day. But until then I will invest my time and myself into where I am. I will plan as if I do not know the time when this career will end (which isn’t too hard to pretend) and I will strive to be glad here. Otherwise, I will be close to useless. Starry-eyed dreamers are not very helpful when there are diapers to change. Planning out exactly how my wedding will look is not as helpful as reading a story to the children. Lovingly collecting recipes and dreaming about how pleased my husband will be when I serve these culinary delights is fruitless when Crystal needs help getting dinner on the table. God made the present time for a reason. It is to be lived in.

“This is your life. You will never find contentment in living for what you hope tomorrow may hold. Contentment is for today.” -Lydia Brownback, Fine China is For Single Women, Too

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