Away From The Shores of Mommy Land

I remember which year certain things happened by how old Naomi was at the time. 

I believe she was 19 when I drove home from church one afternoon, thinking about the young moms I'd just watched. They'd seemed a happy kind of tired and seemingly oblivious to everything except for their children, diapers, playgroups and laundry. I'd remembered my own years like those, though with only one child, I never seemed too lost and preoccupied in deep, foggy Mommy Land. 

Perhaps just the first two years, then here and there afterward.

But mostly I've always been a thinker, a dreamer and a watcher of people peopling my little world. And organized, too, freeingly able to think, usually too much and sometimes I'd purposely get up late, set aside my organized ways, and just do everything the hard way--simply to use up time so I wouldn't have all that time to think. Oh my.

Driving down the street that day while remembering those busy, happily-harried mothers, I recall thinking, "Just wait. Someday they'll have time to think. Some year their days will not be all laid out ahead of time for them with feeding babies, driving children to school and hurriedly running errands so that they can put the babies down for naps, clean house and make dinner before their husbands arrive home.

Someday, like me, they'd know days and hours on their hands to think about who they have become--or not. Where they have been, or not, where they are going, or not. And what it all means.

Except, I know how it often goes. Often the women left behind in empty nests look around them, then panic. 

The Silence haunts them and so do the questions they never had the time or energy to ponder before. And so, instead of facing those echoless walls and growing into someone not defined by their children or motherhood--they return to school. Or to work or they find other ways to surround themselves by crowds and noise so they can continue to evade the questions. And escape that Silence.

No, not every woman does that. But some do. I have watched them.

I guess my only point is there is something amazing waiting for those who face the questions and the Silence with courage. Those who will not back down, cower, on the days when God's voice seems less than a whisper, but instead, will just press-in a little closer to hear Him better.

It's there where He answers those nagging questions. In Him. It's there where silence becomes a friend, a comrade-- not a feared enemy. It's there where a woman finds who she really is outside of Mommy Land and that there are whole incredible lands across the sea left to discover--

--if she will release her hold and go sailing in lands not yet traveled.


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Note: I'm not saying jobs and schooling aren't good things. They are good when they're given as direction during the Silence and not used as avoidance of it.

Just a clarification.

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"...in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength..." ... Isaiah 30:15