A bit of honesty...

Today, after all my excitement and big thinking, I have un-enrolled in my nursing degree. My feelings are a little... mixed, about it all.

I know it's right, I'm sure it's right. But still.

I still want to do it, someday I think. I would like to be a nurse. But not right now. I knew, I think I always knew that something about it all just wasn't sitting right. I probably tried to ignore that not-rightness for a while. But this morning, I took the kids for a walk, and really, really talked to God for the first time in a long time. And I just got that knowledge, (that still small voice) You need to un-enroll in university.

If I'm being really, really honest about it all. Which, lets face it, has always been my goal in this blog. I don't think I had my priorities right. I would like to be a nurse, or do something one day. But much of this stemmed from me searching for some kind of validation, I guess.

Because this. My life. So, so much of it is really unrewarding. I spend so many moments of my life feeling inadequate, feeling frustrated, feeling guilty. I often feel like I am doing so many, many things wrong in this parenting gig, and often I struggle to see the bigger picture.  I'd like to feel important. Like who I am, what I do, what I contribute to the world matters. And I don't really get that feeling from motherhood. Often, I don't feel like I am enough.  I thought I could get that feeling from doing a little bit of something extra that was for me. Honestly I guess I really and truly believed that that piece of paper I would work to achieve would make me matter more. And that's a lie. I know it. But at times it feels true. 

I didn't take into account what would be best for my family, for my little people, for my husband. In different circumstances it could work. It might have been more possible if it was a different kind of study, one that didn't have so much prac involved. It might have been easier if we lived somewhere different, if my kids were older. It certainly is possible. But right now it wouldn't have been what is best.

Often the task of raising my babies feels like something that is too hard, and often it feels like it should be my turn to put my own needs first. But I know that is my own selfish nature talking, and it is not the one that will lead me the right way. I am in a position where I am blessed enough to be able to stay home and look after my children. It might be different if I wasn't. Even though I feel some days that there is space in my life for study and a career.... If I want to be the mother I am supposed to be, if I want to be the person that God created me to be, right now, in my life? There just isn't.

This isn't easy. But really, neither was study going to be. I had enrolled in my courses for the semester and I was excited, but it was a kind of nervous, frantic excitement. It didn't feel peaceful, or right. It was just making me feel overwhelmed, and stressed.

I need to learn how to be more disciplined in what I do now, before I even think about trying to add more into my life. I need to be mindful, and have purpose in raising these tiny humans. Not just lurch from one disaster to the next. I need to learn how to do more than survive. I need to wait on God's perfect timing, not rush ahead and try to pretend like I know better than He does. I need to do my best with what I have been given now, not act like a petulant child who wants to go on and do something else because the task in front of them seems too hard.

I need to believe that I am enough. That who He is makes me enough. That being who He has called me to be is enough. I don't want to be lied to by the world, and fall into the trap of believing that a woman who spends her days looking after her children and her household has no value. Who I am, what I do, has value. Because of Him.