I love being a mom. I love my daughters so fervently, and I cannot imagine my life without them. While I am far from being a supermom, I am happy that I can say I am not a yeller, and I would even say out loud that I have a wonderful gift (God-given for sure) of being able to be very patient with my children. I have not always been able to say this. Being a mom has not always worked out in an ideal way for me, with having a husband who has been gone for months 1 and 2 weeks after the births of our youngest two daughters. I have had my standards adjust multiple times over the years. It is just now that I understand the fluidity of my standard goals, and I am okay when they are sometimes far from where I perceive them to be.
I always wanted to be a mom, ever since I was a little girl. I had a special relationship with my own mom, and I always wanted to have a child to have that relationship with. When I was younger, I never had an idea of how many children I wanted, or genders, I just knew I wanted to be a mom.
I've always loved children and started babysitting as soon as I was able. Children have always loved me. I went to college for a degree in elementary education. When I dropped out of college due to financial reasons, the career path I chose involved teaching children. I have always felt younger and more alive when surrounded by bright, beautiful little minds. When Mr. Cat and I married, we knew we wanted to have children some day. We had our little plans, those plans you make for your future when you are newlyweds. We decided we would have 3 children, a girl, a boy, and then another girl. We even had names picked out.
We were married in 1995. In 1997, we started talking more seriously about starting a family. I had recently switched to a new career, one that was not child-centered, and we felt like we were a little more stable and we decided that starting with the following year, we would begin to try to start a family. I had no idea that God had other plans in store for us.
It was Thanksgiving of 1997 and Mr. Cat was making sausage in our tiny little apartment kitchen (I actually think that kitchen was bigger than the one we currently have!). I started gagging and felt very sick to my stomach. I ran out of the room and down the hall to our only bathroom. The smell was just awful to me. I had to go into our bedroom and run an air purifier to be able to stand the scent of the sausage that was looming in our place. That was our big clue. Mr. Cat went right out and bought a pregnancy test. I took it and we both waited. We found out we were going to be parents.
When talking about my entrance into motherhood, I say one thing that always throws people who know me for a loop. I never intended to be a stay at home mom. Ever. I had plans, people. I had a career. I was going to stay home for my 6 week maternity leave, and after that, baby would be put in a home daycare and I would go back to work. We would eventually move into an apartment that had more than 1 room, but it was no biggie. Babies don't take up much space.
Ha. I had it all planned out. Again, God's plans greatly differed from my own. Long story much much shorter, I sailed through the first trimester, and towards the beginning of the second one, had complications that left me on bed rest and in danger of losing our baby. For 30 days I was made to stay in bed other than getting up to use the bathroom. I was alone all day while Mr. Cat worked in the next state. He left me with a cooler of food and drinks at my bedside. I slept clutching my Bible and praying for that precious life within me for each and every day.
Things improved, and I made plans to return to work. The day I was to go back, complications arose again. God made it very clear to both of us that I was to stay home. This was no easy task. To sum it up, we moved our entire family up to New York to live with my mother in her tiny two bedroom apartment. Remember, no biggie because babies don't take up much space. In the summer of 1998 Mini Me was born, and I have never looked back.
Fast forward through the years. Old Soul was born in December of 2000, Joyful was born in October of 2002, and Gift was born in March of 2003. Four children, all daughters, some of the names we chose, some other names. Two of the four involved a lot of solo-parenting. Two weeks after Joyful was born, Mr. Cat left for Korea and was gone for the first 15 months of her life. He was in Iraq, was able to come home for the birth of Gift, and then a week later was back in Iraq. My experience with mothering has definitely had its ups and downs and many many challenges. Being a mom is rarely how I imagined things when I was young and dreaming of motherhood, or even when I was older and babysitting or working with children.
Especially now that I am past the baby days and are into the teen aged years, the pre-teen years, and the school-aged years, my definition of what it means to be a mom is constantly morphing and changing shape. Even still, the title "Mom" is the most rewarding thing I have ever had the honor of being called.
I am so blessed to be a mother. Someone once told me, children are only lent to us from God. We are charged with raising them, and teaching them, and helping to shape them into productive purposeful people, but they are only on loan to us for a time. It is true. We have to make the most of this little bit of time. As we grow more and more attached and in love with these precious creatures, we have to entrust them back to God. It isn't always easy, for, who can possibly love my children any more than me? But take that love that I feel, magnify it and multiply it by infinity, and you still can't reach the amount of love that God has for them. I am so incredibly honored to be the one that God chose to be their mother, and I love being a mom.
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