Wishing for greener pastures

When I interviewed for my current job, I remember my boss asking me the question, "Where do you see yourself in five years?"  I immediately thought, "I hope to be a stay-at-home mom by then."  Realizing that's not the best thing to say on a job interview, I answered with something more relevant for the situation.  Now it's almost five years later.  How I answered the question has since come true, even though I'd had other plans at the time.  I truly remember thinking that this job would just be temporary until DH got established in his job and we had kids.  I guess that could still be true but this "temporary" is lasting a lot longer than I anticipated...  ;)  My job is a good fit for me, I like what I do, and my boss is great.  But in the end, it's just a job.  It's challenging and has a positive impact on the world, but it doesn't fulfill me.  I am content with it and also with being an FCP, but I would drop it all in a second to stay at home.  (I'd even be a stay-at-home wife without kids...)  I've felt for a long time a strong call to motherhood.  I have what seems like an insatiable desire for children...lots of children.  It started before we were married, and IF certainly hasn't diminished it.  ;)  I remember spending time with a family with five small children and wondered how could that ever be enough children... How could you not want to add #6, #7, #8, etc.?  More kids meant more joyful faces and more souls for God.  Of course parenting is hard work, but what could be more fulfilling than raising souls to get to heaven?  Those were my plans.  God seems to have other plans, at least so far.  

So for the foreseeable future, my time is spent at my job...which was never in my mind supposed to be the be-all and end-all for me, but now becomes the main focus because what else is there?  The temporary, back-up plan is now the front-and-center plan.  The thought of spending the next five or more years at my job just doesn't sound all that appealing because my heart wishes it were elsewhere.  It's not a question of finding a different job; I think the one I have is great, and it fits my skills well.  (It also happens to provide very decent health insurance without which most of our IF treatments would not be possible.)  It's just that in my heart no job can compete with motherhood.  I know it doesn't help to always think the grass is greener somewhere else, especially when the chance to become a mother seems elusive right now, and there are no guarantees it will ever happen, but it's hard—so hard—to give up a dream or put it on the shelf for an unknown period of time.  I know working on being more grateful for my job (and everything else good in my life, especially my marriage) would be a better focus for now.  And maybe asking God what He wants for me today would be better than trying to look at things long term...

Beyond that, I probably need to reread the book Life Shouldn't Look Like This: Dealing with Disappointment in the Light of Faith by Dr. Gregory Popcak.  He's a Catholic psychologist who does telephone counseling.  I used to listen to his show on Catholic radio all the time.  From what I remember from the book, he talks about how to deal with big disappointments in life.  He gives brief examples from his clients, including a woman longing her whole life for motherhood, only to marry later in life and then learn she's IF.  He doesn't expand on that particular scenario—though I remember wishing he wrote a whole chapter on what advice he gave her, especially knowing that he and his wife faced fertility problems in their own marriage (miscarriage and secondary infertility)—but the whole book is written to address any major situation like that.  Other anecdotes he gives are a single person who longed to marry but never found a spouse, a woman whose husband died not long after their wedding, a man who feels stuck in a dead-end job but has to support his family, and someone whose spouse had an affair and left.  The main advice he gives is that we have to pursue meaning, intimacy, and virtue in our lives no matter what crosses we face.  The book goes into detail how to do that in order to find joy in any situation.  I definitely recommend it. (I have no incentive for writing this! haha)  Just thought I'd mention it if other IFers would find that kind of advice useful.  Time to go pull out my copy from the bookshelf...

Note:  It seems that the book I mentioned above is out of print, but there are used copies available.  Dr. Popcak has a newer book that sounds very similar called The Life God Wants You to Have: Discovering the Divine Plan When Human Plans Fail.  I haven't read that one, but it looks good.