We’ve got some great conversations going on whether or not motherhood is a “calling” and all about our Revolutionary Manifesto and about our visit to Moody’s Midday Connection. Click here to listen to it! Please do let me know what you think.

Also, please check out the Revolution at www.themommyrevolution.com. And I’ll be back here writing soon too. Promise.

 Carla: It seems like every article I read about motherhood focuses on this elusive idea of “balance.” I’m all for it, if only someone could step into my life and show me what exactly it might look like.

I don’t think my life is any more complicated than anyone else’s. In some ways, it’s less complicated than the lives of many women I know. I work from home, so that eliminates a whole batch of stressors like daily childcare and commuting and what to do when someone gets sick and having to look presentable by 8 in the morning. I have a husband, so that obviously helps A LOT. I have all kinds of good and wonderful things in my life that make my days far easier than those of 98% of the world’s population. 

And yet.

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This is hard for me to write, in a way, because I SO love the movie Mr. Mom. I saw it when I was probably 10 or something with my grandmother, who laughed and laughed the whole time. Since my dear hard-working, hard-knock-life-sort-of-life Swedish grandmother NEVER laughed, you can see why I might love this movie. Plus, I love their house. Plus, it kicked off me wanting to work in advertising (which I did for a stint) and wear big-bowed blouses (never did. I think I wrote about this in an earlier post). Plus, it was funny.

That said, I hate “Mr. Moms” or to be more precise, I really hate the TERM “Mr. Mom.” It totally p—-es me off. Excuse my hyphens. I hate it because it implies all sorts of idiotic things:

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So here are the rules (they had numbers, but I’m replacing them with my bug bullets for reasons that should be obvious) for the meme, according to Mr. Hsu and the woman who memed him:

• Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
• Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
• Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
• Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Everything in my life seems random and weird, but here are 7 for you: 

1. This is my first meme, and I spent all day yesterday (when I was tagged) panicking about what I would write. I had to go to Wikipedia because I didn’t even know what a meme was. I thought it was just because I’m a work-at-home, freelancing writer mom sort of out of the loop alone here in my “corner” office that I didn’t know this hip e-term. Turns out it’s been around long enough that I should’ve known what it was. I mean, I guessed pretty correctly because of the nature of the beast of what was happening and that it looks a lot like mimeograph and mime and I’m smart enough to know about words that are related, but still. I feel dumb for not knowing. Which leads to number two.

2. My whole life I’ve been lumped in with the smart kids–honors classes and the like–and to this day I think a lot (certainly not all!) of people think I’m actually a lot smarter than I am. Truth is, I’ve got a good brain, a keen mind, but not a super-smarty one. I spend a lot of time feeling much dumber than the people around me. At least I’m smart enough to surround myself with smart people!

3. I broke my nose in a horse-riding accident a few days after Christopher Reeve’s tragic riding accident. You know I’m a cold, horrible, insensitive person because I got so annoyed every time every doctor, nurse, and regular person said to me (the woman who attended Fourth of July fireworks in Grant Park with a MILLION people and rode the Metra to train in Chicago for a week with a white “cast” over her nose), “Boy, are YOU lucky it was just your nose.” True, of course, but still not the thing to say while pulling packing out of a person’s nose.

4. I’m messy. And it’s getting worse. The harder I work in every other area of my life (and I work HARD as a writer, a speaker, an editor, and a mom—not necessarily in that order), the lazier I get with my house. Something has to give.

5. I just found a Minnie Mouse diary from when I was 10. Apparently, I loved Ricky Schroeder then, which is weird since I remember Jason Bateman being my favorite Silver Spoon. Huh.

6. I just had a moment of writers block so I went outside for a while to play with my kids and I remembered that this morning I saw a five-inch-long dragonfly on my table-umbrella (or whatever those are called). I first saw its shadow on the under-side of the umbrella as I walked back up our deck steps to get my son’s mitt for t-ball. From the size of the shadow, I thought it was going to be a toy. Not so. You should’ve seen this thing (and, if I remember, I’ll upload a photo later): long, brindled-colord scaley body, pokey-pointy feet. Those double lean wings. Totally get why they call them dragon flies now. Awesome. More beautiful even than the sparkly dragon fly necklace I wear.

7. Ah, seven. I loved being seven. It was the first age I felt “grown.” Plus, I was born in July, so that was cool. It’s also when my teacher, Mrs. Waterstraat “published” my book of limericks for the school library and the age when I knew I not only wanted to be a writer, but that I was a writer.

So that’s it, people. Now I’ve got to tag seven other people, which makes me panic too: Do I KNOW seven people with blogs?

• Jonalyn Grace Fincher
• Halee Gray Scott
• Laura Polk
• Janine Petry
• T. Suzanne Eller
• Ed Gilbreath
• Gospel Gal

Okay. So I know seven people (I’m sure I know more—no offense if you think I should’ve included you and didn’t. I’m going with the random theme still). Now I’ve got to let them know.

If you scroll down a couple posts, you’ll see a comment from Dawn, who’s wrestling with church roles. She’s been on my mind a lot lately because I think her note personifies exactly what a lot of us go through in various forms, in various ways. I’ve been wanting to respond to her–you, if you’re reading!–but, of course, me being the lazy blogger that I am, I’ve gotten swamped under the demands of work that pays cold hard cash and, of course, that which pays warm, wet kisses (I mean mothering!).

