More Balancing Life with Kids

As I mentioned last month, it is very hard to balance being a mom and an attorney. I’ve been very blessed that I never worked for a large firm where the rules are harder to modify. Still when I graduated from law school with an eight-month-old, I planned to go from my clerkship to an honors position at the DOJ. It seemed like the perfect plan for a mom trying to balance family life with career.

God had different plans.

The month my clerkship ended and I was supposed to start at the Department of Justice, God moved us from Washington, D.C. to Lafayette, Indiana. Check a map, you’ll find it partway between Chicago and Indianapolis on I-65. My husband had accepted a job at a Big Ten University – the perfect job for him – and it put us closer to family – definitely a goal. But where did it leave me? I didn’t know two people in this new town. I had to take the dreaded bar exam again…ugh! Not exactly the journey I’d signed up for.

Yet I knew without a shadow of a doubt that because this was the perfect move for my husband, then somehow it would be the perfect move for me. We were one, and God wouldn’t have perfection for one with ugliness for the other.

I can’t tell you how many times I told myself that.

With hindsight the reasons are so clear:

1) I wouldn’t be writing. I met my mentor Colleen Coble three years after we moved to Indiana. She threw open the doors on my writing dream. I am so grateful!

2) I probably wouldn’t have found a legal situation that allows me to develop my skills while primarily being a momma.

3) My kids have a great relationship with my husband’s family – less than an hour down the road rather than the ten it used to be.

God knew we’d end up with a family of four kids. He knew our heart would be to homeschool our kids. And He knew that wouldn’t be easy in the D.C. area – at least not then.

How does the beauty of hindsight show you God’s hand in your life? Do you stop to look for it?