A hole I dig for myself: Catholic mom blogs

I sometimes dig myself deep holes and I sit in them. I sit in the miserable mess I have left at the bottom of the hole.

The internet, the deep hole of this age, sometimes gets me stewing about the life and vision of who I want to be over and above who I am.  I am a victim of the crafty, Catholic, conservative Mom blog.  I read a lot of different blogs and enjoy them. It's the Catholic one's the hit me the hardest because I resonate so deeply with their attempts to raise children in the context of creativity and faith.

The last few days has had me sucked in.  Which has lead me to a whole other set of questions about why?! Why oh Why?!!

On one hand it is a bit about who I wanted to be.  When I was a little girl I imagined my life in a particular way.  I imagined having a lot of kids, being a homemaker, and I wanted to me married to a (man) farmer.  It was a simple life I imagined for myself.

For so many reasons that is not the life for me.  Education, experience (and a lack of farmers) in addition to other reasons (vocational, personality etc) lead me into other amazing directions.  I am happy in my life with Sean, with 3 kids, with this challenging reality of being bi-vocational (parent, partner and minister).  

But as blogs allow me to peer into the window of a staged room and staged life I get sucked in.  I get sucked into the fantasy of who I want to be, or what i want to feel, or what stresses  I don't want to deal with.  I get seduced by the simple theology, the black and white ideas, the sweet belovedness of children. 

I am the first one in line to identify these are not for me.  I am after all fierce. I am deeply engaged with the grey realities of diversity, body, sexuality, agency, parenthood. I am not good at being home all the time and giving of myself (sure I can work on that but that doesn't mean I should be a stay-at-home parent).  I admire the conservative wing of the church. I don't want that lens of the church to go away.  THeir are wisdoms their I think are important.  

So here I am, trying to dig myself out. Trying to build a set of stairs, or stare up into the blue sky instead of the muck. We will see how it goes. There is more muck around this pit, that I am not privy to talk about here, but alas.  Steps out....