This Saturday, at the Woman of Faith Conference I heard Nicole Johnson dramatize a poem about “The Invisible Woman” she amazingly wrote BEFORE she had kids. In it, she captured my feelings within a matter of moments and stopped me in my tracks.

The Invisible Woman was presented as one of the last pieces in the conferences. I must say it HIT me HARD!

One of the tricky things about being a stay at home mom is the invisibleness of it all. Like many others…I find it to be a heart issue I deal with…

The piece Nicole dramatized spoke so well of this aspect of motherhood…so well I could feel the sting of tears welling up every time she said those dreadful words “being invisible”

But I held in the tears….after all, I was standing amongst strangers at a World Vision booth where I was volunteering.

At first she explained invisibleness in many funny ways….she even makes matching socks appear in her children’s drawers. Imagine that…kids socks that still match! Nicole is all that!

BUT THEN…Nicole continued on to describe how she came to terms with her invisibleness.

She got to the point where she asked God to make her even MORE invisible. THAT is when I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore….

I began to wonder….

How DID she do THAT?

Then I wondered the even harder question

Could I do that too? Stay invisible and desire to be even MORE invisible?

As many stay at home moms will tell you….it can seem to be a thankless job. The days of noses, diapers and lessons seem to melt one day into another into another and another. Many stay at home moms will ALSO tell you they wouldn’t TRADE it for anything.

The idea is….many moms WANT to stay home with our kids but….at the same time we struggle with feeling INVISIBLE.

Like it or not, in the traditional work world there are built in reward systems to evaluate performance if you jump thru the hoops of the year. I used to have sales goals like…”Lois, you need to bring $67,000 in this month for you to get your commissioned paycheck….no pressure” While it was stressful…there was a visible short term goal in sight with a reward if I accomplished it…like eating this month.

Last I heard, my kids have not developed a reward or penalty method to evaluate me. I BET the WISH they could!

My teens also don’t spend a whole lot of time thanking me for scolding them about their room when I can’t see the floor for days on end…. OR when I break up wrestling matches that will lead to tears or make them clean up the “minis” mess in the family room….

My 2yo twins probably thank me in their own way when I change their 3” sagging diapers…or feed them even more “block” cheese and Craisins for snack but for some reason that doesn’t chase the invisibleness feelings away.

What do we do with those feelings?

While I’d love to continue today….I will have to pause to read construction vehicles to the “minis” . Over and over….they are begging me to read this book and my mommy guilt is kicking in….they shouldn’t have to ask me more than once =)

More on Tuesday…

PS:

Info on this touring conference… I can’t help promoting it =)