Seeking Significance as a Stay-at-Home Mom

Last night I went to my weekly beginner French class in preparation for our trip to France in May. One of the homework assignments given the week previous (which I missed) was to bring in your current resume to use as a translation exercise. The teacher realized that I had not brought this with me, and then proceeded to apologize to me for such an assignment as she knows “je suis une femme au foyer” (tr: I am a stay-at-home mom) as I learned my first week of class. She questioned me if I had a resume that I could have brought (which I started to think which computer file would have that ), and whether I was thinking of returning to the workforce after the usual 1 year leave post-maternity. Since I didn’t have a quick answer for her (and no resume at hand), she quickly told me that I could write a few paragraphs about what my day is like with my kids.

Graduating with my BEd

As juvenile as it may sound, there was the part of me that wanted to jump up and explain who I am and what my background is beyond having sticky fingers all over my walls and who-knows-what smeared on my sweater. I really, really wanted to prove to the entire class, all of whom have well respected jobs and may or may not have children, that at one point I was a high school teacher who wrestled with teenagers through periodic tables and balancing chemical equations. That after having our first, J, I put on the hat of being a Microsoft specialist in Word and Outlook, and then muddled my way through bookkeeping as was necessary for our business. Well, and now I blog a bit. But, I don’t know how to say any of that in French yet, so as is, I stay with the stay-at-home mom act since I know that.

;

Ah, feeding time. And self-pictures.

But after realizing none of that actually matters, and as far as I know none of those fellow French students care about what I do during the day, I came to the realization that my significance comes from just being me and who God designed me to be. Not the products of my day. If all of the hurrying around to show the world that I am significant takes away the time and love I can give my family and friends, then what did I accomplish? Rather than focusing my concern on how to prove that I can do “stuff” to others, I need to focus my efforts on how I can give out of the abundance I have. I know that if I was in the workforce right now, I wouldn’t be able to help my family the way that I get to every day. Even on days when I need to call Jesse on his way home from work to bring something home to eat as that didn’t quite get taken care of!