Thought Vomit

That's literally what this post is... my mind has upheaved all of these thoughts, so I'm sorry if they don't make sense.  I just really need to get them out, sort through them somehow.

Somehow.

I have always wanted a lot of children.  I've pictured my home being loud, crazy, busy, messy... everything that comes with having a large family.  Most of all, I pictured motherhood being the final piece of me that has always been missing - like the fulfillment of myself, or the culmination of "Erica" and all that entails.  It's as if I expected to become a mother and then just sigh and say, "Finally, I am what I was made to be. I am doing what I was made to do."  And I love love love being a mother.  I have never experienced so much love as I have for Evie.  It is such an overwhelming love.  But it hasn't fulfilled me in the way I expected.  In fact, I feel that the longing inside myself to become more "me" has grown even stronger since Everlyn was born.  Instead of that fulfilled, content sigh of relief, something is constantly nagging in my mind saying, "Motherhood is so wonderful for you.  But you were meant to live so much bigger than this.  Don't think so small." I don't know what that means.  And I feel like I'm going to go crazy more and more each day until I figure it out.  

I also feel like the curtain has been pulled back for me in many areas of faith.  It's as if I see the "dark side" of Christianity for what it really can be.  I sometimes look through the atrium in our church and see a crowd of people pretending to have everything together, pretending to be happy in front of each other.  A fear of brutal honesty, perhaps.  I don't know.  Maybe everyone is afraid to admit that they're not okay because it feels like admitting failure.  Is that what it's all about? Is that what I will look back at the end of my life and remember my church experience to be? Will I remember the exhausting pressure to put on my happy-pastor's-wife face?

Maybe I'm just in a rut, a funk, whatever.  Maybe I'm going through some kind of intense period of personal growth.  I have no idea.  I just know that I feel increasingly more restless and discontent with myself (but not with my life or my family - just with who I am versus what I am supposed to be... if that makes sense.)

Right now, I don't know what else to do but wait.  Wait for clarity, wait for these feelings to go away, I'm not sure.  I'm waiting, but I don't know what I'm waiting for.  So here I am.  If I figure it out, I'll let you know.