Today is my last day of summer break. I go back into the teaching world for my second year as a teacher, my first full-time year. This is new to me. I am learning to work full-time with two girls. I have one going into kindergarten this year and one entering her second year in preschool. The time has flown by and taken the years with it. My babies are no longer babies and I am not in my twenties anymore.

I have not worked full-time, since my oldest, was 16 months old. Last year was a sink and swim time in my household. I struggled and struggled hard. There is no doubt. My personal life changed. The things I once held as important are no longer important. My time is spent differently.

Confession time: working full-time while running my house hold is hard. Note, I am not saying that staying at home isn’t hard work. 

My full-time day looks like:

6:00 a.m. wake up get ready for the day with my daughter in tow. Get everything going for the morning.

By 7:15  a.m., I will be walking out the door with a five-year old in tow. My youngest waking up and hanging out with her dad until her sitter arrives to take her to school.

Get ready for school between 7:30 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. …then I teach until 3:00 p.m.. I will pack up and get ready to go home with the five-year old in tow. By 3:30 p.m., I will be home and ready to be mom again to do the night-time routine.

I am just tired thinking about it and I haven’t even gotten to dinner or running my mileage. Did I mention I am training for a marathon?

By 8:00  p.m., I will put the kids in bed and turn my attention to my husband. By 9:00 p.m., I will be passed out in order to do it all over again the next day.

I know you are thinking : ” You are a teacher, you don’t work all summer long!” Not true, I have been working the last three weeks in order to get ready for school. That’s setting up my classroom, buying materials and finding awesome curriculum.

Confession time: Some days I love it and some days I don’t.

Some days are amazing as a teacher. You see kids learn and you get to experience everything with them. The others days can be hard. With meetings and expectations that are high. I constantly try to keep creative ideas flowing (which doesn’t come easily) and then all the grading, prep-work and other stresses. Some days staying at  home looks more appealing. It looks inviting. I miss the playdates in the afternoon and lunch dates with my friends. Those days are gone.  Even in the summer,  I found it hard to balance it all.

Confession time: Stay at home moms are tough to be around.

I love my friends that stay at home. It’s awesome, I use to be one of them. But the other perspective , I did not fully understand until I worked full-time. I see my friends be able to stay at home with little to no financial difficulty. They get to do fun things with vacations etc. It’s hard at times to realize that God gave me a different life. I LOVE MY Life, but we all struggle at times. This is where social media I have found to be dangerous. I have found that the pictures of the constant bombarding of pictures of the joys or not so much joys of staying at home on my Facebook feed all the time.  (One of the many reasons, I deactivated my Facebook account.) Working moms can do that too, but I think it’s viewed that we choose to work. The choice is sometimes voluntary and sometimes not.

Confession time: I hate the view that if a wife/mother works she is not giving all she can to her children.

I have struggled so hard against this in the church culture. I don’t like it. There is a view that if you work, then you can’t possibly raise “good Christian kids.”  People have told me that I should have stayed at home until the girls are in at least junior high.  I heard a sermon by Tony Evans about Kingdom Women. HE is preaching on the proverbs 31 woman. This is the woman/wife/mother verses in the bible. The verses everyone looks to to be the perfect woman. In  the sermon,  he talked about how this woman gets up early to get ready for the day (v13),  she works hard in labor including outside of the home (18-19, v.24) and she looks good doing it (v.22).  A woman in Proverbs does not over commit herself, but she is serving God and her family. Can I get an AMEN!

Confession time: I love my job.

The kids in my school are in 85% below the poverty line. I am blessed to be their teacher.  I am blessed to walk into their school everyday and teach them. God gave this job and I intend to my best.

It’s hard to be a mom. It’s hard to stay at home or work while raising a family. As women, we should encourage each other and love each other.

Let’s run this race we have been given with endurance. Let’s do this woman thing with God by our side, our husbands and raise some awesome God-loving children. Let’s not doubt our call in life, but understand it and thrive in it. Let’s not wish for a life we don’t have, but enjoy the one we do.