"Why don't you get a job?"

Over Christmas break, the question, "Why don't you get a job?" was posed to me. Now, when you know our recent history of being laid-off, selling our home, we knew we couldn't afford without a job, moving in with my mother-in-law and keeping to an extremely tight financial diet while on unemployment, it is a completely fair and justifiable question. When it's posed to me, though, something inside me tightens and defensiveness begins to settle in, and shows through in my response. I have been pondering this response in myself and I finally think I have an expressible understanding of why this happens.

My past is riddled with feeling inadequate. So when I hear, the question, "Have you looked for a job," or "Why don't you get a job?" I hear things like..."You're lazy, Why don't you contribute to your family, You're stupid etc"...and my body begins to react on a chemical level to these judgments.

I respond with things like, "It would be difficult...Brian doesn't realize what I do for the family during the day...We'd have to pay for childcare...etc

Those are some logical, defensive things that can be expressed, but today I realized, I don't need to respond by defending the fact that I am not lazy! I don't want to get a job outside the home because I AM NOT LAZY!! I work extremely hard during the day to make our household run smoothly, to be home when the kids come home, to prepare and feed them healthy food, give them clean clothes and a clean house to enjoy, to bless my husband with a neat, stress-free (well, you know what I mean) home to come home to after his long day. Ultimately, me not wanting a job has nothing to do with lazy, but with a core value and priority, which is my family!

If I felt what I contribute to my family by being home, wasn't valuable and necessary, I wouldn't feel the need to fight so hard! Although I want to defend and say I rarely eat the bread of idleness, I can say these things till I'm blue and still feel unsatisfied because it's not about that. My true heart believes with everything that I am, that being home with my children and sacrificing my own goals and even sanity sometimes, is lower on the list, beneath what's best for my family.

What a sweet revelation...now I can stop spending my time and thoughts on not trying to NOT be Lazy and by keeping company with my good friend guilt, every time I find myself not doing something "productive."