Guest Blogger – Jolina Petersheim

Dear Readers,

Our guest blogger today is Jolina Petersheim.  She gives us a great insight to the balance of motherhood, being a wife and a full time writer.  She writes from what she knows and has a great message for all us mothers trying to keep everything moving smoothly .

After reading this article I understood why she could write in about motherhood in her newest release, How the Light Gets In  so well and sensitively.  Make sure you get you copy today, this is a definite must read.

(Let me also add if you have not read The Outcast or The Midwife, get a copy of both of them or any of Jolina’s books.  You are in for a treat.)

Thank you Jolina for joining us today.  Thank you for reminding us that somethings are more important than others and yet they all work together.

Happy Reading,

My eldest daughter, now almost seven, was twelve weeks old when I signed my two-book contract with Tyndale House for The Outcast and The Midwife.

I remember ending my first conference call with the fiction team and then tiptoeing into our bedroom, where my mountain man husband was rocking our precious baby girl.

I walked over to him, kissed him, and then kissed her soft head—her pulse beating so steadily inside her fontanelle. I was both elated and a little afraid I couldn’t balance it all.

And though I wrote The Midwife that year, and even turned it in early, I couldn’t really balance it all. Now that we’ve added two more fluffy-haired daughters to the mix, I still can’t balance it all.

But the truth is, it doesn’t bother me like it did back then.

There’s a tipping point in motherhood when you realize living with a dose of chaos is better than having order but never filling up your heart.

So I choose to fill up my heart.

Right now, I’m writing at the kitchen table. The dishes are washed, but the floor’s not swept. My nineteen-month-old, who has a fever, is taking a nap, and my four-year-old just came in the door in her purple rain boots and coat after running across the field to “help” my husband build our new house.

I’ve had to stop writing this post for about fifteen minutes to help her out of her boots and coat, make sure she was okay (she’d fallen in the mud), and then get her settled in her puppy dog sleeping bag beside me for some quiet time before her big sister gets home from school.

Thankfully, seven years of motherhood have trained my brain to write in fits and starts, and I find my ideas percolating even while I’m folding laundry or steam-mopping the floor. (I was steam-mopping the floor when I figured out the clincher for How the Light Gets In.)

So, even though there’s no real “balance” when you’re in the throes of motherhood and art, over time you learn that one sustains the other. An author friend, who has a large family, told me once that every moment with my children counts for writing even when I’m not actually writing. Every turn of phrase, every expression, every time my girls make me cry with joy or pain, teaches me to be a better artist because a vibrant, fluid life produces vibrant, fluid art.

Yes, I won’t tell you I’ve found a balance between motherhood and art if there’s a balance to be found, but what I have found is that there will always be laundry to fold and dishes in the sink, but my three girls won’t always be little, so I am going to take walks with them, and read to them, and step away from my kitchen table desk when my middle child comes through the door in her muddy purple rain boots. Because even when I’m not writing, I’m writing.

When it comes to art and love, nothing is ever lost.