I Don't Miss My Life Before Children

From time to time I read blog posts about missing the woman you were before you had children: when you had free time, more money, and could sleep in on the weekends.

I read them sort of like I'd read the memoir of a Navy SEAL. Interesting, and I don't discount any woman's experience, but I can't relate at all.

photo by Lance Shields

Sure, I can sympathize. I know kids change everything.

I have 5 of them and understand pretty well that once you're a mother, you need to pack like a nomad traveling through the desert every time you go anywhere. Date nights suddenly require a Herculean effort, me-time is as rare as a Bigfoot sighting, and most of the time you're just really tired.

But still, I can't say that I miss my pre-kid life.

Part of it is that I married and had kids young: I got married a month after my 21st birthday and had my first baby just before turning 22. 

So it's not like I was giving up a fabulous lifestyle to become a scullery maid. When you're 21 years old, you don't have a lifestyle. You have a basement apartment with furniture from your parents' garage and Ramen noodles for dinner.

Basically all of my adult life, I've been a wife and a mom. I've never really seen my kids as additions to my life or changes to my life — they're simply an integral part of it and always have been.

Me, Phillip, and our first baby graduating from college together.
Next stop: world domination.

I know having children involves a level of losing yourself that's incomprehensible to most people without kids. Sometimes when Phillip has a hard day at work I joke, "Well, at least your boss lets you decide when to go to the bathroom!"

I'm only half-kidding when I say this.

When you have kids, nothing is just yours anymore. Enjoy the first few sips of your drink because after that it'll be filled with graham cracker backwash. You have to hide in the garage to eat a cookie, and forget about privacy when using the restroom.

They even take over your thoughts, so that you're constantly worrying about them and thinking about them, even when they aren't there.

Becoming a mom, whether you stay at home full-time or work or a combination of the two, changes you. It does involve losing yourself.

I think that's okay, though. Motherhood is one of the things I think of when I read: "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 10: 39.)

Losing your pre-child life might involve some honest-to-goodness grief, and I can imagine that the longer you've lived it the more intense the sorrow might be.

But in losing my life to pick up the life of a mom, I've found myself. Throughout my 10-year journey as a mom, my character has changed for the better. I'm more responsible, less lazy, more willing to help, more understanding. (I'm still working on "more patient.") 

Had I not laid aside whatever childfree life I could've pursued, who knows: I may have developed those same characteristics, but all I know is that in my present life, motherhood has been the crucible where my best qualities are developed and the roughest parts of me are continually sanded and polished.

Heck yes, I would love to take an an uninterrupted shower once in a while. But still, I don't miss the woman I was before kids because in mothering, I've truly found my life. 

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