I never really realized how much my identity was caught up in what I do until I became a mom. I tell people all the time that when we had Sadie it felt like somebody pulled the rug out from underneath my feet, both literally and metaphorically speaking. I went from having a plan/feeling confident in said plan 99.9% of the time to feeling completely clueless.
The first few months I was in pure survival mode so I didn't really see the identity crisis happening. But once I reemerged into the world from a sleep deprived fog, it slapped me in the face. Sure I was still a campus minister but my time there had been greatly reduced. Somehow I had decided (in my silly head) that being a mom wasn't quite as valuable as working full-time in a real job, I felt like I had no purpose anymore. I think you see where that's headed. I was an emotional wreck with multiple meltdowns that strangely are quite similar to the temper tantrums my 16 month old is throwing these days.
stop.
*editor's note: so this whole typing just for 5 minutes was a lot harder than I thought. Perhaps I'll finish this stream of thought sometime next week. Leaving it without a conclusion is killing me, but that's what I'm supposed to do!
I had such awful postpartum depression after I had my first baby. I'd had to drop out of school for health issues years before, and then I left work early to go home and have my baby - it just felt like I didn't have any dreams left. But now, on the other side of it, I see that it was just a place, just a way that God wanted to write my story so that my identity would end up in HIM, that it would be about who I am in Him and not in what I did. He's really good for that kind of thing...
ReplyDeleteI TOTALLY know where you are, but you're not lesser because you don't do something, anything. God made us in His image, to just BE, wherever we are. We are totally allowed to breathe, and to relish that.