I have two imaginary lives.
In one, I’m engaged, compassionate, fun mom. I include my kids in what I’m doing, stop and listen to their stories, light up when they enter the room. I’m available, present, relatable. I share my love for Jesus with them, teach them to love the Word, tell them stories that help them grow in wisdom. We laugh at our mistakes, do the hard things together, learn to be brave together. Our home is a big open door where we dream of adding to our family in unconventional ways. We practice welcome together. We build a life that will span generations.
In my other life, I’m driven and ambitious. I’m working towards my Masters, writing meaningful articles and books, building bridges for women who believe they don’t belong. I’m a fearless truth-teller, living before God’s face, calling others to join me in living free as His beloved. I practice welcome, engaged in the life of the local church, making investments that will span generations.
(Somewhere between these two lives, I also cook healthy meals, keep a simplified home, read all the books, and get outside as often as possible.)
In my imagination, these lives coexist. I’m all Proverbs 31, rising before the sun and continuing long after it’s gone to sleep. I’m working hard and playing hard. I’m listening well and speaking wisdom. I’m present and producing. I’m laughing often and feeling deeply.
Imaginary me is awesome.
Glimpses of imaginary me emerge just enough for me to think she exists. A spring break bucket list with my kids, a book outline scribbled on a scrap piece of paper, a great conversation with my seminary professor, breathing in the ocean air for the third time in a week.
But mostly, imaginary me is just that – imaginary.
And so the tension is incessant. Where do I invest? My family is the obvious choice, and the one I want to want to choose. Death to self, I remind myself, as I look at the list of things I want to accomplish and put them aside for some family adventure. I want to enjoy life with my kids, but instead I’m thinking, can you please stop talking?? I’m checking my phone, refreshing my email, distracted by ideas and deadlines.
Often I’ve wondered if this is the root of my problem – an inability to “learn to love what must be done.” If I could just release all those ambitions and be here, now, maybe I wouldn’t feel so constantly depressed, so void of joy, so irritated.
Over my years of motherhood, I’ve assumed that, in order to thrive in one life, I have to completely release the other. So I tried to do that, at least in part. I shut down my photography business in order to fully embrace being a stay-at-home mom. I added in foster care and homeschooling because they seemed to fit that life, and I wanted to be all in. But after a few years of withering there, new opportunities began to emerge – opportunities to write and speak, to teach and counsel, to participate in the ministry of my church. And these opportunities were like a breath of fresh air. I started to feel like myself again, to have a sense of purpose, to feel seen and known and like I was actually contributing something. But then my family kept getting pushed aside to make way for my ambition. My kids watched more and more TV while I worked on projects or had friends for coffee. I felt more and more excited and fulfilled by the opportunities in front of me, while my kids had growing attitude problems, out of control emotions, and greater distance grew between us all.
We’ve basically gone through that cycle again since moving to California. Our move here marked a release of everything I was involved in. An end to ministry and a disconnection from opportunities. I determined to embrace the plain things, to be focused at home. I was going to homeschool, to support my husband, to wait on the rest. But it only took a couple of months for me to realize I couldn’t do it. I was lonely, depressed, and overwhelmed at the thought of being with my children all the time. And a fleeting comment from my husband ignited new freedom: “Why don’t you stop pretending to be someone you’re not?”
So I’ve filled my life with people and plans and pursuits that have reignited that life I felt back home. I feel like myself again.
But my kids watch lots of TV and probably wish their mom listened better. Attitudes and emotions are haywire and, most days, my fuse is short. And the laundry. Don’t get me started on the laundry.
These problems are certainly rooted in my sin – my selfishness, discontentment, irritability. When “Release” became part of my vocabulary and thinking for 2018, it was in large part because I figured I needed to release this ambitious life and settle into the ordinary one.
But I think something else is actually true. Ambition is not necessarily at odds with a life of plain things.
Perhaps what I need to release is the imaginary part.
At least for me, imaginary = ideals = demands and expectations = disappointment and shame.
I’m always measuring myself against these imaginary lives. I never live up to my own ideals because they’re unattainable. I dwell in shame, then, thinking I really ought to be better. Shame has this ability to kill all the things – connection, creativity, productivity, rest, enjoyment.
Jesus didn’t bear my shame on the cross for me to pick it back up, day after day, certain that if I would just try-harder-do-better I could achieve the ideal version of myself. (And, p.s. – it turns out He didn’t die to make me into the ideal version of myself.)
I’ve heard Proverbs 31 explained as multiple seasons pressed into one narrative. Surely she didn’t do all of those things in one day, but rather, over the span of a lifetime. I have no idea the accuracy of that interpretation of Proverbs 31, but I do know it’s an accurate interpretation of my ideals. I can so easily tell my friends who are still at home with little babies, “It gets better!” But I also need reminders of the seasons that lie ahead. My children are still pretty needy, but they won’t always be, in the same way. My husband and I will finish school and have more capacity for other pursuits. Everything doesn’t have to be right now.
I’ve mistakenly thought that, in order to truly flourish, I have to release all the things that distract me from my “true calling.” But what even is that?
God doesn’t expect me to live up to imagined ideals. He doesn’t call me to extremes or even to some delicate balance.
He calls me to live in the tension of the life I have.
To cling to him for wisdom because the answers aren’t always clear. To depend on him for strength and trust him for all-sufficient grace.
Living in the tension is humbling, because it forces me to reckon with my my human limitations, to trust in the Lord’s compassion, to repent when I choose wrongly. It requires that I rest in the righteousness of Christ, rather than striving after contrived ideals.
As I release my imaginary self and submit to the one Christ is growing in me, I realize that flourishing isn’t found in the comfort of being sure of my “calling” – it’s found in walking with Jesus through the uncertainty of one-day-at-a-time-ness and ever-changing seasons. It’s found in the tension between wants and musts, extraordinary and plain, now and later – all held with open hands.
“Learn to love what must be done.” I need that tattooed on my hands. There is always the work I’d love to be doing and the work that I must be doing. I have wrestled with “calling” a lot lately. Because what I feel called or compelled to do (write) is not the same thing that I am actually being called to do each day (dishes). I totally understand this tension and have been struggling to let go of the “imaginary” versions of myself!!