Since writing the above something has happened. Over the last week or so my thoughts on the subject of work have taken a different turn.
I started thinking this – what if I considered my approach to discerning what I am called to do in a totally different way?
What if the approach I were better to take was to “inbound myself” and in so doing surrender my desires in relation to work to God and see what happens? I definitely have thoughts about what this may turn out to be but I feel it’s best rather than jumping ahead of myself just to do what it is that I am called to do today. Today that is writing this post and writing notes as thoughts come to my mind. I can see where they lead me tomorrow.
Perhaps I did not make “wrong” choices in relation to which university courses to complete, I didn’t travel at the wrong times and I didn’t make wrong choices in relation to which positions of work to accept. Perhaps I am called to do something else entirely – something I cannot even imagine completely yet and something I can fit entirely in with being a mother and being home for my children when they need me. It may even be something greater than I could ever have done engaging in traditional forms of work.
One of the influencers I follow on Instagram I follow is Leah Darrow. She has five kids and her own business. She recently started a movement called #babiesanddreams in response to Michelle William’s Golden Globe award speech about a woman’s right to choose.
I had mixed thoughts about this #babiesanddreams movement but perhaps I wasn’t conceiving of it in the right way. On the one hand I thought it was unrealistic and that it put too much pressure on women in making them feel they were not enough just being good mothers. On the other hand I felt it was true that it is important for women to have their own dreams separate to their motherhood for their own self-care and healthy sense of identity.
But maybe I also need to consider the #babiesanddreams movement a little differently. My future work now with my babies that I love so much may look completely different to what I have experienced before. I surrender this all to God and ask him to guide me in what it is that He wants me to do.
I put my writing out there for now and wait for my work to evolve. I surrender my work and wait for the resurrection of it into something new, something different. The old way of work and the old type of work I did may have to die but something greater will grow in its place. I am excited to find out what it is.