What Matters Most

I gave notice to my employer earlier this week. I know most of you are thinking, “shouldn’t you have done that a couple of months ago?”, the answer is no, I have been on maternity leave for the past little while and still technically employed. After I wrote the email and received a response from HR it hit me that a phase of my life is over, I am happy to be moving into the next phase, but a little part of me is apprehensive and nervous about the future. Financially things will be fine so I am not apprehensive about that, but there is something about losing the independence that employment outside the home brought that has caused some concern. Since Brian and I got married I have always had a “job”, I have to put job in quotes because for two periods of time my “job” was to be an unpaid intern, not the most lucrative, but it was an out of the house, get dressed up, go to meetings sort of thing. These jobs were always “my” thing. People knew Brian, and sometimes we even worked at the same place, but my performance, projects, and reputation were mine alone, I had friends and coworkers who didn’t see me as Brian’s wife, I was my own individual person. While I have been home with Mikey these last few months it has been strange not to have a job, not to have the pressure and stress from work, and not to have the rigidly scheduled life that a job tends to bring. To be honest, I liked working at this last job, there were some days when I wanted to walk out and not come back, but for the most part I liked the goals we were trying to accomplish and that the daily challenges. As my apprehension about quitting has increased over the summer, Brian and I have had lots of long conversations about should I or should I not quit my job, the answer was always yes, but still I wanted to discuss it until the last possible second (because I'm like that). My job required a fair bit of travel, I would leave Monday morning and return late Thursday night, by the time the weekend rolled around I was tired and had to get ready for the next week, I couldn’t imagine doing this with Mikey. When would I see him, I would miss out on so much, would he even remember me when I came home on the weekends? Would I be able to focus while I was out of town knowing that if he needed something I was hundreds of miles away and that getting home would be a bit challenging? Could I leave on Monday morning knowing he was sick, hadn’t slept well, was teething, etc? I see how much Brian misses being at work during the day, and the thought of leaving for the week made me want to throw up. So I knew going back wasn’t really an option that was going to work for us. I knew that this was the time to slow down, to enjoy Mikey, and to take the time to raise him, but even knowing that I was still nervous. I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with one of my aunts who has worked before her children were born and she said something along the lines of that in an eternal perspective her job didn’t matter, but her kids did and on hard days when she wants to run back to work she remembers that. This idea has helped ease some of my anxiety. While I am sure there will be days when I wonder why I gave up what could have been a promising career to potty train a screaming 3 year old, clean up throw up, and not talk to a grown up besides my husband for a day or so because we need to “practice” taking naps, in the end these things are far more important than whether or not I get that promotion, give that client presentation, get a raise, or even maintain my own separate life. What matters in the end is my little family, there is a time and a season for everything, right now it is time to stay home, raise Mikey, and enjoy motherhood.

I thought this video was a great promotion for taking time to enjoy life... and of course it is so uplifting.