“I’m 34. I live in Long Beach. I’m married. I have two children. I mostly stay at home with them, but I work a little bit part-time. I’m the youngest of five children. Most of my siblings live here, but my brother lives in Texas.
I have some properties that I manage, and then I do some event planning. Weddings and miscellaneous events. It’s perfect. Because most events are nights and weekends, so my husband’s home, and he can be at home with the kids. And the property management, I do from home. It’s mostly emails. It’s great.
I have two kids. My husband and I are involved in our church. So that takes up a lot of our time. And I’m very close with my family. So I see my family a lot. My sisters get together every Monday night to hang out and be in each other’s lives. We celebrate all of our birthdays and everything together. My closest friends are my siblings. It’s fun to be raising my kids with their kids now. I think big families are great. And most of my siblings have a really big family.
On Wednesday, I had to be in a meeting, and my daughter was sick. So I called my mom to watch my daughter. She was supposed to be watching my sister’s kids, so then, my other sister picked up my sister’s kids – and it just felt like, that’s what family does. They take care of each other. You have people that you can rely on no matter what. So having more of those people is great. There’s more people to call when you have a problem.
I would consider my faith the biggest part of my life, but I feel like my faith is grown and developed through my family. And I particularly believe that we’re the family of God. So the family reflects God’s Kingdom. To me, they’re very intertwined. Well, the Bible talks about God’s people about being a family. So I feel like it’s an analogy. God has given us a family to show us how He wants us to love and treat each other. So the way that I love and treat my sisters is how I should treat everybody. Not that I do that well, but that would be the idea. So then my sisters, particularly, help me grow. Like for example, in my relationship with my in-laws, where I may be tempted to speak unkindly about them. They would challenge me to give them the benefit of the doubt and look for the good in how my in-laws are acting.
I’m in what’s called a Journey group. We meet every other Sunday and have dinner together. And then pray, or read scripture, or work through a book together. As opposed to being a Bible study or even an accountability group, its focus is to answer two questions, ‘What is Jesus saying?’ and ‘What am I going to do about it?’ So we spend a lot of time listening to what we think the Holy Spirit is saying. And he may be saying, ‘I want you to reach out to your neighbors and be a presence of peace in their lives.’ So if we hear Him saying that, then we say, ‘Okay, what are we going to do about it?’ instead of just being like, ‘Oh, well that’s a nice idea.’ Then it’s like, well, I’m going to have my neighbors over for dinner. And have them into my home, and welcome them, and try to have a relationship with them.
I don’t feel like it sometimes. And I want to do my own thing – and I do, obviously, a lot. Sometimes you sit, and you’re quiet, and you don’t hear anything. Maybe the Lord’s doing something else or He’s asking you to wait. So that’s hard. Sometimes, you know you hear things you don’t feel like doing. Sometimes, I’m too distracted, and I don’t hear things. The busyness of my own life gets in the way.
I feel like if I’m going to call myself a Christian, then I really need to live by the standards that – live by the ideals that I’m being called to. It’s exciting to have a place to do that. Where people also want to do that.
My daughter is two and a half. And my son is one. They’re very little. And they’re close together, so they’re a handful. But they’re really good kids, and I love them very much. My husband and I were married for three years before we had our daughter. And we really, really wanted to have her. It was a smooth transition to having her, but now my world [has] become much smaller, but more intense. Because now I’m solely responsible – with my husband – for this little life that is so malleable. So she looks for me for every kind of how the world works, the ways she should act, and how we respond to different scenarios. Having children has changed everything about me and my husband. We can’t just do what we want to do. That doesn’t always mean putting the kids first because the best thing we can give to our kids is a good marriage. Sometimes that means putting ourselves and our marriage first. But it’s still what’s best for the family.”
Excerpt may be edited for clarity.