Woes of a Working Mom

Monday during my lunch I ran into a man I work with who was there with his wife and daughter. She's been fortunate enough to be able to stay home with their little girl who is two months younger than Isaac. The two of them have been married for over 10 years and had been praying for Hannah for years and had nearly come to the conclusion that they would never have children. She was telling me about how she cried when Hannah turned a year old and how quickly the time has flown by. Everyone can relate to feeling like time passes too quickly but those with children have a heightened sense of this. She started talking about how she hates to go anywhere without Hannah because she changes so quickly and is doing so many new things that she's afraid she'll miss something. She really struck a cord in my heart and with my response of "I know, it just breaks my heart that I can't be with Isaac during the day," I broke into tears like a big baby. For the rest of the day I remained in the same state; if I so much as broke concentration of what I was working on, the water works started all over again.

Joe and I have been listening to the Money Matters PodCast pretty regularly. For those of you who aren't familiar with Money Matters, they're a Christian Ministry dedicated to teaching what God has to say about how we should handle money. One of the things I hear them repeat so often is a passage out of scripture that says the debtor is servant to the lender. How true this is. I look back now on all the student loans we took out based on the advise of University Financial Aid. Some we needed to be able to finance our education but others we took as cushion, to put into savings since we had very little and felt we really should have since we had no health insurance. They told us that some of the loans would be cleared since Joe was going to be a teacher and that it was cheap money to borrow. We were young, stupid kids. If we didn't have these loans, would I be able to be home with Isaac? Maybe; probably not. I don't know; my husband's a teacher and we all know they're underpaid.

All I know is that I was home today with Isaac because he became sick Tuesday afternoon and although he hasn't gotten sick at all today, he's slept most of the day. He could probably use an extra day of rest that he undoubtedly will not get enough of at daycare tomorrow but I'm forced to bring him in out of guilt about all of the work I have to get done and the people who are relying on me there. I guess I'll just say a little prayer and push on.