Another Child - Another Birthday Celebration

Here in our home, the glow of Samantha's first birthday still lingers as we prepare to celebrate another birthday and another child, the Child Who's presence brings Joy not only to His parents, but to the world, to all who have eyes and hearts open to see His significance.

And again, I find myself hoping God looks down and finds two hearts overflowing with gratitude for the Child He sent into our lives, His own Son sent with Love from His Family to ours, to give the greatest gift and make the greatest sacrifice of Love the world has ever known. 

I hope He finds us full of Gratitude and Peace.

Birthday Baby

This post is intended to celebrate my daughter's first year of life and celebrate the Joy mothers everywhere take in expressing our gratitude and immense delight in our children.  We express this sentiment in many different ways.  Some of us spend hours before a birthday crafting the most adorable cake our hearts can conjure.  Others are overwhelmed by cakes and crafting and all things Pinterest and that's OK.  Instead they find countless other ways throughout the year to build a cozy nest for themselves and their families and to express delight in the husbands or children or extended family God gave them.  We ALL have this sentiment within us.  We all find various ways to express it, with or without extravagant homemade cakes. 

May I present to you: Samantha's first birthday.  The following was my humble attempt to celebrate the gift Samantha is to me, in as grand a way as I am able.  It was not as grand as some.  But I hope someday, when Samantha looks at these pictures, I hope she will feel loved.  I hope she will know that she is important to her parents and to God.
And today, I hope God looks down and is pleased by two hearts overflowing with gratitude for the child He sent into their lives.

Her first year has been a blast.

 Zoo Animals!  Theme chosen by Samantha's Daddy.

Fondant cake toppers, molded by her Mommy and Aunt Megan

Each child got a cupcake to eat and destroy

There was a baby safe food table (pictured) and an adult food table (not in the picture)

Paper balls hung from ceiling, (found at Walmart)

Party favor bags and 1 year old safe party favor toys (also at Walmart)



What sort of game can 1 year olds play at a birthday party???  Hit the helium balloons! 



Waiting for the presentation of the cupcakes

It was a hit.  No need for pink strawberry cake inside.  The icing was her only interest.  Praise God for Oxy Clean.  The shirt can still be worn again.

Cozy round the fireplace



Samantha's favorite gift?  A yellow duck puppet

Infertility, Motherhood, Humility, Suffering, Joy

I lay outside in the grass today, during my baby's nap time, reading another chapter in a book about motherhood and as I read, I had a light bulb moment and I want to share it with you.

It is the following words from Sarah Mae in her book Desperate that grabbed my attention...

"I have no foundation in homemaking or baby-raising.  I only babysat maybe three or four times..... I never wanted to babysit because I didn't like it; I found it boring.  Entertaining other people's children was not my idea of a good time."

As I read those words, I found myself realizing there was a time in my life when I would have read those words and felt smug because I LOVED entertaining other people's children.  I was blessed with a foundation in homemaking and baby-raising because of a mother and grandmother who made it look like a joy.  My heart should have been humble, knowing my love of children was a gift given to me, not something that came from being a naturally wonderful person.  But did I fully understand that at 22 years old?  No.  I would have read the words of that author and secretly congratulated myself because I thought I was better than her.  I wouldn't have voiced this, but I would have thought it.  Don't we all have secret smug thoughts we would never voice?

Now, at 35, I can relate to her.  Why?  Because ten years of infertility gave me plenty of time away from children and I learned to love all the time I had for myself.  There was a season of about 5 years when I no longer wanted to babysit.  During that season, entertaining other people's children was no longer my idea of a good time either.

I do love entertaining my 10 month old baby now, and her little friends, most of the time.  The love of children has returned to me.  It came rushing back with overwhelming love for my new baby.  But because of that other season of life, I can relate to the author.  And that's when it hit me; this is yet another reason God allowed those years of infertility.  If I had not gone through that season, I would never have seen that side of my heart;  my ability to be so selfish, that it was no longer fun to play with the most adorable creatures on earth!

It's always a great relief to see myself more clearly, to see how imperfect I am and to be able to relate to other imperfect people when they admit their weakness and failures.  I'm a much happier person now, at 35, than I was at 22.  It's not fun to be proud.  It's not fun to think I'm better than others.  That is a burden of loneliness I don't need.  The more time goes by, the more I realize I can relate to every person on this planet.  Given the right set of circumstances, there is no amount of evil too great that I could not be tempted.  The more I embrace this truth, the freer I am.  Free to love others on their worst days.  Free to enjoy the fact that God loves ME, on my worst days.

