I'm glad I didn't live up to the expectations of my 18-year-old self.

Shortly after my birthday this year, I woke up thinking about past expectations.  20 years ago, I was an 18-year-old with some very serious goals.  10 years ago, I privately acknowledged that my 18-year-old self was foolish and didn't know what was good for her.  My thoughts then circled around giving myself grace for my perceived childish ways.  Now I look back at that same 18-year old girl and I still feel grace for her childishness, but I also feel a little pity and that is where my mental rabbit trail began.

Mom with me and my brothers in the 80's

My mother had stayed home and done all things domestic and wonderful until I was about 5 years old. At that point, she went back to school and then entered the workforce to contribute to our household income. That’s what was modeled as the wifely duty. There was nothing wrong with it. I aspired to do the same thing. In all honesty, I felt it was the absolute best thing to do for my future family. 

At 18 I was engaged and enrolled in college. I had my ducks in a row and my plans set. I was going to finish school, get married, have children (3-5 of them), fulfill my artistic side by making art throughout my stay-at-home-mom days, and then move on to a career in the art field once all of my children were in school. It was a fairly happy dream.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen quite as expected. The first two steps went as planned, but the rest morphed into something else. My husband joined the Army, being pregnant stunk and my body sent loud and clear messages that 5 kids were not in my future, making time to make art with little ones turned into a shell game at which I always lost, deployments happened, we moved a LOT, and then… we decided to homeschool. 

That was the nail in the coffin. I was NOT going to have a career. I was NOT going to have ANY time, EVER. The year following that fateful decision was a year of mourning for me. I had to bury the dreams of my 18-year-old self. It hurt so badly. 

Now we are here in our 6th year of homeschooling. It is my 5th year of accepting that my life would be much more domestic than I had anticipated. And now I look back and I see that this life is so much more in every way than I had expected. 

That 18-year-old girl didn’t know how sweet it is to wake her children or to see them with no fever after an illness. She didn’t know how good it would feel to have her husband tell her “thank you” for something that seemed insignificant. She hadn’t the slightest understanding of how much joy a servant’s heart could hold.

I am a servant. Some days I still struggle with that thought, but it’s getting more and more rare. I love this family by giving them all that I am. We all know that phrase, “happy wife, happy life,” and there’s a large dollop of truth in it, but it’s missing something important for me. It’s missing the acknowledgement of how much of that “happiness” I chose to have. 

I could easily choose to look at my life through the eyes of my 18-year-old self. I could choose to be bitter that I don’t have a flourishing career and I’m “stuck” at home with my children 24/7, or that I don’t have that second income and all I do is give, give, give, and their shoes are STILL not where they belong, but I think that would be absolutely wicked of me. My 18-year-old self was trained to look at the world and seek “fairness” and “equity” and she would NOT find that in my life with the definitions society had given her. What society didn’t teach her was to look for joy. 

I aimed to follow in my mother’s footsteps and my 18-year-old self would clearly say I missed the mark. I say I was looking too much at her footsteps and too little at the woman walking them. Looking at my mother, I realize I walked in the footsteps her heart took. She was always amazed with the world around her. She found ways to serve at every turn. She taught me to let go of wrongs and to see the goodness in the people around me. She taught me to accept people as they are and not try to change them. She taught me to love unconditionally and to walk upright before the Lord. These footsteps are the path I followed. I wish my 18-year-old self had noticed them.