Looking back at a significant date
This morning, as I had a brief scroll through social media memories, I came across a blog post from this day three years ago. As its title made clear, it was a significant date. It was the day I tendered my resignation from the role that had been my day job, and a big part of my identity, for 12 years. And it came two years to the day after I had told my employer I was pregnant with my firstborn child.
Looking back, it’s both hard to believe it’s been so long yet, at the same time, strangely hard to remember what life was like back then. This time in 2021 I was heading into the unknown. I had a couple of bits of freelance work lined up but no real idea of how much I would have long term, whether or where I’d need to look for new clients, or how the whole being my own boss and fitting work around childcare thing would work.
Three years on, it’s amazing to see how things have fallen into place. I’ve had people approach me to do work for them and never had to go looking for work. I have regular clients providing me with an interesting and varied self-employment workload and a reasonable income. And I’ve even added an unexpected (very) little part-time employment string to my bow.
And, once again, we find ourselves in a season of change. Gary has recently started a new job which has completely rewritten our established routines. And, as a result, we’ve found ourselves needing to turn to external childcare to balance our schedules. If you’d asked me even a couple of months ago if I could see myself putting Daniel into nursery I’d have undoubtedly told you I planned on him starting the term after he turned three, just like his sister.
But, as it turns out, he had his first settling in session tomorrow ready to start after Easter, when his sister will increase her nursery hours from 15 to 30. Is it a whole year before I anticipated putting him into nursery? Yes. Have I questioned whether we’re doing the right thing? Of course. But it didn’t take long to conclude that we were.
His one short visit to the nursery so far has demonstrated that our little man is more than ready to begin exploring the world without the constant pull of Mummy’s apron strings, and there’s no doubt that he’ll benefit from me being able to focus on work on the days he’s doing that, which will free me up to be more intentional with him on the days that he’s home with me.
He can’t wait to get to nursery; I know as much from the way he cried when we dropped off his paperwork the other day and didn’t go in. And after thinking we’d secured him a place initially, seeing it fall through and then receiving an almost instant answer to prayer in the form of better hours than we were initially offered, we have no doubt at all that this step is God’s intended one for our family.
As a parent – especially as a mum – there can be a sense of expectation that you need to be all things to all people. That you need to be ever-present with your children and yet also earn a living to be self-sufficient. To be fully focused on your offspring and yet never neglect your work. Any parent who stops to think about it can see that it’s an impossible task. And yet, it’s still so easy to feel ‘mum guilt’ at every turn because you feel like you’re not giving anything the attention you should be.
Ultimately you can never have it all. Every hour you spend on one thing can’t be spent on another. You can’t fully focus on personally nurturing your children 24/7 and also work to fund the things you need or want to provide for those children.
What you can do is seek the right balance for you and your family. For us, that balance looks to be falling into place nicely so that, in a month’s time, I can sit down to a few hours of work each week knowing that I can fully focus on that and my children can fully focus on whatever meaningful, nurturing activities are being provided in their nurseries.
Yes, we’re going to have to learn a whole new set a routines, Charlotte’s going to have to get used to longer days at school and Daniel’s going to be thrown straight into long days at nursery. But I have no doubt that this is the right combination for the season we are in. And I have no doubt we will all thrive within our new schedules. After all, if it wasn’t meant to be, why would God have opened the door to it?
As Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
If anyone wants me over the Easter holidays, you’ll probably find me sewing name tapes or sticking name labels to everything Daniel owns.
Sarah Moore is the author of For the Love of Lentil, A journey of longing, loss and abundant grace, which tells the story of her experience of pregnancy and miscarriage. Full details of the book are available here. For copies, click here and get in touch via Messenger.