On vocation

I've been reading a lot of Catholic writing recently, from Catholic bloggers to the Pope.  And one idea that I've come across quite consistently is that of vocation as answering the question, "who will I serve?"  This has been an enormously helpful consideration for me.  After all, for me the primary answer to that question is made obvious by my situation in life: I am a spouse, and I am a parent.  This is my vocation, to serve my family.  When I look at any given day, and make my lists of what needs to go in it, the summation of my priorities is:

Serve Landon.  Serve Christopher.

And this has made several other things abundantly clear.  I knew right away that this was about more than housework and baby playtime; this was about my life having priorities so that there was a hook to hang everything on, and so that I would know when I was out of hooks.  So, because serving Christopher is a priority, and because Christopher and an open laptop do not happily co-exist, I've suddenly found the motivation to close my computer and find other things to do when Christopher is awake.  Christopher knows when I'm distracted, not just from direct attention to him, but from being engaged with him and his needs; he knows that when I'm on the computer, he has to work three times as hard to get my attention for something as basic as a diaper change.  This should not be, of course, and I knew that my computer and I had issues, but I've never been able to quite get a handle on it.  I think that this is because I was still thinking of it terms of how I would benefit from being off the computer - how much less guilty I would feel, how much more I would get done.  It wasn't until I thought in terms of serving Christopher that I was able to see how much of a no-brainer it is to just close the laptop while Christopher is awake, and I'm the only one at home.  I'm able to be much more in tune with Christopher's needs, and as a bonus I get some of the other things thrown in - less guilt about my computer use, and more productivity on the home front.  I still get on my computer at least twice almost every day, but I've found a hook to hang it on - it doesn't belong in the same time as my son.

These hooks, however, are not all full with housework and baby play time.  It's a dirty little secret in my stay-at-home-mom-of-one life that, honestly, I have time.  It might be somewhat unpredictable time, but it's still there.  And the thing about thinking of life in terms of vocation, the thing that differentiates it for me from some other notions of service to a husband or children is that I am not asking them to define my self by my service to them, but I am serving them by giving them my Self.  In order for this to be meaningful, there has to be a Self to give.  And in order for me to have a Self to give them, I need to be doing things that renew, refresh, and build-up that Self.  I know that in years to come, when there are two or three or more little ones running around, and they're making more work for me, and demanding more in terms of interaction, I might not have much time for this - it'll be manna in the wilderness time for me then.  But that time is not now, and right now I have time to do one very concrete thing to build-up this Self that I give in service to my family - I have time to go back to school.  Not a lot of time, granted, but a little.  And suddenly, I've found the willpower to spend a little bit of time, every day, working on going back to school.  So far, I've finished filling out one application and started in on another one.  These are things that I've been meaning to do, talking about doing, for a very long time.  My guilt, railings, and feelings of un-fulfillment weren't enough to overcome the inertia.  Seeing it in terms of serving Landon and Christopher was.  There are still lots of questions to be answered, like "how do you think you're going to pay for this?", but faithfulness doesn't require that I know the answers ahead of time.  If it doesn't work out to go back to school because of issues other than time, at least I'll have explored that avenue to its end, and I'll know that it's time to turn to other option.

In the end, here, I'm a little frightened at the sheer gift of this all.  As I look back at the past several days, and see the ways that I've found willpower where inertia seemed invincible, calm and persistence where anxiety seemed unstoppable, and an attitude of service where resentment seemed inevitable I am overwhelmed with the sheer grace of it.  These things are not natural to me, and since they are a gift, I both marvel at their presence, and hold my breath for their absence.  If the lives of those who have walked this path before me are any indication, the road will be much harder up ahead.  Knowing my weakness, God has lavished me with so much help here at the beginning; He doesn't owe this to me, and He can withhold it in the future.  But can I refuse to fully accept the gifts that He gives, because I want to protect myself against the pain of their surcease?  I could, and that's a whole 'nother blog post, but for now, I find that I am also give the gift of gratitude.

My dilemma and resolution

As an intellectually inclined, married, conservative Mennonite woman, I have a bit of a dilemma. As dilemmas go it's not such a calamitous one. It is simply this: my future has more or less been decided. See, being an intellectually inclined Mennonite woman can come with its challenges, but it is, for the most part, rather wide open (barring ordination, basically). Add "married", and all the wide-openness disappears; I will, of course, be a stay-at-home Mom. Since Landon is in school right now, and we don't have children it is perfectly acceptable for me to keep going to school, or work to support us, but the purpose of school at this point is suspect, and the job doesn't need to be anything with possibilities for future progress - I'll only need it until we can settle down and be a real family. The problem is that I'm a little uncomfortable with that. And I've been thinking some seditious thoughts lately.

Could it be that I don't have to give up my intellectual aspirations in order to maintain my stance on scripture (since I'm not willing to do the reverse)? When the Bible talks about God creating woman, did he have a specific role for her in mind in a societal structure that we think of as "the home", or did he have a specific relationship in mind between her and her man?