I know God had many reasons for allowing infertility to be part of my story, but if the above lesson was the only reason, it would have been worth it.

I hate the reality of suffering.  I don't have an answer for every perversion and every awful thing that exists.  I watched a deer die today.  Another car hit it and I drove up seconds later.  The deer lay in the road, heaving, wide eyed, trying to breathe.  We all stood around, wondering what to do.  Eventually the deer stopped moving.  She was gone.  I don't have an answer for why stuff like that happens.  But I've seen enough good come from pain to continue to trust God in those moments when I don't know the reason or purpose for the awful.

I know I would never see myself clearly if I didn't go through trials.  Every trial has revealed more of myself and stripped away burdens I didn't need to be carrying.  Every trial has left me happier than I was before.

Popsicles for Breakfast

Only when you've been up all night with a sore throat and fever you caught from Daddy, are you EVER allowed to have a popsicle for breakfast in my house.

Becoming Like Grandma

After a 3 month silence, I have returned to you.  When I write these posts, I envision us all gathered round in a circle, sitting in the grass, with a forest behind us, warm cups of coffee or tea in our hands, like some sort of hippy gathering, as we share our stories.  I guess I had to get up and leave the circle for a while.  I needed time to grieve the passing of my grandmother.  This is the first truly painful loss I've ever experienced, and I'm learning that I handle grief with silence.

Grandma was.....

well, nothing I could say could sum it up or feel right to me.  Furthermore, to write a tribute to her would be to say that she is gone.  It would feel like I am trying to tie up something that is not finished.  I do believe she is still alive, just on the other side of a great curtain and that I will see her again one day.  So instead of writing one big epic post about how much she means to me, (because she means a great deal) perhaps her influence and memories will appear occasionally in my writings for the rest of my life.

Like me, Grandma was a homemaker.  Perhaps it is because she made this lifestyle look so desirable that I chose this path.

Homemaking covers many topics.  We could discuss so many things.  We could discuss our move into a house with a yard and a fence and all the joys of building my new nest.  But we'll save that for another day.  Today I want to talk about motherhood again.

It's really no surprise to me that the topic breaking my silence is the topic of motherhood.  Truly, it is currently my favorite subject.  It consumes nearly every waking minute of my life right now and I'm even on duty in my sleep!  A nine month old is an all consuming joy.

Yesterday a friend wrote and reminded me that it is OK to admit that motherhood is hard.  I needed to be reminded.

I knew this in the beginning when my baby was a newborn.  It's just so obvious how hard it is and most people don't try to do more than is reasonable at that point.  We are all given a pass when the baby is only two weeks old.  It's later, when things get a little easier and our capacity increases, and we get carried away and then crash and then feel lost because we no longer have any idea where our new limitations are.

I'm in that stage where my baby is sleeping a little longer and I'm finally getting a decent night's sleep.  (Not an amazing night's sleep, but a decent night's sleep.)  I assumed this meant I would immediately start feeling better and well rested for the first time in ten months.  Not the case!  Apparently one or two normal nights of sleep is not enough to heal ten months of sleep deprivation.  No, it actually is making me feel worse for a little while, my body craving MORE, MORE, MORE.  In a way, it was easier to run on insufficient sleep.  The body simply shuts down the call for sleep and functions without it for a season.  Reawaken that beast and watch out! 

I've never heard mothers talk about this stage, but apparently I'm in a season of recovery and it doesn't happen overnight.

To make it more complicated, sometime in the past month I was bit by the bug that says I need to accomplish MORE than simply raising a child.  What a joy killer.  To raise a child is an all-consuming task. Joyful, yet all consuming.  I know it is all consuming and yet I have to be reminded.  Why do I quickly forget?

