When I was a little girl, all I ever wanted to be was a wife and a mom. Every career choice seemed like a backup plan because I believed–and still believe–that my calling in life is to care for my husband and kids.
I dreamed of being the wife who would set the table every night and serve home-cooked meals. The one who would keep the house clean and organized. The one who would greet my husband with a kiss each day when he got home from work.
I envisioned myself as the room mom, team mom, and parent volunteer. I pictured myself reading to my kids frequently, doing crafts, and giggling as we spent the day playing. To put it concisely: I dreamed of being the wife and mom who was “extra.” I am now a wife and a mother of two, and if there is anything I have learned, it is that I am oh-so-very-“basic.”
Reality Check
We all need a healthy dose of reality every now and then, and my first reality check came a few months into marriage. I don’t even remember what exactly caused my husband and I to argue, but it happened. And the reality that I would indeed upset him sometimes (no matter how many cookies I baked) set in. Even after this realization, I continued to strive to be the wife who was a little “extra.” I continued to cook, clean, and write love notes but still didn’t feel like I was measuring up.
Now let’s be clear, I LOVE cooking and cleaning and doing special little somethings for my man. I find joy in all those things. But my motivation was one of accomplishment, not affection.
Just Add Kids
So, life went on. I continued to try to “be all I could be” in the wife department. Then, in the fall of 2016, our son was born. Now I had an additional wave of desire to overachieve. A c-section, an early round of mastitis, and a little man who struggled with sleep quickly showed me that this mom gig would be a little (or a massively huge amount) harder than I ever thought it would be. I felt pressure to be an amazing and amazingly happy mom. The pressure did not come from anyone in my life, it purely came from the weight of a lifelong dream come true.
I fumbled my way through the newborn stage and found a groove (sort of) when our little guy was about one year old. When he was 20 months old, we found out we were pregnant with our daughter. I was simultaneously ecstatic and terrified.
Most personality assessments list me as an “achiever” and describe me as “disciplined” (this is where you say to yourself, “Oooooh, it’s all starting to make sense!”) I like checking things off lists and conquering tasks to completion. And I had no idea how I could do either of those things with two kids. I was barely doing it with one.
Enter the “Basic” Mom
After the arrival of our daughter (and my second c-section), I slowly but surely started to embrace the fact that I absolutely positively cannot be “extra,” at least not all of the time. In the few months since her birth, I have become content with the fact that there will be days where none of us make it out of our pajamas. There will be days where the TV is on too much. There will be days where no one eats enough vegetables and/or everyone eats too many sweets. Sometimes one child will have to cry while I care for the other. And some nights I will fall into bed feeling like I got absolutely nothing done.
My Ultimate Task
In the moments where I feel like I have underachieved and wonder if I am doing enough, I have to remember that the most important part of my job is to love my husband and kids well. I am called to love them as Jesus did and that means sacrifice. For me it means sacrificing my desire to achieve, check things off the list, and feel like I can get a gold star. There is a lot I want to teach my kids and a lot I want to do for my husband. But if they do not feel loved, it is all worthless. I love my husband. I love my kids. And that has to be enough.
I am “basic,” but my task is not.
