Not Called To Be A Mother

My semester has all but finished. I have 2 finals to take on Monday and I am done until midsummer. I need the break. I am overwhelmed by the many roles I fill and hats I wear and I need rest. Today I trudged through a theology exam, willing myself to finish at whatever the cost. I wish it had been as simple as just sitting down and writing out my well researched answers to the questions posed. Had that been it, I could have finished in the matter of a few hours. But that’s not how it went down. 

I woke up at 6am and rolled over to find my three year old had snuck in my bed during the night. Normally I would have protested, but it was Saturday morning and I knew if I just stayed still he would continue to sleep. Thankful for the precious minutes of extra rest, I dozed off again. 8am. Heavenly. I needed that. My ten year old daughter heard us awake and joined the crew in the living room. Saturday mornings with my kids are my favorite. I only get one a month. They are with their father the other three weekends of the month. So Saturday breakfast is a big deal around here. Unfortunately, no one ever wants the same thing so meal preparation is a hubbub of activity as I labor away to satisfy each request.

I finally hunker down in my favorite reading chair with my laptop and coffee. Let the writing begin. I get about twenty minutes in only to hear loud fighting over who is going to watch what on TV. I settle the dispute with a movie they both enjoy. Twenty more minutes. Restless three year old refuses to sit still and insists he must stand front and center with his little nose only inches from the screen. More yelling. By the time I regain concentration on the task at hand it is yet another twenty minutes. Lunch approaches with sunny day demands for a visit to the park. Another hour. Is it naptime yet? Finally. A third of the way through the day and I feel completely unproductive. My patience is thin and my nerves are on edge. This is an easy day.

Today is Mother's Day; it's after midnight. Posts and articles are flying left and right on social media to celebrate the day. I see no reason why I should not contribute. I have a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head on the subject. I have read many articles and books that refer to motherhood as a calling. If this is so, it pains me to say, motherhood is not my calling. I have learned a great deal on my seminary journey about the notion of calling. Calling is not a role, a job, or a task we fulfill. It is an underlying theme that utilizes my God-given gifts and weaves its way through my life, permeating everything I do. A calling is “vocationally transportable,” as one of my professors states. It finds its way into everything I do. As I analyzed the many jobs and roles I have undertaken in life, I finally grasped a clear definition of my calling. It had nothing to do with children. My calling does, however, have a definite impact on how I mother. I am gifted at communication. I take complex concepts and translate them into simple applicable information for others to use. This characterized my job as a linguist. It was a large part of my role as a systems engineer and technical writer. It motivates me to inquire into deep theological matters to construct analogies and pictures, revealing God to others. It enables me to sit down with my three year old and have a conversation about salvation, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit tailored to his level of understanding.

What shocked me the most was that this is the first I had heard of this definition of a calling. And yet it finally all made sense. Motherhood is not my calling and it never will be. Being a mother is a role I signed up for in life. But not all of us get to sign up for that role. Does that make our calling any less relevant? Absolutely not. Being a wife was not a calling; it was a position I was privileged to undertake. I had high hopes of keeping that job for life, but life is full of unfortunate twists and turns. (I am still not sure whether he left his job or I was fired from mine; probably a mixture of both.) The underlying security to which I hold is that the presence of Christ in my life has never been altered by the circumstances that surround me. I still have my calling. It is always there. It is always with me.

There are so many things wrong with referring to motherhood and wifedom as callings now that I think about it. What happens to mothers when their children leave home? Has her calling left her? What of the mother who loses her child? Do we say she has lost her calling in life? What of the widow? What of the wife who is abused, abandoned or discarded? Do we say they no longer have their calling? Or the young bride who discovers she is infertile? Was there never a calling to begin with? What an absurdity! I tire of hearing the words that being a wife and mother are a calling in life that prohibit a woman from accomplishing anything else. Do we say that fatherhood is a calling? Is being a husband a calling that negates all else? Of course not. These are roles we fulfill in the pursuit of our calling in service to God. A calling will infiltrate everything we do, whether they be jobs, roles, or simple tasks.

I love being a mother. It is one of the most joyful tasks I have undertaken in life. But there are days when I think to myself: God, this job is too difficult. I am not equipped to handle this. The demands are too high. The salary is too low. I am bored, tired, frustrated - you name it!  I persevere though. Because part of what it means to be called is to be faithful to the roles I have undertaken in life. I was not born a mother. I was not called to be a mother at my conversion, nor at my baptism, not even as I approached adulthood. And yet God had placed a calling on my life at a young age and while it lacked clear definition I knew it was there. Motherhood does not constitute my calling, but it provides me with an added opportunity to live that calling out in my everyday life. I am relieved to have discovered how the notion of calling fits into being a mother before the pressures of inadequacy threatened to overwhelm me. And so today on Mother's Day I will celebrate this role. More importantly I will celebrate the fact that God's calling is always with me, facilitating my ability to carry out this task of being mother.