It was hot. June beat down on the pavement, and had I been better about avoiding dehydration, it likely would have made my eyes water. My phone was even hot, but I dialed my husband’s number and put my little computer to my cheek. He answered quickly, immediately asking if I’d been able to eat that day. I inflated my caloric intake slightly and reminded him I had just a few minutes before my next lecture. I told him my time spent at the grotto at Notre Dame coupled with ongoing inquiry produced an idea: I wanted to go back to school.
Those glorious, two pink lines had told us about our fifth baby just two days prior, and I immediately got on a flight to Notre Dame to study bioethics. Hyperemesis gravidarum descended on me, but I was not to be deterred. We packed a bag and went, my little poppy seed in tow. My mind exploded during study at the university. I would listen to lectures during the day, taking copious notes, discussing peripheral questions with fellow attendees, attempting to effuse everything I’d learned to my husband on our nightly calls, and working well into the night on my laptop expanding my understanding of the material.
I applied to a competitive East Coast school that week and was accepted. Our sixth baby is due during finals week of my upcoming last semester. All of the children are excited for their first trip to Washington, D.C., next May for commencement.
I am a full-time working mother and full-time student. My husband works in a corporate capacity and is studying for professional certifications outside of work while preparing his own master’s degree applications. Save for a couple lovely date night babysitters and a wonderful Catholic school which our oldest two children attend currently, there are few other resources we can claim balance the family out in any expected capacity. I don’t mean to say this with pride (well, perhaps a little … it’s a lot of work), but to highlight integration over balance.
My husband and I are apparently not patient people. While delayed gratification is a value, gratify we did as soon as we said, “I do” and our eldest son joined us 10 months after our wedding. We had to develop transient systems early and tinker with them over time and with growth. The beauty of family life is how much strength there is in a system that bends. Rigidity would have induced blind spots, perhaps calcified us and prevented appropriate questioning. Shifts in schedules and logistics would have been resented. Responsiveness would have been a threat. We would have had to pick our lanes, stick with them, and operate in allegedly complementary tasks without the cohesion sacrificial love allows in marriages. I would have hated it.
Systems are unique to the family structure and should be subject to negotiation but only under their necessary predecessor: shared assumptions. We knew we were going to have a larger family than the zero to two children the U.S. tax system favors most. Debt and student loans were a part of our monthly budget. We have meetings about finances and logistics. We discuss undercurrents of budding behaviors we notice and want to intervene on. We deepen our understanding of questions that weave themselves through the home like vines we need to either prune, rip out, or watch as they grow and enhance its beauty. These are all spoken between us as we take our date night walks beneath the stars, offering them up like prayers because we are not the only two in this discussion.
Optimization is secondary to agreement first and foremost to the mission. It is transient; it can be severely impacted by sickness, job loss, or any number of factors that rattle our fickle grasp on control. Mission is different. It endures because it answers first to spiritual capacity and second to circumstance. Mission is: We will raise a family to know and love the Lord. Optimization pragmatically answers the “how,” but without letting the “how” dictate the “why.” This is our children’s first inheritance. We did anything we had to to bring them here.
Families contain both material and the immaterial. There are practical concerns and marriage partnership will inevitably require functioning like teammates on the court, so ensure tactical response systems are a fun part of playing together. Be congratulatory and confrontational. Judge efforts favorably and challenge strategies. Trust parts of each other that are distinctive and you cannot replicate, not because you don’t contain them, but because of what it does for your spouse’s soul to believe in them.
Have the children. Watch how your systems evolve and shift over time. Experience the joy of anxiety taking its rightful place under actualized situations rather than anticipatory dread. Families develop over time and children are not a capstone project: they are part of what matures and forms you. Accept the date, ask good questions, decide on a yoke to live under, and sort everything else out as necessary beyond that. Life is best lived empirically.
Jillian Tymo is a researcher, writer, and host of the podcast “Rebranding Motherhood” founded by Dr. Abby Johnson and produced by ProLove Ministries. She examines culture, politics, and religion through her work and academic studies at Georgetown University.
Instagram: @jilliantymo @rebrandingmotherhoodpodcast