Confession

I named this blog “Confessions of a Working Mother”, so I suppose there should be some confessions here once in a while. So here goes . . .

I don’t think I’m very good at being a working mom.

Now I know that women tend to be too hard on themselves, and I’m no exception, but I just think that other working moms seem to handle it better than I do. I just haven’t been able to figure out how to work full-time, keep the house clean, spend enough time with the kids so they won’t be scarred for life by my absence, keep them fed with good, nutritious food (which must be organic and free of high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, MSG, steroids, hormones and any other evil I can’t think of at the moment or haven’t heard about yet), nurture my relationship with my husband, work on my personal development and expand my skill-set so that I can advance at work, watch enough t.v. so that I have a clue what people are talking about around the watercooler, work on the novel that’s been percolating in my head for the past 6 years, keep up with the latest fashion and hair styles, stay slim and in shape, and make sure I have enough “me time” so that I don’t go crazy. Oh, and don’t forget the necessary 8 hours of sleep every night. There’s more, but I think that gives you a basic idea.

I just don’t have enough hours in the day to do all that. I’ve gotten pretty good at multitasking, but still something is going get put off or pushed to the side.

I’m ashamed to admit that my children eat too many meals that consist of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, mac & cheese with chicken nuggets, or cheeseburgers and french fries. I know they should be eating organic eggs from free-range chickens with nitrate-free bacon for breakfast and grass-fed beef with pesticide-free veggies purchased from the local farmers market, but I have two hours from the time I get home till they need to be getting ready for bed and I’d like to spend some of that time interacting with them in a way that doesn’t include the sentence “You’ll eat it because it’s good for you and I said so.”

Another area in which I am failing miserably (much to my own embarrassment) is housekeeping. I don’t like to invite people over because my house is never clean. Ten minutes after I finish cleaning something, it is dirty again. When I had only one child and didn’t have a job, I mostly kept up with it, but now it’s out of control. In some ways I’ve given up trying to have a clean home because the amount of time it would take to keep everything clean would leave me nothing left to do any of the other things I listed above. So, somewhere along the way, I decided that it was more important for me to spend time actually playing with my children rather than following them around the house with a vacuum in one hand and a wet wash cloth in the other.

Does that make me a bad mom? Maybe by some standards. Sometimes by my own. Most days I’m ok with it. Now and then, though, I encounter another mother at the mall who works full time and looks like she just stepped out of Vogue magazine with her kids who could be featured in a Baby Gap ad. She talks about the dinner party she had at her home last weekend and the gourmet meal she made, from scratch. I start wondering why I can’t keep it all together they way she does. What character flaw do I have that she is obviously lacking?

Then her four year old daughter throws herself on the floor in a kicking, screaming tantrum because she just saw my daughter wearing a Tinkerbell costume and it reminded her that she wanted to wear her Cinderella dress, not this outfit that matches her baby sister!
That’s when I realize that looking perfect doesn’t mean being perfect. (And I make myself feel better by telling myself that she probably has a rich husband and a housekeeper to do all the things that she’s not doing while making herself and her children look so good.)

I can only hope that when it comes time to pass through the Pearly Gates, “Thou shalt have a clean house” won’t be the 11th Commandment that all who enter must have kept. Maybe God will forgive me for not trying to be perfect. ^_^


But the Lord said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."