Being a stay-at-home Mom of multiple children is one of the most difficult jobs that I can imagine anyone doing. I know of no other job that has 24/7 hours and no paid vacations (while the rest of the family goes on vacation, Mom takes her work her). I rise up in the figurative gates and call my Mother blessed for the inhuman amount of stuff that goes into a day in her life. Being a parent is important (Mother or Father), it is something that I look forward to, and I don't want to imply that without something "else" a person is, ipso facto, unfulfilled. I have, however, begun to wonder whether our idea of what it means to be a godly wife and mother has been more influenced by scripture or the idealizations of our culture.

I recently read a book by Leora Tanenbaum, entitled Catfight: Women and Competition. While I would never recommend this book as a Christian view of women and femininity (Tanenbaum is Jewish, and her viewpoint is nonreligious), it has proven to be extremely thought provoking. Her perspective on feminism, work, and parenting differs almost completely from the viewpoints that I have grown accustomed to hearing; much of it would not be popular with most of the people that I know, and I find myself out of agreement with her on various point. On at least one point, however, she provided me with an epiphany.

In her chapter on motherhood, Tanenbaum explores the history of working mothers. As she sees it, most mothers have been working mothers for most of history. Of the infamous P. 31 women she says "She bought real estate, planted vineyards, collected food, and spun fabrics. The idea of 'staying home' with her children would have seemed ludicrous to her." (256) "[M]others" she says, "have always performed myriad tasks while they raised their children and while they delegated child care to others." (256) It is not until the Industrial Revolution that we see a split between the public sphere into which a man went out to make money, and the private sphere in which the mother remained with her children. Even with the creation of this separate role of "breadwinner" in the 1800s, mothers "continued to be central players in the economic well-being of their households (257)." In other words, they did a lot of things other than and in addition to raising their children. At this point in history, with men working outside the home, but with women busy keeping up the wellbeing of the home, staying involved with making some income, and having a positive economic effect (all of which sounds pretty good to me), Tanenbaum makes a distinction that I had not previously considered. She introduces as a completely new figure the "'full-time' mother (257)."

Huh? Unlike the busy, household managing, goods producing, maid-apportioning wife of most of history, the full-time mother is, apparently, a sort of unpaid nanny, whose entire focus is child care and ornamental housekeeping. She has no positive economic effect on the household, and her world is entirely child-centric.

As I read the chapter, and digested this distinction, it struck me that Tananbaum's recording of a cultural shift brings out an in important differentiation that I have sensed, but never been able to tease out of my mind. The ideal of women being able to stay at home and concentrate solely on the children and the house, without needing to contribute economically to the workings of the household, is a fairly recent cultural construct; yet when Christian women talk about not working, it seems that this is what they have in mind. This is a role to take upon oneself, and a distinct sphere in which to operate. Certain verses in Paul's epistles are read with this cultural construct in mind, and subtly the attitude begins to steal in: if you aren't being a "full-time Mother", you are creeping outside the lines that scripture draws for you. But is scripture drawing this line, around this cultural box?

I don't think so. As I pondered this, and mentally reviewed scripture (from Genesis on), I came to see being a wife and mother as a position, and not a role. It's a position in relation to God, my husband, and other people, but it is not a part to act with a script that comes with it. This is immensely exciting to me. It opens the possibility that my life can look culturally non-traditional, yet be exactly in line with God's revealed truth.

Here is how I see the distinction that I'm trying to make. I have internalized (but always felt profoundly uncomfortable with) the idea that to accept a role as a helper suited to your husband, you have to do the support work while he does the mission. Men have callings, women have husbands. That's a simplistic rendering of the the basic framework that I ingested. Men have jobs, women have houses and children.

What if, instead, a man and a woman who join their lives to create one entity share one calling?What if marriage doesn't mean that a woman gives up her ambitions to her husband's, and a husband gains a ground support team, but instead that the two of them decide on their mission, and go at it together, whatever that looks like? What if the specific roles that they play have more to do with what their mission calls for then what the culture idealizes? It might end up looking a lot like a male breadwinner/female homemaker standard combo. It might end up being parents who each work part time and care for children part time. It might be two people working separate full time jobs, but with the same goal in mind at the end of the day.

Being a good wife doesn't have to mean staying inside the protective shell of "home" while my husband goes out into the wide world to bring the necessary money back into the home for survivals sake; it means being on the same team. It is not the taking on of a specific "role", but rather a fundamental shift in loyalties. By marrying Landon I have taken up his banner, decided for his cause, declared for his side, and it's a knock down, drag out battle to the end for me. My responsibility is not merely to send him out,then wait for him to come back to my safe haven to lick his wounds. Nope, I'm going with him. Whatever this means. And into this battle will come our children, for whom we are both responsible. We don't operate in different spheres, my husband and I; we may operate in different places in the same sphere, but you better believe that it's the same one.

I don't have to try to make myself smaller in order not to threaten my husband's leadership, instead I have to exert every ounce of strength that I have to further our mission. I don't have to try to figure out how to defer to him; there will be chance enough for that when we have a real disagreement. I don't have to stuff myself into a box in order not to compete with him; we're working for the same goal here. My success and his success are the same thing. Marriage does not need to be an obliteration of one person's goals in pursuit of the others, or a delicate balancing act between two people's ambitions: this is a pursuit of one goal by two people, where each person's gifts are stretched to the max.