One of my college professors was very concerned with the fact that I wasn’t planning to stay there after one semester. I told her I was out of money and didn’t want to take out loans. She set up a meeting for me with the head financial adviser. I told him the same thing. After he offered me several loan options, I said I would think about it, and that I would also talk to my fiancé. Cue the eye roll and annoyed comment, “Oh, there’s a fiancé involved.”
I get it. I was nineteen, and everyone wanted me to make smart choices. If I met a nineteen year old who was engaged and dropping out of college, I would also roll my eyes a them. It’s not a great choice, in many ways. So, no hard feelings.
But what no one (including me) could have anticipated was that dropping out of college, getting married young, and having my first baby around the same time most of my friends were starting their senior year of college, would actually lead me to my calling.
I’m not talking about a job that I enjoy. Or a career that’s fulfilling. I mean an actual, full-on, I-couldn’t-live-without-doing-this calling. I feel pretty lucky that I have that at 27 years old. Plus my kids will be out of diapers by the time I am 30 and be able to babysit themselves before I’m 40. That’s a pretty big perk, in my opinion.
This isn’t actually about what my calling is, but I’ll tell you briefly so that you aren’t in the dark. After the birth of my son ended in an unplanned, traumatic c-section, I started learning all I could about pregnancy and birth. I became a doula and attended my first birth when I was pregnant with my daughter. Since then, I’ve been absolutely sure that birth work is my calling, with the eventual goal of becoming a home birth midwife. (My daughter was born in the spare room of my friend’s house. On purpose.)
But regardless of what my calling is, I’ve been thinking lately about how I got here. I think sometimes as moms, we can feel that we are putting life on hold while we have littles around. No matter how much we love them, it can be common to feel that the baby/toddler years are a kind of interruption to “real” life. We have nap schedules and bedtimes and kids who won’t go to anyone but me EVEN THOUGH I’VE BEEN HOLDING YOU ALL DAY AND CAN YOU JUST PLEASE LET GRANDMA TAKE YOU FOR A SECOND?! Oops, is that just me? Okay, then.
It could be easy to feel that who you are gets put on hold while you raise them. But what if we actually learn more about who we are from them? What if we dug into all the things that come up in ourselves when kids come into the picture, and used those realizations to discover skills, passions, and dreams that would have never materialized without them?
This idea probably isn’t news to anyone. Most parents I know discover new or different parts of themselves after having kids. But the next time you meet a young mom, instead of thinking about all the things she’ll miss out on, try thinking about all the lessons she’ll get to learn early. All the extra years she’ll have to get to know who she is, with the added benefit of a little person forcing her to take a really close look at herself and what she believes about life and love.
My path is not for everyone. I definitely wouldn’t go tell a bunch of high school kids to skip college and find a partner instead. But I am forever grateful that I have been able to find such a deep calling so early on in my life. I’m grateful that I have the time to move toward it slowly and to learn from all of the many mistakes I am sure to make along the way. Whatever your unique path is, I hope that you are able to appreciate all the lessons that are available when you let your little people teach you about life, in the way that only they can.
