It's been about seven months since we moved to North Carolina, and I'm not gonna lie, it's just starting to feel like "home." Home for me has always been a big question mark. Born in Texas, raised in Hong Kong, went to boarding school in Malaysia, spent a few years in Alabama as a kid, went to college in California, spent our first year of marriage in Vegas, and just lived the last four years in West Africa...oh, and there were a couple of other stops in Europe along the way...YEESH! No wonder I've got wanderlust.
Settling in one place for an unestimated time has seriously freaked me out, I'm not going to lie. At first I was just so grateful for John to have a good job and for some stability for Levi. I was stoked beyond words when we bought our first house, and I made a couple of great friends almost right away. And then...reality hit. I'm a stay at home Mom with no car in the burbs of NC. What the crap was I thinking???!!! I should be somewhere exotic...I should be somewhere dangerous...and if I'm going to be in the states, I should be in a city, for goodness sakes! I'm embarrassed to admit it, but we hadn't been in our house three weeks when I was already inquiring about jobs for us overseas. My husband just laughed. It's so typical of me. I'm so SCARED to be tied down. I don't want to commit because what if there is something better that I'm missing out on?
On top of my itch to keep moving, I was being slapped in the face with the realities of being a full-time, stay-at-home Mom. Wow. I didn't realize how much my patience would be tested and how tired I would be. I mean, I had lived with seventeen teenage girls AND my son for the past two years, but I guess I hadn't realized how much help I had with him. He had constant playmates and would play outside for hours everyday. There were times when I wouldn't see him all afternoon- and we're talking about a kid that wasn't even two yet! It's been a battle to give him all of my attention...to take time out and play with him...to realize that I have to teach him the things he doesn't yet know. I realize this may seem like a huge, "DUH!" to anyone out there who is a Mommy, but it's almost like I'm doing this for the first time. We've had some rough days...really rough days. We saw anger in him that we had never seen before. We saw a kid that had some serious frustration, and it was unnerving.
But somehow in the past weeks and months, God has changed my heart and my ideas of what being a Mom is. I've realized the importance of paying attention to him, not just distracting him so that I can search Pinterest for a few hours. I've realized how much he needed stability and consistency, and how much he was hurting for it after being yanked out of the only world he'd ever known. I've realized that I have to teach him things that he doesn't yet grasp- that he won't necessarily just get it unless someone shows him. I've realized that I want to be the one to teach him about God and how special Levi is to him. I've realized a lot of things about being a Mom. And I've realized even more things about my son. Sure he's a crazy, wild, fearless kid who jumps off of high things and gets a little rough when we wrestle. But he's also a smart, kind, sensitive little boy who needs to know that his parents aren't going anyway...that things aren't going to get flipped upside down (at least for a while). And each day that goes by where we can spend that precious time together, I see a happier and happier kid. And that makes me want to be a better and better Mom. I want to take my job seriously, because it truly is such a privilage.