Finding your purpose as a stay at home mom...

It was 6 years ago this month that I turned in my 2 week notice. I can't believe I have not worked outside of the home for that long! I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would get to be a stay at home mom. It is for sure a blessing that I get to experience so much with my kids.

However, it is also a struggle. I have had good times and bad times. There are days where I feel like I have done so much and yet when you look around the house it seems as if I haven't done anything at all. 

Lately I have been struggling with finding my purpose as a stay at home mom. Now many of you may say this "your purpose is your kids" or "teaching your kids and taking care of your house is your purpose". Please, I beg of you that if a stay at home mom (SAHM) ever talks to you about not having a purpose DO NOT say those words to her. The truth is, taking care of our kids is every moms job, whether you work outside the home or not! 

You see when I worked, I enjoyed it! I was good at it. I loved the people I worked with. It was really an ideal situation. Well until the company got purchased and things started falling apart. But all my favorite coworkers still work together, just at another company. I feel as though I am missing out. I use to have inside jokes with people. I brought home some money (not as much as the hubs, but still contributed). I felt like I had purpose when I worked outside the home. I got to help people with finding the right mask for their CPAP. I got to work with people on how they could pay their bills. I felt like a lot of what I did some how was a blessing to others. Whether it was to the patient or to my co-workers or my boss. 

I have recently done a little re-search on this topic. It turns out I am not the only SAHM that has gone through this. Here are two blog posts that I felt were helpful. 

     The Wonder Years

     The Huffington Post

    

Now then, I do not have the answer yet to finding my purpose as a stay at home mom. However I am working on it. I would love to hear your stories and also I will hopefully be sharing some other stories from some other SAHM friends.

I heard this song the other day by One Girl Nation. Just thought it was so great and encouraging, no matter what you are going through! 

Being an example to our kids...

I am a spender. There I said it. I love to spend money. Not just on myself, in fact I probably enjoy spending it on others more. However, after Christmas I decided I would use the money I got as a gift and put it towards making our guest room look nice. 

I have had so much fun doing this. I love finding bargains and cute things and even better cute things that are bargains!

I have since been looking for some cute night stands/end tables/side tables. What ever you want to call them. The thing is is that most stores and people who are re-selling them are really proud of them ;) Meaning, they are expensive. I just can't seem to bring myself to pay so much for tables in a room that I won't be in. So I decided to just wait till the right pair came along. 

Well a few weeks ago, what I thought was the right pair, came along!  I was so excited because they were cute and really priced pretty good compared to other ones on craigslist. The only problem was that I only had about 1/2 the amount of money for them. So at the dinner table, in front of the kids, I asked Justin if he would mind giving me some credit and that I would "pay it back" with my birthday money (my birthday is in February). He thought about it and said yes. 

After I started thinking about it though, I decided that I shouldn't get the tables. Why? Well because what am I teaching my kids? If I took the "credit" then that is teaching them it is okay to go into debt. Now I know that this isn't quite the same as a credit card or anything, but it is still debt non the less. So I told Justin that I would just wait till I had the money. I also told the boys, who probably didn't care, that I was wrong to ask daddy to let me get the tables even if I didn't have the money. 

Sometimes, being a good example to our kids is tough. It might mean costing us cute side tables or even worse! I'm glad I chose to not get the tables. I am trusting that God will provide the right tables for me when I have the money or when we put it in our budget to get them with our general fund. 

What is something you have had to change or apologize for in order to be a good example to your kids?