Shaking off the pillar of salt...

I’ve been looking for contact information for a dear friend whose email address I’d lost last winter when my computer crashed. I found her. She’s an assistant principal at a middle school in Indiana. After sending out an email to her, I made the mistake of doing internet searches for other people I knew in college. An old boyfriend, my freshman roommate, a neighbor from my junior year – all of whom have made a HUGE splash in the business world and are described in glowing terms by their employers and reporters in their field journals.

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I was already discouraged with the lack of progress I’m making on my book and to procrastinate I’ve been reading more Nero Wolfe lately, this after having snarffed down the latest Dan Brown thriller. But this time, instead of enjoying the tale, I was left with a sense of worthlessness. I despaired a little, comparing the complexity and cleverness of these authors’ works to the pedantic style of my own writing. I’d begun to wonder how on earth I’d come up with anything that anyone would pay to read voluntarily.

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Adding the comparison to my former peers to my existent frustration with my own work was a miserable mistake. I felt surrounded by examples of brilliant people accomplishing great things; and here I am with only four living beings to my credit. I had to fight off irrationally heavy feelings of inadequacy.

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I made the choice to be a stay home mother – to sacrifice aspirations to success outside the home and concentrate on raising intelligent, God-fearing human beings. It’s a decision I’ve always been proud of. I’d stack my fantastic children against your patent-lawyer-partnership-within-five-years or international-man-of-business any day. But this morning, I doubted my worth. Fool that I was, in my already weakened state I still went to the edge of enemy lines and pulled faces at the enemy. Did I think I’d fair better than Lot’s wife? Of course adversity would do everything in his power to try to negate my sense of pride in the complexity and intelligence of the work to which I’ve dedicated myself.

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When I made the decision to stay home, I knew that returning to the world of work outside the home would be horribly difficult. I knew that much of the rest of the world wouldn’t value my experience like I do. So many people feel that because a degree isn’t required to raise children, that the work mustn’t be very intelligent. The biggest failure of the feminist movement is that modern feminists, women striving for equality and greater value for women’s contributions in society, they themselves persist in denigrating the work of their stay-at-home sisters. They’ve done nothing but perpetuate the sexist lie that a career raising one’s children isn’t as prestigious as a making partner in a legal firm. Instead of beating down sexism, they joined it.

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I was prepared to face that from the outside world. What knocked me out this morning was that I wasn’t prepared to encounter it from within myself.

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It was a momentary stagger, however. Writing this has been cathartic. The fire is back and I’m ready for the challenge. I may not earn a paycheck for my work. It may not show up in any industry journals or qualify for accolades from my community. But it is intelligent, challenging and definitely a worthy use of my master’s degree.

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So now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some research to do for a problem one of my children is facing. If I don’t have that action plan worked out before 4 p.m. there will be hell to pay.