When I was at the allergist a few months ago, I picked up the April 2007 issue of Child magazine. As usual, God gave me a gentle reminder through an unexpected place.

The last piece in the magazine was “The End of Ambivalence” by Rebecca Walker. I’ve tried to find this short essay online, but was unable to. However, she has written a new memoir that was published this spring: Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence.

Walker writes about her own struggle with wanting a child and yet being afraid to have a child. As a product of the feminist movement, she has been told time and time again that motherhood would be too limiting and would rob her of the “real” opportunities in life.

When she becomes pregnant, she decides to finally figure out why she has felt this way. She discovered that her ambivalence runs deeply throughout her life. She gives several examples of the ambivalence in her life and then writes:

I realized that I had spent years living a kind of half-life: half happy where I was, half wanting to be somewhere else; half enjoying the person I had become, half wanting to be someone completely different. I struck bottom when I realized there were only two or three areas in which my feelings were definitive — and one of them was designer shoes.

As a daughter of the feminist movement, I was brought up to relish the many options open to women. And of course I’m grateful for these opportunities. But a month before my son was born, it dawned on me: The options we take for granted can be almost as oppressive as having none at all–if you can’t decide among them. And you can’t truly appreciate the road you’re on until you make peace with those you’ve not chosen.

This struck me because I’ve pondered this idea often, courtesy of Mary Engelbreit. One of the screensavers I rotate between has various Mary Engelbreit pictures. There is one shot in particular that I’ve often sat and thought about. Entitled “Don’t Look Back”, it shows a young man choosing the left path named “Your Life.” The path going off to the right that he didn’t take is called “No Longer An Option.”

No longer an option is sometimes hard for me. I understand what Walker is saying when she talks about options themselves being oppressive when we can’t decide among them. I found this particularly challenging when we weren’t getting pregnant. Should I get a real job? Start a new career? Go back to grad school? If I wasn’t going to be a mom, then what was I going to do? As much as I love David and being a homemaker, I couldn’t envision myself at home all day for the rest of my life when I was only in my 30s. And yet to start moving in one of those directions seemed counterproductive to what I really longed for. It was hard to know what to do because we had no guarantees there would ever be a baby Caroline.

Like Walker, I’ve struggled to fully embrace where I am now. It is easy to think about what isn’t anymore or what might be ahead and totally miss the here and now. Ambivalence can rob me of the joy of life if I allow it to do so. It is also so easy to be overwhelmed by the options available to me, even as a stay at home mama to Caroline. My days are full and still I find there are so many more things I would like to do. Options can be oppressive.

It has taken me a while, but I think I have found that I am mostly at peace with where I am in life. If I think about other options and actually taking them, I don’t find them as appealing as what I am doing now. I think it is my personality to always consider the “what ifs” and “what could have beens.” And contemplating that from time to time can be good if it reminds me to be thankful for where I am and to enjoy the calling God has on my life. In spite of its difficulties, I don’t think I would choose anything else if given the choice.