Maybe every mother has a tendency to forget?  Maybe all Americans try to see how much they can accomplish?  Like it's a badge of our value as humans?  Is this why people keep passing me in the street saying, "they grow up so fast!  Enjoy it!"  As well-meaning as this is, I wish they would stop.  I am keenly aware that Samantha is growing fast and soon she will grow up and be gone.  It's a painful thought.  If I think about it too much, it will ruin the beauty of the moment.  Trying too hard to enjoy something can, in itself, rob any possibility of enjoying it.  On the other hand, by not trying hard enough, we can also miss enjoyment, so I can't fault those ladies for their mantra.  It's just that I'm the mother who needs to be reminded that she will be a BETTER MOTHER if she spends time away from her baby occasionally.  I'm the one wanting to spend every minute with her, kissing her and enjoying her, not wanting to miss a minute of her short time with me, but at the same time CRAVING, NEEDING time alone and having a hard time taking it.  The one exception is when she is with her Daddy.  I have no problem walking away and not looking back and not thinking about her when I leave her with him.  I am at complete peace in those times because I know she is having a blast and he is having a blast and he and I are so bonded, when she is with him, I feel she is still with me.  Anyone who has a marriage like this is blessed.  But I digress.  The point is, I need to take time away from my greatest joy occasionally, so I can continue to enjoy her.

It's ok to say that motherhood is hard. It's even good and necessary to admit it.  But it's way more fun to talk about how amazing and wonderful motherhood is.  The joy makes all the hard worth it.  At 9 months old, it's just now getting really fun.  It has been fun, but it's getting even more fun.  Like sitting on the kitchen floor together every morning, sharing a bowl of oatmeal from the same spoon.  Or popping bubbles in the kiddie pool out back.  Or listening to Hakuna Matata from the Lion King seven times in a row just so we can bop our heads and hands to the music.  These things are the heart of homemaking.  We stay home so we can do these things together.  That is what Grandma taught me.

Yesterday my Mom asked if I remembered the time we visited the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream factory... the time we all nearly wet our pants laughing because Grandma got slobbered on by a cow as she tried to help us kids feed the cows in the Ben and Jerry's pasture.  The amazing bit is that she hated all things farm related.  She grew up on a farm and wanted nothing to do with it.  Yet she did it for us.  She was always a good sport.  Willing, in her 60's to ride a thrill ride with me, a 10 year old, when the circus came to town.  Speaking of the circus, she always made sure my sister and I each got our OWN cotton candy when she was buying.  An incredible luxury.  But again, I digress.  I only vaguely remember the incident at Ben and Jerry's, but it illustrates what I do remember about her.  She was always on the floor with us, doing things in our world on our level, yet at the same time, raising us up, inspiring us to join her on her level, in her world.  Come to think of it, isn't that what Christ did for us on the cross and the Holy Spirit continues to do for us every day.  He comes down to our level and enters our world to raise us up with Him to Divine Glory. 

Whether Grandma knew it or not, she was imitating Christ for us.  And this is the heart of homemaking; to imitate Christ every day.  Many of us have heard this over and over in Sunday school;  the goal in every area of life is to imitate Christ.  Yet Grandma made it look like a joy instead of a burden.  She did it without broadcasting that this was the purpose of her actions.  Indeed, it is only dawning on me now how successful she was at things others read book after book and blog after blog, seeking to become.  Perhaps, sometimes, in trying too hard, we miss the whole thing.  She wasn't into reading Christian self-help books.  For her, simply presenting a sincere heart, a willingness to serve and a humble spirit, was enough to make her legendary in the eyes of all who knew her.

I seek to be like her, even now, when she is no longer a phone call away, but separated from me by a Holy curtain.  I hope to see her again one day.  In the meantime, I will continue to eat oatmeal on the kitchen floor with my daughter, like she would have done.

Keeping Watch

I am currently weaning Samantha from the need to have me nearby as she goes to sleep.  Some days she needs physical contact to get to sleep, some days she just needs to peek up at me occasionally and know that I'm still there, watching over her.  At other times, all she needs is a kiss goodbye and she's content to drift off all alone in her room, fiddling with her pacifiers and birdie.  And then there are the days when nothing satisfies and she has to cry herself to sleep no matter what I do.

Today all she needed was to peek up at me occasionally to know that I was still there.  As I leaned over her crib a few minutes ago, waiting and watching, my mind wandered back to my own childhood.  I distinctly remember the warmth of knowing that as I went to sleep, there were lights on somewhere in the house and Mom was up doing things.  I relied on that comfort into my teens.  Now, at 34, I can't get to sleep unless I'm the last one to go to bed.  As much as I've tried, and no matter how tired I am, I can't get to sleep if I know my husband will be coming to bed later.  The knowledge that everything is not settled down for the night around me, the anticipation that something will be bustling about nearby, keeps me awake.

