Honestly, I didn’t struggle with fear or anxiety before becoming a mom. Fear simply wasn’t a stronghold for me. However, it is amazing how much fear and anxiety motherhood brings. You know, the kind that keeps you awake at night or weasels into your head while driving or assaults your mind when you should be enjoying a moment. For me, two fears stand out in particular.

The first is that being a working mother will negatively affect my children. I know in my head working does not make me less of a mother, but sometimes that truth doesn’t travel the 18 or so inches to my heart. My daughter is my most precious treasure, and I want to spend time with her, provide a good, clean environment for her complete with healthy cooked meals. However, time spent at the office cuts into those hours, and therein lies the tension. Part of this ‘mommy guilt’ is rooted in how I grew up. Majority of the women in my own life were stay-at-home moms, many of whom homeschooled their children. As a result, my vision of a good mom was one who stayed at home with her kids, homeschooled her children, and always had a home-cooked meal ready for dinner.

The other fear relates to financial stability. The Lord has always provided, but still, I like to be in control, especially from a budget perspective.

To battle these anxious thoughts, I take a step back, ground myself in truth, and shut out that evil, deceptive voice. I believe God will give me the strength to do the jobs he has given me and do them well. Also, I remind myself there are hundreds of thousands – if not more – women going through the exact same thing, and they successfully raise good kids. Related to the financial concerns, I remind myself of all the times God provided for us in the past.

– A working mama

The future has been on my heart recently. I struggle with answering this question because fear has a grip on me, and I have been feeling very scattered.

As I get older, mortality consumes my thoughts. My parents are aging, and I simply can’t imagine life without them. But, as the saying goes, the only two things guaranteed in life are death and taxes.

Someone at work asked me if I wanted another child. I wrestle with that question as well because I recently realized I have an adventurous spirit. I have this insatiable desire to travel, and I worry if I wait till retirement to travel, I won’t get the chance to because I am not promised tomorrow.

I try to remember some sage advice I once received: live life with the end goal in mind.

My dad lived a lie for a long time.

Whether rooted in pride, shame, jealousy, etc., lies are like weeds. They are first and foremost ugly; and, if not dealt with, they grow, spread, and choke out life. For me personally, a powerfully painful lie choked and ended my mom and dad’s marriage and damaged the relationships between my dad and his kids, including me.

I don’t know the full extent of it, but it started with one lie and ultimately spiraled out of control. He hid financial struggles. He lied to himself about having things ‘under control.’ He hid a woman.

It profoundly impacted me, and while I still love him, things will always be different. You know the sentimental Father’s Day cards about love, leadership, being an example for the family? I just don’t share any of that sentiment. I just have to make Father’s Day about my husband because he is an incredible man to celebrate.

My niece lived with me for a year; when she arrived, she was lost and lacked direction. I encouraged her to try new things, helped her learn the value of a dollar, and engaged in real conversations with her. When she left my home, she was an unstoppable force going after her dreams, and I took great joy in seeing her blossom.

To this day, we are close, and while I do not have children of my own, it was a blessing to be a motherly figure for her and see her grow up.

I would’ve been a great mom.

One of my favorite life stories is when we found my dad’s biological mom.

My biological grandma found out she was pregnant when she was 16. Rather than sending her away, her father hid her in the house and flatly informed her the baby would be put up for adoption. After enduring sneers and condescending comments for nine months, she found herself in a sterile Columbus-based hospital.

Adoptions were closed in the 60’s, and hospital procedure was to take away the child immediately after birth, attempting to prevent any bond that may change the mother’s mind. So, the baby – my dad – was whisked away to the nursery, while she was taken to a recovery room. That night, my grandma’s feisty sister snuck into the nursery and brought my dad to my grandma. My grandma held my dad, but she didn’t dare take the swaddle off his face. They spent nine months together literally as close as possible, and she feared if she looked at the little miracle in her arms, she would feel too much love. She later shared it was a life-long regret, and she had recurring nightmares until she met my dad some 40 years later.

Adoption laws changed in the 1980’s, and my biological grandma went to the courts to open the access to her file, allowing my dad to find her phone number when he went looking in 2004.

With his birth mother’s name in hand, he dialed the ten digit number. After a few rings, the answering machine picked up. Not sure of who would listen to the message, he only left his name, birth date, and phone number.

Questions spiraled in our minds. Would she call back? Would she be nice? Would she be bitter or angry?

A few days passed before she returned his call. Turns out she and her family had been on vacation, delaying the callback. She was overjoyed to hear his voice for the first time and learn his name. Shortly thereafter, my dad and his biological mom met, followed by a full family reunion a few weeks later.

It was indescribable to see her face and see my dad’s eyes in hers. We have had a close relationship ever since. She is married now with kids, and they all welcomed us with open arms. We all gained family members that year, and it felt like a puzzle piece finally fell into place for my dad.

When I was younger, my parents felt led to move our family across the globe. While their intentions were good, it was a difficult, molding experience.

I had a hard time adjusting. I missed home. And, learning an entirely new culture – especially during those tween years – was tough. To add insult to injury, half of us, myself included, struggled with depression. We fought almost every day, struggled to communicate, and longed to return to the states.

