Back to Work: The 'Me Too Crew' and 'What's the point?'

I start back to work tomorrow, and I'm both excited and sad at the same time.

I'm emotional over the part of going back to work that means I have to be away from Jacob. At this point, a little too emotional to capture in words. For now, suffice it to say I am squeezing him a little tighter when we rock at night and that tomorrow morning will be one for waterproof eye makeup.

I'm looking forward to getting back to my "real life" again. My leave has been wonderful, but I knew it wasn't a permanent thing and I'm looking forward to getting settled into a weekly routine again. (the actual figuring out of this routine is causing me some crazy stress, more on that soon)


The thing I'm looking forward to the most is getting back to what I now consider my "Me Too Crew" (probably missing some critical punctuation there...deal with it). I have great friends at work, and many of them are parents of young children. I have seriously missed seeing and talking to them daily about the joys and struggles of parenting. There is something so very powerful in sharing what you think is this crazy story, or this major parenting fail, and having someone else (or sometimes an entire group of people) nod their head and say "Yeah, that happened to me, too!" or "Oh man, I've so been there!".


I recently had the wife of one of these friends comment to me on Facebook about how crazy it can be with a 2 year old and an infant. This "me, too!" made me feel so much better about the many times I've felt completely overwhelmed with my boys. I am very happy to be re-joining that conversation with my work peeps, and I know it is going to work wonders on my stress levels!


On the not-so-excited front, I'm definitely stressed about how I'm going to manage my full-time schedule with both kids. I know that there are a lot of women who have done this, and who do it everyday, but it is my first time juggling an infant, toddler, husband, home, and career. Trying to picture how I'll swing work, menu planning, grocery shopping, family dinners every night, quality time with the boys, nurturing a marriage (or at the very least maintaining basic civility towards each other with all the stress!), breast feeding and pumping and storing milk and all the washing and packing of bottles...it is overwhelming to say the least.


This obsessively trying to figure out the perfect arrangement and ordering of tasks each day to ensure that it all gets done has reached a fevered pitch the past few days, as I get closer and closer to going back to work. I was literally pacing the floors the other day, with Jacob in the Moby wrap, trying to work out how I would make family dinners still happen every night.  With Jacob here now, I don't have time to menu plan during Kaleb's Friday nap. And in the summer we go to the cottage a lot on the weekends, which means I won't be able to grocery shop on Saturday, or if we go on Sunday I won't have that time to prep dinners for the week. And, I'll need and want to nurse Jacob right when we get home each night, so I won't be able to work on dinner. And so on and so on, I had myself worked into quite a stress-frenzy. And then, a thought came to me: "Why are you doing family dinners in the first place?" I'd like to say it was the still, small voice of God, but I fear He had to use a louder and more persistent voice to break through my incessant worrying over the details. But, the question came through and it stopped me in my Moby-wearin' tracks.


What IS the reason I wanted to eat dinner as a family every night? I can tell you it didn't have anything to do with playing with new recipes, and it wasn't about planning elaborate menus and spending hours on Pinterest looking for new ideas. No. The point of family dinners is to spend time as a family every day. The food on the table is no where near as important as the people around it. So what if we have sandwiches for dinner? Who cares if it is cereal even, some nights? If my family spends quality time at the cottage or the park on a weekend, that is a GOOD thing, not a nuisance! I can't believe how far from the goal I got, letting myself get stressed and worried, trapped in the details.


I want to be the kind of mother who smiles and laughs, I want my boys to look back on their childhood and see a happy mom who delighted in being with them. I know I will always have stress, raising a family is hard work, juggling career and marriage and children and home is tough for anyone. But, when my boys are grown and we look back over these years, I know it isn't the "Mom always had a balanced nutritious colorful meal" memory that is most important to me that they carry. That will happen some nights, eventually it will happen most nights. What I want my boys to remember when they are grown is more along the lines of "Mom had family dinner for us every night. We talked and laughed and I never once doubted that my parents loved me and wanted to hear about what was going on in my world." Or something like that. THAT is the point of having family dinner every night, and I'm very thankful to the Lord for the reminder this week, I needed it! :)