It made me wonder... when did I change?  When did I go from being the child that needed to know someone was still awake in the house keeping watch, to the adult who can't go to sleep if others are still up?  The mother who now keeps watch as her own little girl drifts off to sleep, comforted by my wakeful presence.

Deperate for Air

It's been six months and twelve days since Samantha was born.  In the last three weeks it has begun to seem as though the hardest part of motherhood is finally behind me.  I know that will probably change.  Another tough season will come.  But for now, she is sleeping a bit longer which means I'm getting enough sleep so I no longer hit a wall every 10 minutes, feeling like I've reached the end of my capacity.  I'm breathing again.  A little bit deeper every day.

But it's still tough.  I was reminded just how tough yesterday morning as I picked up a new book written for Moms.  You know you're still in the thick of it when the first few lines of the introduction have the power to make you well up with tears, relieved and grateful that someone else knows just exactly how you feel.

"I can't be a mother today, Lord, I'm just too tired," Sarah Mae recounted of her own feelings as a young Mom.  It's those first two words that got me.  "I can't."  The exact words I battle every few days.  I counter back with "I can. And I will," based on a phrase in II Timothy that tells me "God has not given me a spirit of timidity, but of power."  I'm battling and having success, but the battle itself can be tiring at times.

As I read Sarah Mae's words, I breathed the fresh air of another woman's understanding and I looked over at my baby and wondered how this small, sweet bundle of joy, deep in peaceful sleep, could cause these tears. 

How could her presence cause me to pick up a book called Desperate?

I suppose it is the very fact of her incredible sweetness and utter vulnerability that makes me desperate to do the best job caring for her.

I am reminded of a pivotal day in February, when she was only two months old and I wasn't getting enough sleep and I realized on an new, important and deep level that I needed the air and the food of God to make it through one more day as a mother.  For several weeks, I kept running into a wall, reaching the end of myself and getting angry.  I have never experienced anything more peculiar than the type of anger that rises up in me when I am pushed to the end of myself and am still being asked for more...  when I realize more is needed and WANT to give it!... but just have no more to give?  That is the most bizarre feeling I have ever felt.  Nothing in my life before has ever brought me to the true end of my own energy and pushed me for more.  Not like this.  I felt exhausted, claustrophobic, boxed in.  My husband endured several emotional meltdowns as I reached that wall over and over and every time sat down in despair and didn't know what to do. 

I kept turning to food and sleep and a one hour break from the baby while he took a turn watching her.  These things helped a little, but they were not enough.  It was not until I remembered that "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God," that I was truly rescued.  Instead of taking a bath with the hour my husband gave me, I sat and read bits of Psalms and Proverbs and Philippians.  I drank and ate every word, transformed in 10 minutes from a woman who wasn't going to make it through one more day, to a woman who felt revived, happy and eager to go find her baby and kiss her again.  I had pushed through the wall and found the other side; the place where there is an endless supply of energy to do whatever is needed.

Southern Appalachia Homemaker

Last time we talked, Samantha and I were spending the day outside.  We are outside again today, but in a very different location.  A few days after my last post, I learned that Chris' company was asking us to move to Birmingham, Alabama.  Four weeks later, we are here, fully re-located in temporary housing while we house hunt.  A shock?  Maybe.  But I've come to expect sudden change.  Life can change in the blink of an eye, all of our plans re-arranged.  It's a lot more enjoyable to ride the wave than to fight it when it happens.

"The mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps."  Proverbs 16:9

We still intend to buy a house, as planned, but instead of on a lake a mile down the road, we are now looking for a house in the southern Appalachian mountains of northern Alabama.  Without fail, God's re-directions are far more delightful than our plans, for those who have eyes to see.  I've always wanted to live in the Appalachian Mountains, but didn't think it was possible with Chris' job.  I was born in South Western Virginia, right in the middle of the Appalachian chain.  When I think about returning, I think of Virginia or North Carolina.  I've never been to Alabama until now and had no idea that the Appalachian chain extended this far south.  What an amazing surprise!  After only a few days, I already feel more at home here than any other place I've lived since getting married and following my husband on the job trail.  Colorado, Florida, Switzerland, they were all wonderful adventures, but this?  This feels like home.  This is where I belong.  At least for now.  Only God could coordinate my husband's job and my ideal location to be in the same place.

