Hello Friends – I’m back!
I wanted to take a moment to explain where I went and why I “ghosted”. Almost two years ago I felt God calling me to start a blog as a way to share my unique motherhood story. The only problem was that as soon as I heard “blog”, I stopped listening and started interrupting. If you know me personally, you know that I do that a lot (chalk it up to being Type A). I started telling God about all my great ideas and in the process, I silenced him.
Eventually I stopped hearing God in my blog posts, so I stopped. I thought maybe I had heard him wrong, maybe he didn’t mean for me to blog. I felt like I had failed.
A year went by and God’s voice was still as silent as my blog. It took quite awhile for me to realize that I was still talking at him and not with him. A good friend of mine encouraged me to stop and sit in silence with a truly open heart and mind. At first I felt silly and struggled to keep my mind from wandering, but soon I could feel him with me again. I started to apologize for being so prideful, and this time I asked him to lead me. I never thought he would tell me to start my blog again. NEVER! I had written that off as a failure; but soon I was filling a notebook with words for a blog post.
When I look back at my past blog posts, I see someone trying really hard to show people she knew how to be joyful in middle of a struggle, which was true some days, but definitely not most. Plus my struggle is not over yet, it may look different now but having a child that is health affected (let alone two children) is a hard. Being a mom is hard!
So let’s start over.
My name is Jamie, I am turning 32 next month and I have two little girls, each born with a different birth defect. If you are new here, check out my past blogs and the pages on my girls – it’ll give you their story. I am a true girly girl who LOVES fashion, shoes, hair and make-up. My day job is doing Global Community Engagement for a large Medtech company. I really enjoy getting to engage our employees in their local communities and getting to fund programs that I know will make a big difference to people’s health all around the world.
On a personal level, it is no coincidence that the name of my blog is “Becoming Joyful Mama” (a name he whispered to me in the early stages of my blog) because after all we’ve been through, all the miracles, the blessings, the grace… I still struggle everyday to choose to be a joyful mama.
I know how blessed we are, how special these girls are and trust me I am SO thankful, but I still yell way more than I should, some days I still get irritated at the smallest things and I still daydream of a vacation all by myself! I am a normal Mom with all the normal struggles. BUT I feel called to be better, for my girls, my husband and for myself. I want to go to bed most nights feeling good about my Mom skills that day, not with a long list of regrets that I am asking forgiveness for. I also want to be true to myself, the woman that I know God created me to be.
In the next couple of weeks, I will share an update on my girls, an introduction to who I am and some the things that inspire me. I will also be starting a Instagram page called @becomingjoyfulmama so that you can introduce yourself to me as well. My goal for this blog and Instagram page is to create a space where we can support each other through our struggles, celebrate our triumphs and work together to become joyful mamas.
One last thing, I have a prayer request. Nora has a doctor appointment tomorrow with her Cleft Care team. It is her mid-year check up with this team. I’m not concerned with anything but if there is one thing I have learned, prayer is always necessary! I’ll post an update on my Instagram page and here next week.
God bless!
Becoming Joyful Mama 