In our desire to convince people of the rightness of our position in certain matters, we can unwittingly lead people to believe that the spiritual life is meant to be easy. Far too often, we build things up with high and false expectations that damage the people we are trying to help. Instead of being honest about the very real struggles of our vocations, we brush these struggles off, ignore them, or pretend they do not exist, all for the sake of convincing people that certain choices are good, right, and/or superior.
In reality, the good speaks for itself, but that does not mean the path to holiness is easy. One of the areas in which I think we avoid full disclosure and honesty is in the struggles stay-at-home moms face in their vocation.
I am a stay-at-home mom and many of my friends are stay-at-home moms. I have noticed—as have many of my friends—that in our desire to convince people that staying home is good and worthwhile, we portray the realities of day-to-day life in unrealistic terms. We pretend that we are constantly smiling at our children with joy and happily thanking God for the gift of doing the dishes, laundry, and sweeping the floor for the umpteenth time in one day. Instead, many of us are muttering under our breath as we clean up the most recent mess. We are all works in progress! Most of all, we ignore the fact that many stay-at-home moms are lonely. Yes, lonely.
Western culture has led to a radical decline in community. As the idea of rugged individualism and the idea that we can do it ourselves took hold, the notion of coming together in community all but disintegrated. This is true both inside of the Church and in Western culture. Now most stay-at-home moms are islands largely isolated from one another. There are movements within parishes to get mothers together. This is a good first step, but I think we need to be honest about the struggles many Catholic mothers—good Catholic mothers—face in their isolation.
Swimming the Depths 