As I write to you now, we're on the back patio and my baby sleeps in a pink stroller next to me and I look out over my laptop at the small woods behind our apartment that rest on a hill and separate our apartment buildings from another set of apartment buildings.  A breeze grazes us and I breathe fresh mountain air, daydreaming about what the rest of our new life in Alabama will bring.

The Best Things Found are Free

As mothers, I think most of us are looking for rhythms and routines to order our days. We crave flexible schedules to help us anticipate what is going to happen next. There is so much that is new and unsettling and unpredictable about life with a baby. Whether you are a rigid schedule maker or a loose schedule maker, we are all looking for stability and comfort from the routines and rhythms we create and find.  And most of us find ourselves in a constant state of tweaking and experimenting to perfect these daily schedules.

I am no exception.  In the past, I tended to seek constant variety with little repetition.  Life with a baby has found me groping for more consistency and evaluating everything I do more closely now that I have someone else to consider, not just myself.

On this intoxicatingly delicious Spring day in Virginia, as I strolled down the street, meandering away from my in-laws brick two story, wearing my baby in a front carrier, I was reminded how much happier and healthier I am when I'm outdoors.  My baby is happier and healthier too.  She sleeps better and eats better outside in the fresh air.  I resolved, today, to spend at least a few minutes every day outdoors with my child from now on, closer to the rhythms of nature.  This is, after all, one of the best ways to live the theme I already chose for raising this particular little girl.  When she was in the womb, I sang to her every day.  I sang various songs befitting the mood of the day, but there was one song I sang every day, a little didly I made up, adapted from a song I learned as a child, and it goes like this,

"Samantha, Samantha, look round and you will see,

God's treasure is everywhere,

the best things found are free."

I do love buying toys and new props for her education at each stage of development.  But my fondest wish is that her favorite toys will be the ones she discovers outdoors in God's great big beautiful creation.  Today I am reminded that I want to start cultivating this love in her now, even at four months old.  The weather does not always make it easy to be outside all day long, but on a day like today, it would be a great misfortune to be indoors.  So we're not.  Today, Samantha and I are eating and sleeping and playing outside all day long.

More Revelations from Samantha Grace

As I said, there were three particularly poignant moments in the first three months with my new baby.  The second two were revelations that hit me during conversations with her as she and I played together.

One day, as I cuddled her, I said, "Samantha, do you know your Daddy loves you?  Even though he is not around as much as I am, he loves you just as much as I do."  As those words left my mouth, it dawned on me that this is similar to the Holy Spirit telling us that the Father loves us just as much as the Spirit does.  The Spirit is WITH us, as our helper and our comforter.  The Father is in heaven preparing a place for us.

Samantha's Daddy works hard, preparing a place for her.  Which leads me to another topic... in a few months, if all goes according to plan, you will see photos of our new house, a house just down the road by the lake, a beautiful location to raise a beautiful daughter.  We plan to move in May.


The second revelation came as I played with Samantha on the bed a few days later.  I was overtaken by how wonderful she was and said, "Oh Samantha, you are SO cute and SO sweet, I can hardly bear it.  My heart can't take it.  My heart is aching from just looking at you.
That's when it hit me.  I gasped and exclaimed to her, "Samantha, if God is MORE sweet and MORE perfect than you, then NO WONDER no one can bear to look at Him!"

I've always wondered why people in the Old Testament kept dying just from catching a glimpse of God.  He was too Holy to look at?  I didn't understand it.

Now I think maybe I understand it at least a tiny bit better.

Lessons from Samantha Grace - Part One

So about that baby in this story...

After 10 years of waiting, praying and hoping, she arrived on December 8, 2012, cuter and more precious than any dream we ever conceived: Samantha Grace Sherman - which means "God hears."

I'm already dreaming of the things I want to teach her; the books I want to read to her and the places we'll go. But in these first few months of life, her presence has been teaching me far more than I've been teaching her.

There were three particularly poignant moments these first three months. Today I will tell you about the first.  It happened the first week home from the hospital. My husband and mother both left to run errands, leaving me alone with my baby for the first time ever. Before pregnancy, I prided myself on my vast experience with babies. Yet NOTHING could have prepared me for the weight of responsibility that came with the arrival of my very own baby. I was SO stressed. The delivery and c-section, left me weaker and more vulnerable than I have ever felt in my life. It baffles me, even now, to think that God entrusts a woman with the most precious task on earth, caring for a helpless newborn at the very time when we are at our weakest and most helpless ourselves. Mentally, emotionally, physically broken. I honestly don't know how I would have made it through those first six weeks without this promise from Isaiah.... "He (God) gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young."   I recited this to myself dozens and dozens of times those first weeks.

