A calling

To begin with, I'm not really a regular follower of the great modern evangelical blogger, Rachel Held Evans, but her post yesterday on egalitarianism is fantastic (you can check it out here).  One bit in particular that I loved reading:

I am troubled by the common teaching from the Church that “motherhood is a woman’s highest calling.” A woman’s highest calling is to follow Jesus Christ. End of story. And she can do that if she is married, single, divorced, widowed, a mother, or childless.

There are a lot of ways to be human, male or female - a lot of great ways.  I think as someone who falls into categories 3 and 6 above, and who at times has a difficult relationship with both of these choices (to the self doubting tune of, "What on earth am I doing with my life?"), I appreciate hearing affirmation of the value of diversity of lifestyle and experience.  My child-free status has been troubling me more than usual lately, and I think a lot of it's probably that I'm thirty and so many of the women my age are mothers or intend to become mothers as soon as possible, and I am still having none of that.  And along with being surrounded by new and expectant mothers, there's also a sort of cult of motherhood that suggests that you're missing something big if you don't have kids, and it's hard for me not to internalize that.  Women who love their children dearly claim they didn't know what love was until they had their children - one photo celebrating parenthood on facebook even claimed that one's "heart would be empty" if not for their children.  Even people who don't subscribe to so-called "traditional" gender roles often adhere strongly to this thinking - that only having kids can fulfill you, and naturally it only follows that if you don't have them, you are making a regrettable mistake that you don't even realize so you had better keep reconsidering it until you come to your senses.  


My natural tendency towards existential anxiety makes my seemingly counter-mommy-cultural (but actually not at all abnormal - as of two years ago, almost 1 in 5 women in their early 40s hadn't had any children) choice a difficult one.  Because so many women derive a sufficient sense of purpose from raising children, or at least claim to, I sometimes wonder if I will be able to find fulfillment while remaining child-free.  Mind you, having a child does not sound particularly fulfilling to me, and in fact I know that in many ways it would be mind numbing, but still - where do I find fulfillment when other people default to parenthood to meet this need?  


Zooming out a bit, I know this is part of my ongoing struggle for purpose, and not knowing if it's ever going to come from a career, or a really wonderful committed relationship, or a continual learning process...or some combination of these and a few other things.  Most of the time I just can't see the overarching point to the brief frenzy of one lifetime.  


I don't really have a better ending than that, so that's all for now.