I feel I make a good mom, than I am a wife. Both have no manuals, and both cater to the needs of my 2-year old son and my 36-year old husband.
It takes balance to juggle both roles. I co-sleep with my toddler son. And some days I find myself cuddled by both my son and my husband on each side. I am blessed to be able to wake up like this. At the same time, I brace myself to conquer the day to fulfill both their needs. So each day, before I wake up, lying in bed like that… I spend time in prayer, asking God for grace and strength to be able to live the wife/mom life I am called to live.
I am also working full-time in a design position. This is where I could finally breathe for a moment — regather my thoughts, recompose myself. Motherhood can turn one’s world upside down, and I feel it’s important for moms to take time-outs too. Playschool is a great, great help. “To want to remain strong”, as Les Brown says, “is to ask for help. (It’s) Not because you’re weak”. I have held these words to myself these past months. I am not one to ask for help, if I could do everything on my own, I would. Without a doubt. I am a superwoman, I tell myself. But I also learned we don’t live alone, and we are not creatures of solitude. We are meant to live in community. So we are meant to ask for help when we need it.
Yes, my husband is a hands-on father and he is amazing at it. I could trust him with our toddler son, with all my heart and mind, without having to call in once during the day. He has got it all under control. And that is one thing I love about him too. Apart from him being creatively talented, and how he is a handy man around the house. I, for one, throw things out when they wear out. My husband? He fixes them, and that impresses me everytime.
Being a wife, I feel it is a lifelong journey of learning, humbling of self and forgiving. It’s not always sunshine. Not always a bed of roses. No, marriage is an empty box. We bring love and honour into it. And that is something I need to learn, we need to learn together. We’re dealing with another person who is from a whole different background, different upbringing and different environment before we met them.
Being a mother is far easier– it is easier to mould a person, than to accept an existing mould. When sparks fade, you see the person in all their glory — the good, the bad, and the in-betweens. Raw, real and sometimes unloveable. Behind the good and happy days, loving demands tears, biting one’s tongue, guarding one’s heart, and the willingness to sit with your beloved down in the pit when they find it hard to love themselves, what more, you.
Going 8 years into the relationship including 3 years into marriage, I haven’t mastered this part yet, obviously. Sometimes we wake up like we hate each other, but as the day grows, we learn to like each other, and it’s back to hating each other again. But LOVE, love always prevails. Love makes us come home to each other at the end of the day. Love makes us prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner. Love makes us do the laundry and make sure the house is kept.
People ask me how do I know that he is the one. I tell them, I don’t know but he is whom I am willing to suffer with and for. How has it moulded me? I guess I learned not to flip his work laptop and his music keyboard over when we get into a fight. Haha. I learned that when he asks for food, that’s when he’s open to forgive me. I learned to surrender my pain and doubts to the One who made me.
I speak on this other side of marriage, because it is rarely spoken of. The happiness is definitely there, but what do you do when things get rough? When the sun doesn’t shine? Do you stay or do you go? I am one to run away, but with this one, I stay. This is where I learn to be a woman of strength, and this is also where I learn to be a woman of gentleness.