But back to that first poignant episode during week one: First, you have to know that my greatest fear that week was Samantha choking.  In the hospital there was a moment in the middle of the night when she silently started vomiting and choking on amniotic fluid and I was unprepared for it.  I happened to turn at exactly the right moment to see her choking, but I had no idea what to do and she started turning blue.  I turned her over and somehow she got through it, but I came away from the episode thoroughly traumatized and gravely afraid of being left alone with her.  Nonetheless, the moment came later that week when everyone left the house and I was alone with my baby.  I had just finished feeding her.  I sat her up to burp her and I said aloud, "Jesus, please help us not to be scared by ANYTHING."  What I meant to say, was, "Please don't let anything scary happen."  But that's not what I accidentally said.  I said, "please help us not to be scared by anything."  So what did He do?  He expertly allowed the thing for which I was most afraid to happen at that very moment.  Literally, as the last word left my mouth, Samantha projectile vomited for the first time, splashing the bassinet, two feet away.  Milk came out of her mouth AND NOSE!

We lived through it and I smiled.  He could not have more clearly spoken into my life to say, "We are not going to avoid all scary situations.  Instead, I will be WITH you and you do not need to be scared by ANYTHING.

For those of you who think a baby vomiting is not a scary thing, it is humbling to share this story with you.  Indeed, it does seem a bit silly to me, looking back on it now.  But we all have fears.  Insert a different fear and maybe you can relate.  What fear do you carry that you can let Jesus be WITH you to overcome?

Homemaking - My Choice

As I said, there is a baby in this story...

Two nights before her delivery, I was awake at 4 am, sitting on a big blue exercise ball, trying to stay comfortable through contractions.  The following journal entry is what poured forth from my pen that night. This was the night I re-connected with my life as a homemaker in a deep way.

December 5, 2012 – 4:30 am

It’s in a moment like this that it becomes crystal clear to me that the life I have chosen for myself is exactly the one I believe is my personal calling.

The countercultural nature of my lifestyle has tempted me to insecurity many, many times.  I defend myself, I hide myself, or I try to compete with other people by rules that don’t apply to me, rules set by a very different lifestyle choice.

Tonight I am proud of my decisions and I vow never again to apologize for them or hide them.  I will celebrate this life.

I was a single woman with no job outside the home.  I was provided for financially by my father.  I learned the art of homemaking from my mother and I learned to care for children.  My time was free to pursue any project inside or outside the home to be productive.  Work was a value and laziness was not excused.  Yet this type of work was flexible.  I could put down a current project at a moment’s notice to serve other people, especially other women.  At 17 I spent 5 weeks in the home of a woman who just gave birth and was unusually sick.  Her husband was also sick and she had 6 children to manage.  I went to her side to help her for over a month.  This is only one example out of dozens where I was free to serve when others were tied down by careers.

If society does not create at least a certain percentage of women, like me, to do this type of work, who will do it?  A paid nanny or paid companion?  Few can financially afford such a luxury.  And will a nanny or companion, trained only in a classroom, be as good as a woman who lived and breathed this lifestyle from girlhood?

I’m married now.  I’ve been married for 12 years without children.  Part of the philosophy behind a life of homemaking and serving during my single years was to prepare me to be a wife and mother.  When I didn’t become a mother soon after marriage, I often lost perspective and wondered if I should have pursued a career to “stay busy.”  I could have had any job I wanted.  I was a smart child.  I could have gone to college to be a lawyer or a nurse or a business owner.  I had the brains for any of those options.  But that is not the life I chose.  At a young age, I saw the value of a homemaker and I embraced the training my parents and others were willing to give me.  I could blame my parents for “pushing me into this lifestyle,” but I can’t do that.  Plenty of other girls were encouraged by their parents to live the life of homemaking I was living and many girls chose not to go this route.  The choice was mine. 

I could have pursued a career and I might have enjoyed it very much.  But if I had pursued a career, I would not have been free to serve the people I have served as a married woman without children these last 12 years.  Tonight, my only regret is that I didn’t serve more people and make the most of the time.  I regret the times I spent feeling lost and useless and paralyzed.

