Being a stay at home mom was my first career choice

I decided to become a stay at home mother when I was four years old. The reason was because I simply hated to watch my mother prepare to leave to go to work in the mornings. I witnessed this on the days that my Dad was home, due to working the night shift. I also hated daycare. It was a cold, uninviting environment that I dreaded going to. Added to the fact that my daycare teacher was a mean old lady with a perpetual frown on her face. I just hated being there. My experience hating daycare, and being separated from my mother made me want to become a stay at home mother.

Throughout my school years, I pondered various career paths that would be compatible with motherhood. A career that would provide a great deal of flexibility, since I knew that I wanted to stay home upon the arrival of my children. I excelled in school, and was accepted to my number one choice for college, a top university that was about thirty minutes from my home.

Even learning and fellowshipping among some of the nation’s brightest students did nothing to dim my desire to eventually be a stay at home mother. However, it was not something that I would broadcast to others. There was a young woman, though, who was very bold about saying that she wanted to be a homemaker. She had no desire to pursue a career. All she wanted to do was get married and stay at home with her children. Ironically, no one I knew derided her comments. I guess, because secretly, many other young women desired the exact same thing. We admired that she felt confident enough to express such an old-fashioned sentiment on a modern, liberal college campus.

Upon graduation, I became an English teacher, and taught for four years. I wish I had used this time more wisely, and focused on paying off as much of my student loans as possible. But, I didn’t. For one of my loans, for every year that I taught, they cancelled fifteen percent of the loan. That helped tremendously. On the other loan, I paid the minimum amount each month, instead of putting as much money as I could toward paying it off.

Since the birth of my son almost 10 months ago I have mainly been a stay at home mother. Not, that I’m in the financial position to do so, but I chose and continue to choose to walk in faith. For four months I worked part-time as a teacher assistant. I rationalized that it was not as stressful a job as being a full-time teacher. No papers to come home and grade. Not leaving earlier to make sure that my lesson plans for the day went smoothly. But, then my husband’s schedule changed, and going to work part-time would mean putting my son in daycare part-time. That was not an option. So, I quit.

Since that time, I have been praying fervently to God to open up doors to earn money from home, and He has been faithful to supply opportunities. Sometimes I get frustrated, because I’m not reaching my financial goals yet with working from home, but I’m gradually getting there. I realize that nothing is worth me leaving my children in the care of others. God blessed me to have a child and another on the way, and I choose to be the keeper at home that He has called me to be, even when it feels like maybe I should return to working outside the home for financial reasons.

This journey has been a wonderful learning experience, and I have gained greater faith in God and have realized that any dream or goal can come true if you are willing to work hard and sacrifice for it.