I love my jobs.  All of them.  I love being a mom.  I love being a mom to 4 others during the weekday through mommy day care.  I love being a wife to an incredible man doing incredible work way too far away from home, way too often.  And I love my first love, photography.  My first love gets the last priority anymore.

Right now, being married to Citizen Way is like…

• Only being able to talk to your best friend via Morris Code for weeks at a time.
• Nearly single parenting about half the time.
• Spending nights completely alone – can’t go anywhere with Maisy asleep in bed.
• Turning into a beggar woman simply to find a few hours of loving care for an incredible daughter while you work.

This doing marriage often from a distance and doing parenting nearly alone is not easy, but it is rewarding and life-giving.  It is incredible and occasionally drops a seriously amazing fun thing in our laps. But, most of all, it is what we love… for better or for worse.

And honestly, I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything else.  We, Josh and I, choose this lifestyle because we are called to it.  He is doing incredible things for the kingdom on the road.  And, in simpler terms, he’s absolutely doing what he loves and what he’s been made to do.  And the same goes for me.  I am doing incredible things just within these four walls as I raise one daughter and help raise four others.  My photography work, in terms of the Kingdom, is something of a meaningless job.  I pray it is a job that produces images that may inspire a family or marriage to stay together, but what I do know is that it is a job that gives me immense joy and life.  It also is a job that provided for us for the first 4.5 years of marriage!  We are blessed beyond measure and I know it every moment of my life.  Now I know it’s just simply a matter of problem solving!

Today we talk about problem solving for…

Turning into a beggar woman simply to find a few hours of loving care for an incredible daughter while you work.

I am a determined woman in a busy world and though I have photography to do I seldom have the care to back me and Maisy up.  With a husband and dad gone on the road my newest, greatest challenge is maintaining my also beloved work life.  The editing part is simple; I do that when children are napping and/or when Maisy is in bed for the night. But the shoots… well therein lies the challenge.

When daddy is here I get to leave Maisy behind for a daddy-daughter fun day.  It doesn’t get any better than that!  But leaving Maisy behind with anyone other than her daddy is harder than ripping a Brazilian wax job off oneself.  I am not a crier but I promise I sob until my eyes are red and puffy every time I even think my daughter won’t be shown love in my absence.  It’s not that I don’t trust other people with my daughter, it’s that what I long for is someone she knows, trusts, and cares for that knows and cares for her in return.  I want something like what I am to the 4 girls that I care for during the week.  If I find that, I know I get to perform a drop off that isn’t full of tears, on both sides, and that she is having fun and being loved on while I’m off working.

So what did I do?  I prayed.  I prayed hard.  Some months later and God has answered my prayer!  God is so good that he’s placed such a person into our lives!  So far she has cared for Maisy one time and it couldn’t have gone better!  God answers prayers, big and small.