I am about to have a baby.  I will still be able to live this life of homemaking and serving other women, but my time will be more limited than before.  I am now the woman in need rather than the woman who is free to go.

Tonight I am lonely.  I'm wishing there was a single woman in my community who would come and sit by my side as I go through the days and days and night after long night of childbirth pains that lead up to final labor… or even a married woman to at least sit with me during the day while our husbands are at work. 

Where are these women?

Our society has eliminated most of them.

Let me say that I fully support and applaud women who's heart's desire is to work outside the home with a vibrant career. I'm grateful we live in a day and age when women are respected and free to do so.  At this point, the problem isn't that women who want a career can't have one.  At this point, our challenge, as a culture, is to make sure women who chose homemaking feel equally productive and respected even though their productivity is measured differently than in the corporate world.

I want to end by saying thank you to Jaime and Amanda; two women who were there for me at the hospital during the most challenging moments of my entire life.  Jaime is a homemaker with 4 children.  Amanda is currently staying home with a 7 month old baby boy.  That night, these women embodied the true spirit of homemaking and women helping women.

I have many stories, but this is the story of me and Florida.

When I married in August of 2000, I told my husband, "I don't ever want to live in Florida."  I was a Virginia native, raised in Vermont and, in my estimation, Florida was too hot, too flat and too far from my family.  This is the attitude I took after I had secured the husband of my dreams and we were starting our married adventure in Colorado.  In my mind, all roads eventually led back to Virginia, MY home state.  NOT to Florida, his home state.

Rewind history by three years and you'll find a very different attitude on the same girl, intoxicated by love.  As she meandered her way, alone, down a sleepy country road in small town Florida, shaded by ancient live oaks, she reached up to pull down a strand of hanging moss and, inhaling the deep scent of jasmine, she envisioned a life here in Florida with her childhood friend, the boy now becoming a man, currently attending college at UF.  She liked the vision.  She could see herself here.

Love colors everything.  It makes us see good in everything.  It makes us see potential.

On the other hand, Love also keeps us tied to our roots..... it keeps the good aspects of our past interwoven with our present.  So which road led us to Florida instead of Virginia?  Homesickness.

Homesickness for the East Coast, and a shorter drive to family, made me agree to the first decent job my husband was offered.  It happened to be in Florida.  "I don't ever want to live in Florida" turned into "it's better than Colorado."  I enjoyed my time in Colorado, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.  At 21, eager to strike out west for adventure, I had not factored in homesickness. 

Chris adores Colorado and could have stayed, but as family is important to him too, he was happy to move back east.  We packed up and drove cross country for the second time.  Arriving in Florida, Chris buckled down to an interesting new job and I breathed deeper.  (The air in Colorado was thinner.)

For 8 years I said, "this is temporary.  We will settle in the mid-Atlantic states."  Somehow, during those 8 years, Florida wove her way into my heart.  Somehow, Florida became my home.  How did that happen?  Is it because I've been here so long it's become familiar, for better or worse?  Maybe.  I AM tired of moving.  But there's more.  After 8 years in Florida, we moved to Switzerland for a 2 year adventure.  When it came time to return "home" to the U.S.A., it wasn't Virginia I wanted, it was Florida.  At that point, I let go of past ideals and went home to Florida with open arms.

This brings us to the present day.  We've been home for a year now, renting a house and growing a baby.  Yes, that's right, there's a baby in this story...

Today there is a two month old baby, sleeping next to me in a cream bassinet beside my bed as I talk to you.  I look over at her now; the most beautiful baby I've ever seen.  Her Daddy is hunting for the perfect house in which to raise her.  After renting for over a year, we are getting ready to put an offer on a house to buy.  But I have cold feet.  It's a suitable house in an ideal location, so why do I have cold feet? I already told myself that Florida is my home and I want to stay.  I think there must be a little corner of my heart that still doesn't want to commit and buying a house is a form of committing.

Isn't that always the way it is with committing?  Commitment doesn't ever come without a shred of uncertainty.  At some point, you just have to pick a plan and start walking, embracing imperfections and making the best of it.  So that's what I'm doing.  I'm inhaling the deep scent of Florida jasmine and I'm celebrating the woman I've become; a woman in her 30's, finally at peace with the life of homemaking she chose 15 years ago.....