Almost four months back at work – you may expect a post about balancing work and mom life. Thanks to incredibly supportive co-workers, clients, and an awesome hubby, it’s been a pretty smooth transition. I did want to share a little calendar I’ve been keeping up with.
Highlighted in green are the days I was able to work from home or took at least a half day off. Highlighted in red are the days I had an event or was traveling and didn’t see much of KJ at all.
However, that’s not really what I plan to talk about.
As I’ve picked my running routine back up, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the balance of my content on social media. Everything seems sensitive or flat out controversial these days. Of course, most of posts are about the least controversial topic in the land - #BabyKJ!! At least, that’s what I thought before I started sharing. I have struggled so much with almost everything I post.
First there’s the problem of general over/under sharing. I do not want to live my life behind a phone and I don’t want my son to grow up with a phone in his face. I really try to get down on the floor and just be with him. However, I know there are family and friends that love to watch him grow and play too. I understand that I don’t have to share it all, but we have the technology to do so. Therefore, I try my best to capture the new or especially charming moments.
Then there’s the problem of what to share. Am I being “fair and balanced” or just painting a highlight reel of our lives? When my son is upset or when I’m having a bad day the first thing I do is absolutely not to go find my phone and record the moment. As a result, I’ve had to answer questions like “does your baby even cry?” and had people comment that my son is setting “unrealistic expectations” for their husbands. Trust me, I hear the compliment in these comments and I truly do appreciate them. I am VERY grateful to have a pretty easy going baby. I pray every day that I would not take that for granted. Obviously my son cries, and the minimal amount of time that we are with friends does not show the whole picture of parenting.
Pondering these things leaves me challenged to show more “real life” mommy moments. To show that KJ does get upset, that we do have bad days, and that this mom thing is HARD. Even though “he is totally worth it” is 100% true in hindsight – there were are moments that I doubt that truth. Moments when I genuinely wonder if I was meant to be a mom.
We lost a baby which made me long to grow our family that much more. I walked through a time in life where I felt like everyone around me was having babies and God wasn’t choosing us. I cried every single night that I saw another friend’s baby announcement. Tears of joy for them, but mostly (if we’re being honest) tears of sorrow and longing for myself. Satan tried to turn that sorrow into pity and selfishness, but God used it to sow seeds of gratitude. In my most vulnerable, sleep deprived, early days of KJs life, I wondered if God had only given us our sweet boy to shut up my constant prayers. Like a human parent with the “she’ll only make that mistake once” mindset. When I have my hardest days with KJ, I cry in frustration. As the tears roll down my cheeks I can feel the Lord remind me of my prior tears of longing, and my heart shifts from frustration to gratitude. KJ is a gift from the most loving Father. Who am I to meditate on the hard parts of parenting when there are so many out there longing for the same gift. I choose to appreciate my sweet gift and forget the moments not worth remembering.
Sure, I try to share real life. The funny, the frustrating, the insane, but it’s all filtered through a lenses of gratitude. That is something I will not apologize for.
So, maybe my feed won’t be fair and balanced after all, but I think I’m ok with that.
Note: I understand that sharing the positive perspective of my life can still be seen as boasting, which I don’t want to do. Also, I am in no way trying to insinuate that people who share more frustrating/funny/insane moments are ungrateful parents. I understand that as KJ continues to grow up I will probably continue to have more chaos to share. I still have a lot to learn. I’ve barley been a mom as long as I was pregnant, and I only have one kid. I hate that I am writing this disclaimer. I am not a people pleaser, but I just want to share my heart while doing my best not to offend anyone.