Feeding the Other Side of Me

 I am (as I think we all are) trying to figure out who I am and who God wants me to be.  Being a wife and mother is pretty much a given and, as I wrote about here, should be the starting point and the basis of everything else that I do.   I am a wife and mother who cooks, cleans, launders, teaches, plays with her kids(notice how the cooking and cleaning are at the beginning of the list--that needs to change).  The domestic side of me romanticizes (romanticizes?) about frugal, "self-sufficient" living with more homemade and less store bought.  This includes gardening, canning and freezing, cloth diapers, hanging laundry out to dry on a clothes line, making homemade bread, raising our own milk cow(maybe) and chickens (maybe).  Everything except livestock  are all very realistic possibilities at the moment.  Included in this domestic dream are three more kids (at least!) by the age of 46. 
Then there is the other side of me who thinks, "More kids!?"  Won't that just prevent me from doing what I want to do?  I want to go out with friends for coffee.  I want to go see concerts in Chicago.  I want to find a career when the kids I have now get old enough (at least that's what I tell myself sometimes).  I want to travel to Europe and sit in a cafe with a glass of wine and brush up on my French.  I want to do the things I have never gotten to do before it's too late.  I also want to be able to do age appropriate things with my oldest; things that we can't do with the little ones along. 

But I need to stop and ask myself:  what are the truly important things in life, and what is God asking of me?  Won't God provide me with the things I truly need?  And won't the things that God wants for me provide more happiness and fulfillment than anything that I could ever hope for myself?  In fact maybe I already have everything or at least the opportunity for everything that I mentioned above inside and outside of the domestic realm.

The truth is, I procrastinate.  I don't call to sign up for that continuing education French class; I put off calling up a friend to go out for coffee;  I fail to take advantage of the plentiful concerts and museums in my own community; and I put off looking for a baby sitter for the two little ones so my husband, teenage son and I can go out to a movie or concert together. And the truth be known, the more years that go by, the more content I am to stay at home and sip wine or just go away for a weekend a few hours away in  Wisconsin.  (Did you know they have vinyards there?)  And I am growing more and more content as a housewife and grateful that I can focus much of my time and energy on the domestic front.

So perhaps the answer to my dilemma is that God has already offered me so many opportunities to enrich my life with things that I would like to do but I haven't been doing my part.  He is also gradually putting new, more important desires for domestic things in my heart to replace less important desires for what one may consider more glamorous things. So yes, I still have interest in things not seemingly related to the domestic front; and I can still do these things if I put in the effort but at the same I am developing a true love for my domestic responsibilities and know that they are of eternal value.