The Future I Hope For

Note: I realize that I recently wrote a post entitled "Thinner Thursday...(or not)".  In that post I talked about a pregnancy woe about feeling negative about my body.  In this post, I will be talking about another pregnancy woe.  Please do not get me wrong, I am very excited to have this baby, I believe that God has blessed Dave and I with him/her.  Despite the excitement, however, there has been some anxiety and I will be talking about more of that in this post.  I already love our child though, and would not give him/her up for anything.

Lately I've been feeling pretty confused.  You see, I had big plans for my life.  Plans that involved having children and having a family, but a little later on.  As much as I would talk about how much I wanted to have a baby, I wanted to get my Masters degree and get into a career before moving onto the family step.  I wanted to be someone first.

I worked hard in University so I could get good grades so that I could (hopefully) get into good post-graduate programs.  I wanted to be employable, I wanted to be wanted, I wanted to be a changemaker, and to be honest - I wanted to be written about in someone's history book.  And I had worked hard in school and with volunteer opportunities to make sure that would happen.

Now, I am pregnant, live in a tiny little basement apartment with a husband who loves his job and has lots of lateral movement opportunities, but for the time being, doesn't make a lot of money.  And I am unemployed.  I feel like a big failure.

And I feel like I won't ever succeed at my dreams of being someone (it doesn't help that I don't really know what I truly am passionate about, or what field I want to be in for the rest of my life).  I know that being a mother is a great calling, and again, I feel I am so blessed to have the opportunity to have this child (I know there are many women who can only dream of having this opportunity), but part of me feels like this is it for me.  I am a 22 year old who feels like life has come to an end (employment wise at least).

I know that I can still get a job despite being a mother, and I could still do something with my life, I just don't know if I could be the mother I want to be, and the employee I would want to be at the same time.

So here's to trusting that the big man upstairs knows what he is doing with me.  I have mentioned it before but this passage has been of great comfort to me recently, and I turn to it again to give me hope that God hasn't called me to be a nobody.

I know what I'm doing.  I have it all planned out - plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.