I am now three weeks into the new school year and 15 weeks pregnant with twins. To say September has been interesting would be an understatement to say the least. I have been planning this post now for several days/weeks. I am finally forcing myself to sit down and write it.
I find it funny that I was more disciplined with my writing during last school year than I was over the summer. I thought starting a new routine would help me get back on track. However, chasing after a 14 month old is much more demanding than guarding a 10 month old. Add pregnancy to that and I spent most of my free hours on the couch.
In the first week back to work for teachers we had several mini professional development sessions. In one of the sessions we wrote “I am” poems. Now I am not much of a poetry writer, however with this poem we were given several “I” statements and just had to fill them in. I wanted to share that here as I feel like it embodies what this blog is and means to me.
I am Martina Maslanik
I wonder what my life will be like in a year
I hear my daughter calling for my attention
I see her reaching her arms to me
I am a mother
I pretend I know what I am doing
I feel bad when I get it wrong
I touch my daughter’s hair as I hold her
I worry about what she will face in her life
I cry because I know I can’t fix everything
I am a wife
I understand my husband has goals for himself
I say that I support him in whatever he does
I dream of being able to afford the things that he wants
I try to help us get there
I hope that our situation will always be improving
I am a wife, mother, and teacher
Just in rewriting this, I am reminded of a split session that I attended at a ladies conference the year that I got married. We were split by age so that ladies in my age group, I believe it was 20-30, were a range of young adults still in college to ladies that had been married for several years and had children. The speaker did an activity where she had these little cards representing different things such as college, wife, mother, ministry leader/worker, etc. As she said a statement, she would hand us cards for each thing that related to us; all of the “hats” that we wore. She encouraged us that no matter how many hats that we wore, no matter how many roles we needed to fill, we needed to focus on our relationship with God as number one.
She reminded us that if our relationship with God was solid, He would give us the strength necessary to fulfill all of the roles. It is so easy as a wife and mother to get overwhelmed with my responsibilities of taking care of everyone else. Now that I am back to work that means there are even less hours to do laundry, prepare dinner, and play with my child. But one thing I have learned if I start my day off spending time with Jesus, my whole day goes better. I have energy to do what needs to be done in each of my roles. I just want to pass along the encouragement that you can do this. You can be the wife, mother, teacher, adult, or whatever else you need to be if you have God as your guide.
Martina