one mo blog

I start my new job next week.  It’s an exciting place to be.  This might be the last full-time job I ever hold.  I’m only 29, so I doubt it, but Jenny and I were talking the other day about how great it would be to find a home and settle down for the next 30~ish years.  We’ll see.

However, I’m also a bit bummed.  For the last 4 years I have had the privilege few other fathers get in today’s world:  I have had the chance to spend the majority of my time at home with my children, and it has been wonderful.  Just now, as I’m writing this my second daughter toddled up to me, gave me a big hug, and then went back to her play.  Sure, over most of these past 4 years I’ve worked as well, and have been a full time student.  However, I always considered my primary job to be taking care of the day-to-day duties of raising my children.  I guess you could call me a stay-at-home dad.

I’ve taken on this tag a bit reluctantly.  It comes with a lot of baggage and in some cases disdain in conservative christian circles.  Men who don’t work full-time to make sure their wife can stay at home with the kids are sometimes seen as lazy, or not performing their duties as a husband, father, man and christian.  What I’ve learned over the past four years is that sometimes “providing” for our families means doing what is best to take care of them, even if it means putting our own ego’s to the side.

You see, for us, Jenny staying home has always been the “preferred” way of living.  I think women are just built to take care of their kids.  Over the past four years this has been highlighted to me in a number of ways, but mostly by a general sense of restlessness I feel by being at home.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done a good job,  Jenny is just a more gifted homemaker than I am, and I think this is a natural thing.  Men, it seems are driven more to produce, to work, to provide, and not being able to do that was more than frustrating at times.  We even had a plan to make that happen.

When we moved back to Baltimore my plan was to work in a sales job that I hoped would provide enough money to take care of my family, and afford me the opportunity to also work part time at Metanoia.  About the time Cayla was born everything was looking good.  My sales numbers were going up, and for a couple months there I actually made more than my wife did as a teacher with a graduate degree.  We hoped that if things kept going well that Jenny would only have to work for one more year as a teacher after Cayla was born.  But then some new government regulations that favored big business in the industry I was working in came into effect and it quickly became apparent that I was not going to make enough money for our plan to work.  Unfortunately, with only a bachelors degree in U.S. History, and my only real full-time work experience in youth ministry it became clear by a quick once over of the classifieds that I wasn’t going to find a new job that would make enough for Jenny to stay home.

So, we created plan “B” and I started grad school.  It was something I had thought about doing for a while, and counseling was always something I was drawn to.  I had even started a grad program in Salisbury, but stopped after on semester for a variety of reasons.  Now the plan was for me to get through Graduate school and find a counseling job that would pay enough that Jenny could stop working.

Plan “B” has paid off, and despite the poor economy God has provided the job for me that we have been praying for over the past two and a half years.  However, life has thrown us a curve ball again, and we have added three kids to our household over that time, the oldest is my 10 year old stepson.  This is wonderful news, but brings with it a necessary move to a bigger home in a better school district.  As you might guess, this probably means Jenny won’t be able to stop working after all.  This just highlights the point I’m trying to make: Sometimes, “providing” for your family doesn’t mean living the ideal life of dad at work and mom at home with the kids.  Sometimes, “providing” means doing what you need to in order to take care of your family in the best way possible.  Just a thought that I think is even more pertinent as we continue in this time of economic uncertainty.

Life Children