I have been feeling the pull again. The pull to do more, and the pull to be more, as a mother.

I get into trouble, because I look at other people’s lives. I look at their blogs and their pictures and what they do, in their immaculate homes and tricked out craft rooms, and I think I should be doing more.

More cooking. More crafting. More sewing. More gardening. More creating. More teaching. More serving. More outreach. You know, more.

Because these other women – women who have more children and more responsibility than I do – are doing more. So I feel like I should do more as well. Except that there is one problem. I can’t do any more than what I am already doing.

Sometimes I wonder about the future and what our children will say about the army of blogging mothers my generation has become. How will they look back at us during their childhood years? How will they look back at how we spent our time?

Will they remember that we, as their mothers, were so busy documenting our lives to share with others that we didn’t actually live them well? Will they think that they were merely props in the image we were creating for others to see? Will they think we were more interested and passionate about our projects and pictures than we were in them, our children?

One day, each of our children will have their own story and a testimony about their life. What will they say about us, their mothers? Will they say we were always there for them? Will they say we gave them everything they needed? Or will they say we were distracted and disconnected from them, yet always connected to our phones and computers and cameras?

With those thoughts in mind, I am trying to find more balance in my life. I am trying to prioritize things during the day according to their priority level in my life. Homeschooling has moved back up to the top of the list, which helps explain the new groove we are in. It is followed by speech therapy. After speech therapy is my time with the Lord – which should be at the top of the list, but isn’t – because I am not physically capable of getting out of bed at the crack of dawn to spend time with the Lord before homeschooling starts. My time with the Lord is then followed by exercise. And yes, I am actually exercising.

All of which puts blogging/writing at the bottom of my priority list. Which is ironic because it is the thing that I am probably the most passionate about. It is what I think God has created me to do. And it is what I love. But writing is now relegated to the late part of the day, after everything else has been done, when we are either at the Y or after everyone is in bed.

Because one day, my children will have their own story to tell. And I don’t want them to look back and remember that I was always on my computer during their childhood years. I don’t want them to remember me as having to always be connected, phone in hand and taking pictures all day long. And I don’t want them to remember me as a distracted mother, more focused on the image I was creating for others to see, than I was about truth, reality, and the needs of the precious little souls, entrusted to me by God, who were right in front of me all along.