My Weaknesses as a SAHM

There are a few things that really stick out to me when I consider the sins I constantly face as a SAHM. These probably apply to other women as well, but sometimes spending so much time at home seems to really bring these out.

1. Ignoring my kids. Since I spend all my time at home, I feel like there is a big blur between mommy time and me time. Life is just not comparmentalized. Your home is where you work and where you are supposed to retreat. For me, this translates into me being pulled to me time when I should be focusing on mommy time. I think I can just pop on the computer for a bit while the kids are playing. Or I see the newspaper and think it would be so great to sit down and read it for awhile. But then the kitchen sits messy or the bathroom doesn't get cleaned. In the end, I think it's my kids that suffer. I put myself before them and don't get down on the floor and play with them.

2. Comparing myself with other moms. As I said, I spend a lot of time with other moms. This gives me plenty of time to fret about what ways they are better than me and what ways I'm better than them. I wish I was as skinny as Erica. I wish I was as pretty as Keyna. I wish I was as fit as Kristin. It goes on. But it also goes the other way. I find myself criticizing (in my head) the way that different moms parent their kids. I climb right up on my high horse the minute I walk into the library and see a mom letting her kid crawl all over the furniture and throw toys. I pat myself on the back when Samuel & Joel say please and thank you while the other kids grab. I think about how I would organize the house differently if I lived at that mom's house. I am being really honest here because I want to expose my pride for what it is - ugly, ugly sin! I hate it when I catch myself being this way. And I feel like there is so much competition as a SAHM. Do I do preschool with my kids? What kind of schedule do I keep? How clean is my house? Am I going to homeschool? It gets so exhausting and before I tsk my tongue and think it's just something that happens to me, I have to admit that it's something I inflict on others as well.

3. Resenting my husband. The first would be that my husband gets to go to work every day and get a break from the house and chaos. I think a lot of SAHMs struggle with this one. I don't know if our schedule makes this more or less pronounced than others. Ed works from 3pm-12pm Monday through Friday. That means that he usually sleeps until 8:30 or 9am. We get up at 7 or 7:30. I find myself getting so upset when I have to get up with the kids every day while Ed "sleeps in". I wish I could just sleep until I was ready to get up. And then he gets to come downstairs and have breakfast (which I've fixed for him) and then I clean it up. Same with lunch - he waits for me to lay out lunch and then he sits down to eat it. And I clean up. Dinner? Same drill - I cook and clean. Can you see my bad attitude dripping through here? Ed goes to work at 3, comes home for dinner between 6 and 7, and then heads back to work for the rest of the night. That leaves me to do bedtime every night. When I talk about our schedule to others, I always talk about how great it is to have Ed home during the day. But as I go through my day, I find myself getting so upset all the time and resenting him. It is NOT him - it is DEFINITELY me and a sinful tendency to make everything me vs. him. He is a GREAT dad and he really does help out so much during the day. And he cleans the kitchen floor for me! The problem isn't anything he does or doesn't do. It's me building up resentment towards him. I always seem to concentrate on the negative instead of the positive. And this tends to cause strain on our marriage. I find it so hard to put away the resentment.

4. Finding my job mundane. Ugh. This is the worst for me. I focus too closely on the day to day things I'm doing as my job instead of stepping back to see the bigger picture of what I'm actually accomplishing here. I see my job as a SAHM as a combination house cleaner, cook, babysitter, grocery shopper, laundrymat, etc. And I get so bored. But is that why Ed and I decided it would be a priority for me to stay home once we had kids? Absolutely not. I became a SAHM so that I could be the one to fix my kids meals, talk to them about their day, teach them things along the way, teach them about the Lord and how much He loves them, put them to bed at night, be a living example to them. I should clean my house because I love my husband. I should cook the meals because I care about my family's health. I should never view spending time with my kids as just 'babysitting'. I should do a good job shopping because I want to be a good steward with my money (okay, for everyone that knows me, you know that I actually enjoy this part!). Sure, a lot of what I do is mundane. I get it. But there are things that need to be done one way or another. I can either hire someone else to do it, not do it at all, or do my job with joy because I am doing it for the Lord. If I step back and think about it, life isn't necessarily meant to be fun or easy. I think about all that women have had to do for centuries past, as well as what other women around the world do today and I realize I actually do have it pretty good. It just takes that stepping outside of myself to get a little perspective.

I realize this was a really negative post as far as sharing all the downsides I find in being a SAHM. But I am thinking that some of you out there might feel the same way at one time or another. Tomorrow I'll touch on how I try to turn these things around as well as things that I think I would miss if I weren't a SAHM.