Metheran Struggles

Jess: I’m nearing the end of the first month of my internship, and the Metheran family is adjusting to our new life: two parents working full-time and a child in daycare.

This has been a pretty tough transition for me. As the weeks of the summer dwindled down, I began to question my desire to do an internship. I was having SO much fun with James every day, as well as getting to do some things I haven’t had time for since seminary started—like reading books because I want to or playing Lego Harry Potter. So some of my reasons were pretty selfish, but others were vocational.

I have no doubt that I have been called to serve God as an ordained pastor. It took me many years to be able to say that, and there are definitely days where I still question what that means. Probably most days. Yet I also have no doubt that I have been called to be a mother—a mother to James, a mother to his future biological sibling(s), and a mother to children in foster and potentially adoptive care. I have known of this calling for the majority of my life. Yet in all the years that I spent thinking about these dual callings, I never thought about how they would function in one life.

I never thought that leaving my child in someone else’s care for the majority of the week would be so hard on me. Throughout the last 6 months or so, Wes and I have debated every possibility for childcare. We talked about utilizing the Mother’s Day Out program at TLC, and the Baptist Church in Kyle. But these places didn’t offer late enough hours or flexibility. We talked about a nanny, but I knew we couldn’t afford the level or hours of care that we needed. We talked about regular daycare, but I had no desire to send James to daycare—and it is very difficult to separate the “good for James” daycares from the others.

So we searched high and low for home daycare, and finally one of Wes’ parishioners told us about her neighbor. We clicked automatically, she was willing to work with our crazy work schedule, cloth diapering, homemade food, and other random things, and we loved the setting. (It doesn’t hurt that Wes’ parishioner can pop in if we’re ever concerned). But I refused to take James on my first day, and I still have a hard time dropping him off. This is made even more difficult on days when James is obviously having a hard day—I feel like I’m doing something wrong by leaving him.

For now, I am reassuring myself by remembering that James will remember the general feelings of his younger years, if that. He will remember laughing with Mom and Dad, reading on the couch, hugs, encouragement, learning, and being loved. He will not remember the day, earlier this week, when I picked him up and he bawled. The point is quality, not quantity.

But I also wonder if this is what our life should look like for years to come. After my internship, I will be “going back” to school. I will take online and intensive courses, but, for the most part, I will be hanging out with James every day for another year. How will that affect my call into ordained ministry? Are there times when one or the other call will reign? Can I realistically balance these at all times until all of my children start their own lives? Being a part-time mom isn’t an option for me, and there have already been days where I feel like that’s what I am. This year is certainly filled with excitement already! 

Wes: I think that the past month of transitions has been a little easier on me, mainly because I never really stopped transitioning from one thing to another since we moved back down in May. First, there was the literal movement from New Jersey to Texas. Then there was the change from transience to permanence as we actually got to move into our new home almost exactly an entire month after moving down here. Then there was the shift from part-time ministry to vacation/Sabbath season to full-time ministry. Finally, we’ve not had the transition from one of us working full-time and the other staying home with James to both of us working and James in home care.

Does life ever take a break?

It helps that James is such a happy baby most of the time. Also that he seems to really enjoy being at Miss Jamie’s. We haven’t had to deal with a breakdown at drop-off or pick-up yet, thank the Lord. But it’s still hard. I loved and cherished every minute of my lunch breaks during my first month at KUMC, when I could come home and know I would be greeted by both my wife and the cutest baby to ever crawl over the earth.

Oh, also, James is crawling now.

But we deal. It’s all part of life, apparently, so you kinda have to deal with it. You do what you gotta do, and that’s that.

We’ve also discovered just how challenging the time-juggling is going to be for us Metherans. We don’t have the extra money to pay a babysitter, so when we both have meetings at our churches on the same night of the week, one of us has to take James to that meeting. Now, we’ve really lucked out a couple of times because James has some amazing grandparents and uncles who love to be around him. A few sticky situations were avoided when Mega-Me (My dad. Yeah, that’s right. His grandpa name is Mega-Me. Be jealous) came to play with James while Jess and I took care of church stuff. Next month, Grandma K (Jess’ mom. Not as awesome as Mega-Me) will play with James all week while I am out at a retreat and Jess is working. They’ve been life savers.

But it’s hard. It’s hard knowing that the precious little time of each day that we should be able to spend with James, we are instead stuck in finance or council or whatever other meetings. Not that those meetings are not important or not worth attending—I fully believe they are (for the most part) essential—but baby always trumps (potentially boring) meeting.

Hopefully, we’ll become better jugglers of time and better Tetris players of schedules. And, hopefully, we’ll find some way to remember that God’s going to see us through, even if we can’t spend as much time with James as either of us would like.

Well, that's all for now. You stay classy, World Wide Web. 

-jess and wes