What Tomorrow Brings

Tomorrow, the weather service is calling for cringe-worthy weather, the kind of weather that has you contemplating the Plan A of hunker-down-at-home or the Plan B of pack-the-car-and-hightail-it-out-of-dodge. We are anticipating tornadoes, hail, high-winds, lightning, thunder, and lots of rain. Normally, dangerous weather was something to gawk at with my husband, our noses pressed against the windowpanes looking for signs of a funnel cloud. That all changed about 8 weeks ago... When I became a Mama. Now we have our little man to consider. We have someone who depends upon our safety and well-being to be sure he grows into a healthy, happy, productive member of society. We have someone who needs us to be present and nurture them through the coming years. All this has me thinking about who I am as a person. What kind of wife am I? Patient? Sometimes. Loving? I hope so. Easy-going? Eh, not so much. Supportive? I try. What kind of mom am I? Nurturing? Working on it. Kind? Mostly. Then I realized, the effort put forth to be the best possible version of myself is all I can do. By being my best self, I am doing all that I can to be there for my husband and my son. I am seeing to it that despite the bullying voice in my head, I am a wife and mother to two of the world's greatest men. They love me in spite of the fact that there are things I should and could do differently. I wish I was a New York Bestselling author, a professor, a farmer, a child activist. I wish I didn't always say the first thing that came to mind and, instead, thought through the muck and mud in my brain, and spoke from my heart instead. I wish I didn't envy those who have something I dream of. I wish I could give my husband that job he so desperately wants to have. I wish I was the kind of woman who didn't wish so much. But I am. And I do. For now, I am all I need to be. I am a wife and a mother. I wrote a book that few have read. But I wrote it. I tutor informally, not in front of 100 students. I have a hobby farm, nothing like the hundreds of acres I dream of. My words are quick to anger more than I like to admit. I serve a God who knows what tomorrow brings, even when I don't. If any of you find yourselves in the path of the bad weather tomorrow, I pray that you find safety in the storm.