The Best I Can

I’m tired of having to defend my decisions. Or my beliefs. Or my choices.

I brought two little boys into the world and my sole purpose in this life is to raise them to be strong men. Good men who love Jesus and love people. Men who make mistakes, but who own those mistakes and do what it takes to fix them. Men who think of themselves last and put others first. Men who love their families, whatever that may look like in the future.

We live in a world that attacks women, most specifically mothers, for their choices on how they raise their children.

Quite frankly, I’m a little sick of it.

Vaccinate, don’t vaccinate.
Breastfeed, bottle feed.
Organic, non organic.
Homemade baby food, story bought baby food.
Public school, private school, homeschool.
Co-sleep or crib sleep.
Handmade or store bought.
Pacifier, no pacifier.
Adoption or no adoption.
Cloth diaper or store bought diapers.

Aren’t we all just trying to do the best that we can?

Trying to love our husbands and our children and give as much of ourselves as we can?

Since when did we turn against one another rather than supporting and encouraging one another?

I’m a mom of all kinds of choices. Both of my babies were vaccinated; and baby number three will be, too. Despite the fact that we are facing an Asperger’s diagnoses with our oldest, that doesn’t change my belief on vaccinating.

I bottle-fed our oldest and nursed my youngest for 15 months. I buy some organic goods but otherwise, I buy whatever is on sale. I use Pampers Diapers and find cloth diapering to be cute, but inconvenient. We’ve done both Public and Private school and find that we prefer the Public School system over Private. We been to non-denominational churches and Baptist Churches; and for our family find that “church” in the sense of religion just doesn’t work for us. We prefer fellowship and discipleship.

We’re adopting baby number three rather than pursuing having another biological child…and have no preference on whether this baby is a boy or a girl; white black or green. Despite the various people who think that we should have a girl because, clearly our family can’t be complete with a girl since we have two boys. And, you know, having a child that isn’t caucasian is taboo.

We have weapons in our home. I carry a concealed weapon and so does my husband. We have pistols put up and away where our boys can’t reach them, but we stress the importance of our second amendment right and the right to bear arms and protect our families. And that’s our decision There’s a million, billion choices that we make for our families every day and we all do (for the most part) what we think is best for our families.

Just because what you do looks different than what I do doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.

Choose not to breastfeed? Okay! Wanna go with cloth diapers? Hooray! Those are really super cute…and I’d love to see Pampers take some lessons on design from some of the Etsy shops I’ve seen. Dig the idea of church in your Pajama’s? Awesome! I love the more casual atmosphere of the church we are attending right now, so church in your pj’s sounds fabulous!

It all boils down to this…

We are all different. We all have different upbringings and beliefs and religions. But in the end, none of that is going to matter.

None of our differences are going to make, well, a difference.

We’re all doing the best we can for our children.

Why can’t that just be enough?

So despite the negativity, I choose to focus on the good in the world. The good in people. The support from those who know our family, love our family, and support our family. The world is a negative place, so any further negativity isn’t welcome here.

But as for you?

I’ll support you in your choices, no matter if they are different from mine or not. Because I know that, deep down, we’re all just doing the best we can do for those we love the most.