The thing is, over the past few years of difficulty and stress I've been wondering where my place in this new, harder, world is. In the dreams of a younger me by this point in time I am a stay at home mum in my own house and with several little kids running around. That's not reality for me right now and I don't want to sit around feeling sorry for myself, because I have faith and hope that right now I am where God needs me to be.
It is often a very lonely place. Because I work full time and then watch the kids full time so that my husband can work (and vice versa) there is not a lot of opportunity to go out and do the things that one needs to do to meet the new people who become friends. And because we're Catholic and being Catholic is basically the sum of who we are and what we do throughout the year, it is always particularly lovely to connect with other people who are doing the same things. Then we seem less weird being the ones who are still celebrating Christmas a few days in January, because our friends are doing it too and in this hipster world it means we're basically the coolest of the cool with our crazy trend-breaking trends.
In this ridiculously decadent, over-priced mega-city where we live I know that mine is not the only family renting, not owning, and renting a much smaller space than we would have in the ideal world. We may not even be the only family without a van, let alone a car. And I am certainly not one of those working mothers who are sometimes denigrated as selfishly working simply to buy unnecessary luxuries and vacations for my family. My life, and my home, is often messy and full of stress and half the time I think my landlords are secretly wondering if their tenants are complete and total insane slobs. But as my husband likes to remind me, we only get one life so we might as well make the best of it and have fun while we're going.
So, here we go again. I'm going to try and blog more, because it's a good outlet for me and because these precious days of family life are flying by. There never seems to be enough time to do anything that I love, and I know that is the life of a mum with toddlers, but week by week I am slowly regaining minutes as the children get older and as life settles into a bit of a groove.
I am going to try and blog more. I am going to try and share how a working mum with crazy toddlers can still live out the liturgical year, simply and easily. I have no idea if I will succeed, or if another surge of activity will tear me away from all my relaxation outlets for another six weeks. But hopefully, hopefully, I can begin to carve out a little space of hope & promise for myself.
