Motherhood.

A week as a full time mom. 

A full time single mom. 

A full time single mom with four kids ages 6-17. 

Granted, I didn't even have to work this week, and had few appointments or other obligations, but I have a new respect for the 10.4 million single mothers who do this every day, year in and year out. What strength and wisdom and patience they possess!

This week offered a wonderful revival and reaffirmation of my femininity. I feel rather strange using such a word to describe my not yet 20 year-old self...femininity makes me think of old women harping on the virtues of purity and submission; but I'm beginning to understand the word to represent the embrace of a biblical and countercultural call to express myself as a woman. I woke up each morning this week and knew my responsibilities for the day were centered around: caring for children, baking, cooking meals, cleaning, laundry, playing with playdoh, and running errands. How incredibly refreshing - perhaps because of the overload of coursework and responsibility at school this semester, but I am inclined to think it's more more than that. My satisfaction with a clean home, a running washing machine, and freshly baked bread is something driven from my core. I feel, somehow, more alive in doing these things than I do in all the busyness of school, the doing doing doing of meetings and research and paper writing and class and conversations and planning and everything else that seems to hijack my identity during the school year. And yet, when I'm in the thick of those things, I love them too. I love that I have a place on my campus for the things that I do, things that I'm good at, things that give me a place to serve others. 

And so I find myself struggling with the balance between the two. I do find joy in living out my passions, my desire to bring real love and real change to God's world and my community. To rescue girls from the horrors of sex slavery and empower church communities to rise up and declare God's justice. I get chills just thinking about the great things God has yet to do! But I also look forward to having my own family to serve and care for in these little (and not so little) things, in being a woman who fears the Lord above all else and who longs to serve and love simply and faithfully. 

I don't think I can aptly define this struggle. It's more than just waiting for the right guy to marry, and the right circumstances to have kids. It's so far removed from wanting to be the perfect soccer mom or modeling a pristine motherhood. It's about understanding that this longing for restored femininity is not only right, but it's good because I'm looking back to my unique God-given role as a woman and trying to reconcile it with what this distorted culture expects me to be. 

So how do I embrace a right femininity in a culture (even my own 'contemporary and relevant' christian subculture) that says such a pursuit only creates a mass of tamed and useless doormats? How do I pursue a passionate longing for justice for those who are in bondage while passionately loving my own children and raising them to know and love the Lord? I don't think these callings are mutually exclusive, but I feel there are few visible and certainly few celebrated examples of success. 

I'm so blessed to be able to look to my own mom as a role model. While we certainly differ in calling and passions, she is a strong and incredible woman of God who is faithfully raising 5 children to be grounded in their Savior, to understand the inherent value of chocolate in any good recipe, and to find simple and unqualified joy in the humor of napoleon dynamite. In many ways (particularly the last...) I'm so different from my mother, but I know that I am who I am because of her love, and her skills with laundry, and her patience through years of homework, and her pumpkin bread, and her willingness to allow me my own passions, and her wisdom and encouragement as I try and fail and try and fail at life. I know my motherhood will invariably look different from hers, but I hope that I can succeed as fruitfully as she has in raising children who can follow God's call faithfully because of her example. 

I look forward to the time when God will call me to be a mother. I know it will present a whole slew of challenges and re-orientations, but it seems to be an awfully great adventure! But until that time, I'm going to keep struggling with these questions and keep pursuing a right understanding of my femininity. I know that for some, such a pursuit may seem laughable, naive, or even purposeless; but I hope that the conversations that will ensue will teach me greater humility and greater respect for the generations of women who have struggled and succeeded before me. How great is our God who allows us fellowship with our elders, and critical minds that can reel against contemporary culture and pursue something greater!

me and momma.

So please.... thoughts/wisdom/insight? What does femininity look like when it is less concerned with reacting to culture and more concerned with creating it?