But I thought of Dawn when I read these words from Carolyn Custis James’ new, fantabulous book, The Gospel of Ruth. In fact, I thought of Dawn, and I thought of myself and every woman I’ve talked to, heard from, or exchanged e-mails with over the course of this true-identity-seeking year. If you’ve wrestled with your “place” in your church, community, or family, hear this:

“A woman’s high calling as God’s image bearer renders her incapable of insignificance, no matter what has gone wrong in her life or how much she has lost. Even if her community shoves her aside, turns a deaf ear to the sound of her voice, or regards her as invisible—even if she is forced into a passive role in the community—she remains vital to God’s purposes and is a solid contributors anyway. She simply cannot be stopped.”

I love that. Of course, it’s something, if we know Jesus and we know he made us on purpose, we know deep down, but a lot of people try to drown that bit of wisdom, try to stop us from living out God’s purposes, so it can be hard to believe.

Dawn, I hope I can talk more later about the whole church-role thing because I have BIG issues here as well. In the meantime, check out “My Door-Slamming Church” at this site and “Let Men Get the Door” at GiftedForLeadership.com. You’ll get the drift of my issues there.

All this to say, I haven’t blogged since I turned in my book for those very reasons. I’m still sick of my own thoughts, and I’m cringing a bit even now as I think them.

But one important thing came of all this me—and it affects my mom ID more than I ever realized. In the book, I’ve got a chapter on how God can shape and grow you during periods of being “hemmed” in—meaning during times of motherhood when you feel you’re kept from or unable to live out all your gifts and dreams or whatever.

While I’ve long experienced this hemmed-in feeling as a mom, spending all these months eating, drinking, thinking, sleeping my book hemmed me in in a whole new way. Actually, in the reverse way. While writing about wanting to be known for my full identity and being encouraged to live out my full identity, I found myself wanting nothing more than to be with my kids.

Not that I wasn’t with them, mind you, during this process. I wrote in the wee hours of the night, during “nap” times, baths, and with them playing on the floor while I typed at my desk. I had babysitters sometimes, but primarily, I was at-home as much as I ever way. But I even when I was with them, I wasn’t often engaged—my mind was on the book.

That’s whey I realized what was happening. I think God also used the period of writing to stretch and grow me as a mom. I’ve come out of the book-writing period not only pumped about getting to live a dream, but recharged about my role as mom. Go figure… But I gotta run now—I’m getting sick of me again. 

While I guess I’ve been a hybrid mom since my oldest son was born in that my identity has that of a mom crossed with so much much more, I’m now even more of one, I guess, since a post of mine appeared at the official Hybrid Mom website. It’s pretty cool. I encourage you all to check out the site, as well as my post, “Hard-Knock Mom.” And comment away!

In the meantime, I’d love to hear how you like to be identified as a mom. I like to keep it simple: “I’m a mom and a writer.” How about you?

“I didn’t used to feel social anxiety, and now I feel it all the time. I used to feel pretty confident in a crowd, but now I feel like I’m the most boring person in the room. People ask what I’ve been up to or how I’ve been, and my answers feel so lame. I’ve been up to everything and nothing. I’ve been absorbed by the lives of little people. I don’t have interesting trips to talk about or exciting dating stories or even updates on the basics of my life—apart from the kids. I feel like I’ve turned into someone with nothing to offer a conversation, much less a friendship. And that’s a very lonely feeling.”

Can you relate? Any insights? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

So today I’m just going to plunk out a quote that I thought I’d use in the book, but didn’t. Or, I should say, haven’t yet. It’s from my friend Jonalyn Grace Fincher’s TERRIFIC book, Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home. If you haven’t read it yet, do it. (You can click on it on the widget on my page, and it’ll take you right to Amazon.)

Here’s the quote: “Often the roles we play are like pinching shoes. …To fit into some role, we squeeze ourselves, contort ourselves, even cut off parts of ourselves. … It hurts to wear shoes that are not for us. It hurts to keep shaving off parts of our souls. Can we just admit it once and for all?”

Isn’t that great? So what do you think? Are we moms who feel contorted or chopped down so we can fit into a ready-made mom mold finally able to admit this and say it hurts? Are we ready to say this isn’t who God made us to be—and that it’s not how it has to be? Are we ready to start living as the women God made us to be–as mothers and beyond?

Since last Friday I’ve sported quite the scrape across my lower left cheek (on my face). Since it’s not disfiguring and healing nicely, I have to say I’ve taken a bit of a fancy to it. Actually, not so much to the scrape itself, but to the mystique of having it.

It’s funny how differently people look at me with it. I notice their eyes shift down to it, and I like to imagine what they might be thinking as to the origins of the red gash: Knife fight? Tree branch? Wild animal? My dog?   

But the thing is, I have no idea how they think I got my scrape because no one asks. That is, except the people who guess right about the origins of my scratch: my fellow moms. Any mom who’s noticed the scratch has come right out and asked, “Your baby get you?” And right there the mystique is gone. I have to ‘fess up: “Yes, my one-year-old son wasn’t happy with me putting his hat on him and he reached out to push me away and scratched me—hard—across my face.”

While I’m sure I’m deluding myself that anyone actually thinks my injury was the result of some toughness on my behalf, it’s fun to have something that makes me a little interesting on the outside. Especially since as I go through my day to day life, nothing else really stands out. 

But there’s also something nice about having fellow moms recognize something that other people don’t. I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about how each of us moms are different, but it’s nice sometimes to look at the ways we’re alike and how we do know and understand each other better for being moms.