During that tempest, I found refuge in the relationship with my sister. We stuck together and helped bring each other through until we moved back to America.

If I had to pick a silver lining from the experience, it was having the opportunity to start fresh when we moved back to Columbus. I was in the same school district, but at a different high school, and the new start allowed me to meet new friends.

My mom died last year, and it is the strangest thing to not be able to pick up the phone and call her. You don’t realize how much you take for granted; I miss the sound of her voice. I am a completely different person since her passing, and I recently had an epiphany: there is a higher power and rather than stumbling across events and happiness, I am convinced God is orchestrating my life.

I used to believe in fate and coincidence, that people stumbled across happiness, but not anymore; now, I believe at my core people have a choice to make their own happiness out of their circumstances.

Looking back, I see God’s hand in my move to Columbus. I didn’t know many people when I moved here after college. I left an environment I called home, surrounded by friends I considered family, and moved to a city foreign to me. To add insult to injury, as a few short years passed, many of my friends were starting their own families. I felt like an outlier because I wasn’t ready to be engaged, married, or have kids. However, I found some BG alumni in Columbus who were in the same season of life as me. They became my lifeline. As we spent more time together, we formed strong relationships and were influential in each other’s lives. We discussed where to live, career decisions, family issues, and everything in between.

Now more than ever, I believe I was led to Columbus, to that group of friends, to my current employer, etcetera.  And now, I feel like my mom and God are working together to line things up for me. Things are happening to me that I have wished for my entire life, and I believe that there is nothing I cannot achieve. For example, I have always wanted to visit Israel and be baptized in the Jordan River; I now know I will soon go.

I’ve always been looking for Mayberry.”

When asked why, she responded, “I pretty much grew up in the ghetto. My mom was single, and our budget afforded us a small apartment in a crappy area. While I couldn’t change the family I was born into, I always wished I came from a ‘normal’ family, the kind where a mom bakes Christmas cookies and a family sits down together for dinner. Instead, I lived on food stamps, I heard at age 7, ‘we don’t talk about those things’ after telling my grandma someone had touched me, and my mom forced me to leave the house for college.

Thankfully, I had a good group of friends during middle school and high school. That group and their families positively influenced the course of my life. And while I didn’t want to pursue higher education, I ended up earning both my bachelor’s and masters. Today, I have my version of Mayberry; I am a college professor, a wife & mother, and a homeowner in a ‘white picket fence’ town.

The adverb, just, is a powerfully diminishing word. Think, “I am just a ____.”

The word stretches back to the 1400s, meaning, “exactly, precisely, punctually,” and morphed to mean “merely, barely” in the 1660s.

When someone listens to the wrong voice, using ‘just’ to modify his or her identity, it reverberates in the mind, and the inferior feeling is quickly amplified by what culture teaches about status, titles, and worth.

• I am just a kid.
• I am just a receptionist.
• I am just one person.
• I am just a janitor.
• I am just a mom.

“Just” peels away layers of self-confidence, creates a battlefield in the mind, and leaves one feeling defeated and painfully subpar.

Ohioans cross out the letter “M” all over Columbus because of the “Team up north.” Similarly, I suggest we cross out “just” as a word to modify who we are. In fact, perhaps identity shouldn’t be rooted at all in the answer to the question, “What do you do?”

Either way, speaking for myself, I want to rest in my current chapter – embracing the ordinary, the seemingly mundane, the repetitive … the beautiful things I will one day miss – and have a healthy awareness of the gifted sand trickling through the hourglass.

Another school year has come to a close. School buses will no longer add time to morning commutes, the laughs and screams of elementary school children during recess silence, and retail stores and restaurants will be staffed with young students on summer break.

For many, this time of year also includes commencement ceremonies and graduation parties, celebrating students who completed degree requirements. High school and college students alike are often bright-eyed and excited for the next chapters in their lives. And, rightly so.

However, sometimes expectations clash with reality. Think of graduation as the introduction to a chapter of refinement. In the 15th century, graduation actually meant, “A tempering, a refining of something to a certain degree.”

Consider refining silver. In its natural state, silver is often found combined with copper or lead and has dross on the surface. To obtain refined, marketable silver, it must first go through fire. Refining silver requires vigilance, patience, and diligence, and with the proper application, the fire removes impurities, resulting in a shiny, beautiful product.

Similarly, graduates will walk through fiery circumstances. While not pleasant at the time, those circumstances can remove impurities, forge a person’s character, and make him or her stronger. Moreover, with the proper attitude, that fire can properly mold, teach invaluable lessons, and produce a bountiful harvest both for the individual and others.

So, for graduates – whether graduating high school, college, or some other season of life – I hope you:

1. Choose humility over pride, live by your convictions, and love others
2. Choose to run from the tempting pitfalls this world offers
3. Make choices based on wisdom and understanding, rather than on fear, insecurity, misplaced identity or desire for other’s approval

And most of all, I challenge you to embrace the fiery circumstances, knowing they are not meant to set you ablaze, but rather to refine you into a better you.