I finished the post below on Monday (except adding pictures).

I left this post exactly as I had written it (except adding pictures), but there’s more coming…

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Can it really be four years ago that I clicked “publish” on my first blog post ever, in September 2010?

This blog and I have seen plenty of changes in those years…

Every once in a while it bothers me that I still haven’t decided what I’m going to be when I grow up. The indecisiveness has been well-documented — thanks to the blog!

There is one theme that has repeated itself through the varying interests, though:

I am a mom.

As you know, this wasn’t a guarantee for me — being a mom. At times, I thought I might never be one. But I already detailed that story, during the phase when I posted about navigating the infertility maze.

The blog started as a challenge to learn photography while I was stuck near the top of a giant pile of rocks (our house was at 7,250 feet) in the arid mountains of NM. Sometimes I was very literally stuck, as several feet of snow made our long, craggy road impassible for two-wheel-drive vehicles — for weeks and months at a time.

At the time, our four children ranged in age from 3 months old to 3 years old. I didn’t venture out very often!

Even from the beginning, as I set out to learn photography, our theme surfaced:

I am a mom.

Over time, when the buttons and dials on my camera became less intimidating, I started posting about homeschooling and children’s activities. These posts screamed the theme:

HEY! LOOK! I AM A MOM!!

Two years into blogging, we moved back to the blessed fields of Kansas, where this long-displaced “plant” was able to burrow roots deeply into native soil and respond to the boundless sky that calls for stretching and growing, upward and outward.

I wrote a little about my struggles to settle into farm life — and during the heaviest harvest, I gave up homeschooling.

But even then, don’t you see how I loved the way my kids experienced these things?

With all of this farm produce, I recognized that I needed to learn to cook — for real — with whole, raw, unprocessed foods.

I think this new challenge lasted two or three posts. I’ve often said, echoing Nixon, “I am not a cook.” (I hope that, like Nixon, my words will be proved wrong someday.)

Even through that brief phase, the pictures made it clear where my heart was:

I am a mom!

Then… for the first time, God started tugging strongly at my heart about something He wanted me to do… the only real, solid “calling” I’ve ever experienced.

I tried to write about this, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have enough to say yet. There was no shape or form to the task. I tried for a few months…


Then I took a year-long break from the blog.


This burden is still inside me, but even coming back to the blog this past year, the task is formless.

I feel like a mom again — a pregnant mom, in the third trimester, longing to give birth to this watermelon that I’m always carrying with me. The time drags on slowly… Is it time yet? No, not yet. We’re still gathering, growing, developing, taking form. Will it ever be time, or will this be just another “thing” that I don’t end up doing?

Meanwhile, the theme continues:

I am a mom.

Right now, being a mom means driving 12 to 16 hours per week –just driving time alone. It means feeling housebound by a mountainous avalanche of laundry. It means entering everything — everything! — into my reminder app immediately, so the loose ends don’t unravel us entirely. It means supporting the growing interests and hobbies of my family and occasionally shedding tears because every minute that I spend on my own interests (writing, studying, photography, running, music) is stolen from my family’s needs.


It also means reminding myself that I would never in a million years trade these few tears for the bitter, hollow monsoons I shed before I became a mom. This is what I had longed for, and I will not forget that.


I’m just not sure how to juggle motherhood with the growing “watermelon” — this specific weight on me for people outside my immediate family.


I remind myself: A seed doesn’t make itself grow.

“…neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” (1 Corinthians 3:7)

If this is what God wants me to do (and if it’s not, I don’t want anything to do with it), then everything I need will be provided at the right time. There is plenty of intense learning happening right now — gathering knowledge, discipline, experiences, relationships — even if I can’t synthesize and communicate it very well just yet.

Meanwhile, I’m sure I’ll keep posting about being a mom, when I can steal away time. I don’t want to look back and see that I failed to soak up the gift and privilege of this calling, which is abundantly clear.

“He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents…” (Malachi 4:6)

“…He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.” (Isaiah 40:11)

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’” (Matthew 19:14)

“Moses spent his first forty years thinking he was somebody. He spent his second forty years learning he was a nobody. He spent his third forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody.” – Dwight L. Moody

“Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’ He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.’” (Mark 9:35-37)

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)