This generation of women was mostly raised to be employed. To go work somewhere, help earn a living for their families. But this generation of children doesn’t need their mothers less than previous generations. On the contrary – it seem to me, children need more and more the strong loving presence of parents to be emotionally healthy and safe in this world.

I think I was raised to have a career. I remember growing au and people asking: What are you going to be when you grow up?” Recently I heard a little girl giving the best and most logical answer I have ever heard: Í am going to be a human.”

Now, I would have loved to just be a “human”. Actually to just be a mother and a wife and not to worry about helping to earn a living would have been wonderful. This is not actually “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” . I would have loved to have the luxury to make such a choice. I don’t think I would ever be able to be at home without a lot of intellectual stimulation, but being a mother and a wife does not exclude intellectual stimulation. Right now I am not bringing in money or earning a living in the financial sense. I am a student, therefore I study (there you have all the intellectual stimulation needed ) and I am doing the mother and wife act much more than while I was working. So I am making a contribution, better than before even though it cannot be counted in banknotes!!

But this is taking a financial toll. It places a huge burden on Nestus to support us financially with the small salary of a university support staff member . At this point I need to clarify, he is doing miracles with it and manage to provide quite adequately. But since we decided to start homeschool Laura as of next year and the other two as they reach grade 5, I started worrying about having enough time to for homeschooling and studying and later on, when I have to do my internship, when will I then find the time needed by my children. I started reevaluating my intended career as an accountant/auditor. I know that I do not want or intend to put my life on hold because of homeschoolling. We always believed that our lives should not centre so much around the children, that we would have nothing left when they leave home as adults. I want to complete my studies and do the internship and for once in my life earn a decent salary. I want to do this, for myself and for my family. But I also want to eventually homeschool all three the children. I just wish there was time to do all of it without compromising and neglecting some things.

I also started wondering, how does other families cope? Even here, in our small hometown, there are lots of families with only one income, and it would be something like a teacher’s salary, or a lecturer. Granted, teachers and lecturers average nearly twice Nestus’s salary, but still…. How do they manage to buy houses (very expensive ones) and new cars? What do they do to make it possible for moms to stay home? We cannot cope without the support of our close community and dear friends!! We would not be able to buy clothes for the kids, if somebody doesn’t give us a little bit of “Jesus money”!! We cannot even afford to pay school fees!! How do they do it? We would not be able to go on holiday if our dearest friends don’t invite us to go along with them, and even then, sometimes we worry for weeks about getting the money needed for fuel to travel.

Until now the Lord has blessed us, we have everything we need, normally in excess, allowing us to share where possible, but I still struggle, and I wonder, what does other people do?!! Do the Lord care and provide that much for them as well? Is it only me, who, despite every proof to the contrary, still have difficulty trusting Him? Is it only me that still worry about what we will do when we retire, would we have enough to live, not only survive?

I have seen so many people actually going without food. I have seen mothers going to waste disposal sites to search for food, discarded by the more privileged, to give to their hungry children. We had to give many times to sick or old people who have no food, whose social security pensions were cancelled due to the incompetence of government officials. We live in Africa, where there is always a famine going on somewhere.

Until now the Lord provided for all our needs, but through experience I know, He does not always provide in all the physical needs of everybody that believes in Him and prays to Him. Until now He has provide for me and my family, but what about the thousands of people living less than 15 km from me in squatter areas? So, how can I say that I will homeschool my children, taking care of their future and ignore my own? How can I say that I will leave it all in His hands, He will provide – if I have seen that His idea of what is best, and my idea of what is best is not always the same? From this privileged position, a chair in front of a computer, with electric light, save inside my house, well fed and healthy, I have difficulty saying I believe and therefore He would provide!!

Even though I probably sound very ungrateful, I can uncategorically state: The one thing I do know is that He know the best. He intends the best for me!! I have to find my place in His plan and make peace with the consequences – Find a way to trust that in the bigger scheme of things, my life will fit perfectly. And again make peace with our limited budget and long term financial scarcity!!

At least for the near future I would be able to homeshool Laura and study at the same time, later on…. Well we will have to face “later on” when we come to it .