“(I)t annoyed me that someone else would decide for me whether I could or couldn’t handle following a dream while being a wife.  It was almost as if becoming a wife meant giving up any other part of me.  But I really begged to disagree.  And I was even more determined that it wouldn’t happen.”
My So-Called Life As A Proverbs 31 Wife
Sara Horn

This very accurately describes my life.  Between being a wife and a mother, I feel like I have lost track of who I am.  It’s not a decision anyone else made for me.  Honestly, it’s not even a decision that I made for myself.  Not consciously, anyway.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a Mom.  Kind of strange, actually, because I am really not a big fan of kids.  It’s not that I don’t like them.  I just don’t want to be constantly surrounded by them.  And a mom, unless she is able to afford nannies, is almost always “surrounded” by kids.  I am not sorry that I have kids; these boys are the greatest blessings I could have ever imagined.  Life without them is not something I even want to consider.  I have to share them with school teachers, and that is bad enough.  Last week, one of them asked when he can date—and he is only ten!  My time with them is growing short.  I’m not looking forward to the day when there is another girl who is more important to them than I am.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know who I am outside of being their mom.  I went from Rob and Irma’s daughter, to John’s wife, to Andru, Robin, and Seth’s mom.  There is nothing wrong with any of these roles in my life.  My parents, my husband, my children, they are all very special people in my life, very special blessings that I would not want to live without.  It’s just that I have spent so much time filling those roles that I don’t really know who I am.

Who is Lynn?

I wonder if this is a normal thing.  Does every mom go through this?  Does every woman go through it?  What about men?  Do they have an identity crisis, a time when they just don’t know who they are?

I am in the process of trying to figure out just who I am.  The problem is, I feel selfish while doing it.  This process requires putting a lot of attention on myself.  It means thinking about my needs and my wants, my likes and my dislikes.   I am trying my hardest to balance out what is good for me with what is good for my guys, but it is hard.  Balancing is not something I’ve always been good at, but I am trying.

It’s important to me that I do figure it out.  I want to be the best wife and mom I can be.  My guys deserve that.  To be that, I need to figure out who Lynn is.  There has to be more to the woman I am than just wife and mother.

And I know that whoever it is that I am, God created me to be and do something special.

I just need to be patient while He works out just what that “special” thing is.