The Highest Honor

Recently I have been considering my goals and desires for my life and comparing them to what other people think should be my goals and desires. I love being a woman but I often feel sorry for the man that gets stuck with me for eternity. When it comes to femininity I am lacking greatly. I feel like I am a masculine and cold hearted woman. I feel sterile. Like I want nothing to do with the part of me that feels the need to cook and clean. Maybe this makes no sense.

I want to be a doctor. And I feel like there has been a lot of pressure recently to change my mind. As if I can't have it all. Like I can't have a career and have a family. Why can't I have it all? Men have it all. Men have what I want. A family that loves and reveres them and a career that takes them away from the demands of taking care of a home. I want to be a mother, but not enough to sacrifice being a doctor. Or maybe I do.

One night I was at the desk and Joanali was talking to me about motherhood. She held up her 1 year old and told me that when she had her kids all she wanted to do was stay home and teach them about God and how rewarding it was that when they were hurt all they wanted was their mom. Do I want that? Yes. I do. I want to love my kids and I want them to love me back. I want to be their mom that they can't wait to spend time with every day. Am I really selfish though, for wanting more? Is it really selfish to want to help bring other babies into the world? To help make other families? To help women stay healthy? Boyd once told me that a life lived for others is the best life. Being a mom is a life lived for others. But so is being a doctor. I just feel as if those around me look down on me for desiring something other than being a wife and a mother. I understand that that is a role for a lot of women. But I think about spending my days with only my children, constantly picking up after them and cleaning up after them and feeding them and changing them and I want no part of it.

Womanhood is the highest place of honor. Motherhood encompasses much of that. If I choose to forsake or to lessen that part of me, does that make me less womanly or less honorable? Can I really not be a good woman without being a wife and mother? Can I really not be a good wife and mother if I have a career outside of the home? Can I really not have it all? I've spent a lot of time with Joanali's kids and I feel foreign holding Mayley in my arms. I don't understand a lot about Nathan. Granted, they're not my kids. But I've never been comfortable around kids. And yet I feel this yearning when I'm around them to have my own. And I want my own but I don't want to be consumed by them. I want to go on with school and a career. And I have a pretty good feeling that the first time I hold my first child I will fall in love and want to spend all my time with them. And I'll feel bad about going to work and leaving them behind. But that is my choice to make. It shouldn't make me a bad mom. I can still love my family while having a job. I would rather be a great mom for a few hours a day than a mom who spends all day with her kids and is frusterated and resents her kids for keeping her from a dream she's always had.

And I feel like most people, especially women, will read this and think nothing except that I am a coldhearted and selfish person. And maybe I am. Maybe I am selfish for not wanting to spend 24 hours a day with my maybe future children. But I feel compelled to be a doctor. I feel like it is the right path for me and I don't think that anyone aside from the Lord and my husband (if he ever appears) should tell me otherwise. Every situation is different, and my situation is telling me to be a doctor. To try and have it all. No one but me knows the prayers I have prayed and the promptings and blessings that I have recieved. And I feel that no one should be allowed to judge me or tell me how to feel or not to feel until they have received promptings on my behalf. What is right for one woman is not right for every woman. I know my path and I'm going to do my best to be both a great doctor and a great mom. Maybe I'll never be a doctor. But maybe I'll never be a mother, either. I don't know the future. But right now I know my heart and I know what I have been lead to feel and believe.

And I don't want to hope for a future that I might not live.