Help With Your Mother's Rule is a forum for women who want trouble-shooting
help with their Mother's Rules or about any aspect of the 5 Ps of
the married vocation.Ask Holly: This blog is composed of your questions. Contact me at the address listed on Holly's Helpers page and I will respond. Please share your unique ideas as well. The more ideas and experience we share, the more successful every mother will be in designing her own unique Mother's Rule.
I think that what you need to do is re-examine a central question - because one hour a day with your children and personal exhaustion are signs that something is not working for you.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the key issue to look at here is not how to devise a rule to fit this, but to examine if this present situation is working for you. A standard principle to examine or discern one's work outside the home is "Will this job, with the way it is set up, help me to fulfill my primary vocation?"
That means, does the job you have help you to live a deeper prayer life with God, care for yourself with adequate rest and exercise and nutrition, devote yourself to your husband, spend motherly nurturing and educating time with your children and ensure your home is clean?
If the present job is not helping you - and in fact, it appears to be hindering you - then you need to re-examine whether you are even called to this present job.
Now, that does not mean that you need to quit it completely, but to look at alternatives: are you able to reduce your hours, to go part time, half time, 3/4 time? Are you able to job share to enable more time for your primary vocation? Are you able to reduce home costs in order to foster ability to take part time work? Are you able to switch to another type of job that gives more flexible hours thus enabling you to spend the time with your children that you need to - your central call?
I think these are the serious questions you need to examine or else your 5th P is dominating and you are feeling the stress of it.
Your children need their mother. Your husband needs his wife. You need balance, space and God. You cannot turn an apple into an orange, and no amount of working with this situation will do that unless you look at the original issue, which appears to be the fact that you are spending too much time, for your circumstances, working outside the home and not enough time on the 'real' needs of yourself, your husband and especially your young children.
We only have so much time - and we can't do everything well. I think you need to re-examine your full time work to make this outside employment actually fit with your vocation as it manifests itself now - with three little ones and your own burn out. It will not always be this way - and in the future there may be more room for you for full time work - but we need to take account of what the present needs are and meet them.