Overwhelmed

I am having a hard time defining what I need to focus on. I feel completly overwhelmed right now. So many things at the very same time and so many changes in a very short time do this to you. And lets remember I am a Martha at heart. I worry and do too much.

Parents in health crisis, new jobs, a new baby, the start of an amazing project, all at the very same time.


I am currently home facing a horrible cold. I get colds when I am confused or over tired and both conditions I have right now. I did not take good care of the cold when I needed to and I ended up with a bad, bad infection. But its also a good time to think. To put some order. To pray about things.


As an excercise mainly for myself here are my current roles and what is going on in them. I feel overwhelmed just reading through them:

I am a new mother:

I became one 11 hours after an amazing call on August 15th. Josemaria is a baby, he needs me and I want to be his mother. Be there for him 100%.

But I am feeling I can´t in the perfect manner I would like due to all that is happening at the very same time (more about it below) and the end of my maternity leave in January.

I know its my perfectionistic nature which is telling me that I am not doing a good job when the facts say I am doing a good one. (all that know Josemaria say he is thriving. He smiles all the time, has never gotten sick, has a great schedule, is far more advanced in motor skills than most boys his age, is right or ahead on schedule on everything else and in general seems like a very happy, healthy boy). I think that having to face that I will need to return to my job in January is what is conflicting me so very much.

I am a wife:

A and I have a great relationship, but with the baby, his new highly demanding job and family stress we have not been focusing on our relationship as much and I need to make it a priority before it becomes an issue.

With DH comes as a package his family which is a nice, but highly demanding one at times one.

His father depends a lot on my DH (he is the good son. the one that is always there for him ) and is putting a lot of pressure on him and I to spend time with him and specially in the last months when he has been feeling alone and his health is not doing well. We have become his cargivers of sort.


My DH is the 3rd of 5. 4 men and 1 girl. Two live abroad and while they are in constant contact there is not the same closeness, nor can they help in the practical aspects. The oldest who also lives here has a very difficult family life and needs help rather than what he can give and my sister in law (the other local one) is very close to her dad, but has a family of 3 children and a difficult husband to focus on and is also not very good with the practical aspects of an elder parent.


So this leaves my DH and I who have always been there (my father in law calls me the resourceful one so when he needs help with practical things he calls me!). We are also the ones that sit and listen to him , something that his other 4 children do not.


Yet for some reason we never ever fufill his expectations even when we try our best, but at the same time we want to be close since we love him. A lonely parent in frail health needs us , yet we need to live our lives. .

How do we participate and be there for him, when its clear the other siblings are not and most probably will never be there, without giving him all our free time? Where is the balance? What is the Christian thing to do?


I am a daughter:

at the very same time my dad is facing cancer and both him and my mom need me there. I have not blogged about it, but after his succesful prostate cancer surgery they found more cancer a couple of weeks ago which was not taken out in the 3 hour surgery. The doctors, several top ones. have recommended he start radiotherapy for the next 7 weeks. Daily for 1 hour each day, including Sunday´s . My parents tought that they could postpone it until January, but the head of the oncology clinic said no. Do it now. They also suspected something in the colon, but gratefully nothing was found.

My mom is going to have to face cancer again. Her only brother died of cancer at 37, a horrible death . I see the fear in her eyes and even if my dads prospects are very good with this treatment, going to an oncology guard everyday for the next weeks will be incredibly hard. I need to be there for both.


I am a provider of my family:

My DH has just started a new job, a highly demanding one that is a much better one than before, but until end of January he will be freelance and until February his end salary will be defined. He is leaving home Monday´s at 7 a.m and the rest of the days at 9 a.m and coming home at 9 p.m. He will need to take several courses, take many business meetings during lunch and participate in many committees to get ready for this new position. He is very happy and future prospects are good, but we need to adjust to the new reality that he will see Josemaria only in the early mornings and weekends for the time being.

We are almost certain his salary for the next year will not be enough for me to leave my job. After a lot of discernement I need to continue working for now. I have 2 options: my current job where I have been 12 years which is changing right now a lot or a new job at a great company who supposedly had great family practices (in the USA they pay for adoptions in part of their employees and give extremely generous maternity time)


Last week the amazing company contacted me yet again and sent me a letter congratulating me.- I had passed most of the hiring process and asked me to to send tons of stuff their way (from my university grades, SAT scores, language diplomas, all my social work, etc) and now my file is under review by a global hiring comitees. I have an 85% chance right now of being offered a new job.


I will know if I have a job offer from them in about 3 weeks and I will need to make a decision.


News from my current job are not good. People are fighting to appear in the picture due to all the changes (2 maternity leaves, my boss leaving, etc) I have the offer to take my bosses position (with tons of travel) and thinks are chainging dramatically after my boss left. If I come back to my old company things will not be as I expected.

Yet I know the job like the back of my hand, could still have a ton of flexibility working from home, but I do not like it anymore. I dread going back.

This coming back to work is perhaps what is most adding to the stress. as a mother I want to be there also, but how? one of the conditions for me to accept this new position is flexibility so we will see if I can get it. Yet I will not be home all of my time, but only part time. Can you be a good mother under these conditions?


I am a practitioner:
I love this part of my life and feel a vocation. I have tons of clients right now that need my attention. I have some 35 active ones and a waiting list of some 10. Since there is no infrastructure here things sometimes get out of hand and PPVI does not have the basic resources in place to help development. We do not have offices, materials in Spanish, doctors, etc . So I get late calls to my cel phone, tons of emails for translation help, etc and its crazy. We need the infrastructure soon or this will continue to be unmanegable. Yet how do I develop it with everything else going on?


I also have to continue with the certification of my center. The first official one in Latinamerica. Omaha has asked me if the other practitioners can depend from this 1st center like satelites so we work all together. I am doubting I will be able to do it with all that is going on right now. Yet I know the inmese need. I am so torn.


I am a promoter of Napro in Mexico:
I do not know how I ended up doing this. It was not my intention, but I work in marketing so I love marketing something that I love, yet how do I balance this with everything else that is going on right now? Somewho people now know me and ask me all the time to meet with them about this. Just yesterday 10 different emails on this. Dr. H sends me emails with things to consider for future work, the bishops ask me to present, the head of the largest prolife organization in Mexico asks me to meet, eetc.


how do you reconcile your duties as a mother, wife, daughter, daughter in law, family provider, and your service to God and others? (I see my work as a practitioner) Where do you draw the lines?


I probably will not have a perfect answer, but I need to establish some sort of balance during these uncertain times, times of complete change (new jobs probably for both of us, our parents needing us, motherhood) and specially pray for God to guide me.