Sacrifices

Everything in life involves sacrifices. If you want something to be done quickly and inexpensively, you sacrifice quality. If you choose to eat that double-decker cheeseburger, you sacrifice a little bit of your health. If you want to take an expensive vacation, you sacrifice some of the luxury items you would normally buy in order to save for it (Starbucks!)

I have been wondering lately what Mark and I would be willing to sacrifice if we were in a worse financial situation than we are, or if Mark was in a different type of job. We are so blessed to be in the position we are in, where I can comfortably stay home with the kids. Of course, a lot of hard work is behind that blessing, the work of a brilliant engineer who is my husband. But if Mark had a position that paid less, we would be faced with choosing which sacrifices to make.

My friend recently reminded me that she grew up in a home where her dad worked 2nd (or 3rd?) shift. The job was a conscious choice by her parents so that her mom could afford to be a stay-at-home mom. But the sacrifice was that she and her sister grew up being primarily raised by their mother, and her father was less involved in the day-to-day child rearing. She remembers taking family vacations without her dad, because his work wouldn't allow for him to go.

I was also talking to my sister about a family she knows where the mom and kids live here, and the dad lives in another state. He is living there for business, but flies back "home" on the weekends when he can. These kids don't see their dad on a day-to-day basis, either.

I don't know how those wives do it. I need Mark every day. Some days, I can barely make it to 4:25, when he arrives home. He is my rock, and my soft place. I rely on him for so much.

And I don't know how those kids do it, living in an environment absent of their dads for a vast majority of their time. Do they grow up to resent them? Are they as close to them as they would be in other circumstances?

And I really don't know how the dads do it, missing the tiny details of the kids growing up. Mark is sad if he is gone for a weekend, he feels like he's missed so much. What would it be like if that was your every-day reality?

I realize that it is easy for me to decide how I would react if our financial situation went south, because I'm not in that situation. But I really feel that I would rather live in an apartment and have Mark working a regular amount of hours, on a regular schedule, than to live in a mansion away from my husband. I would also rather live a less lavish lifestyle in order to allow Mark to be the hands-on dad that he is (by him choosing jobs that might pay less but would provide more freedom). And as far as staying home with the kids goes, I would sacrifice my stay-at-home status before I would sacrifice Mark's time with the kids. As Jenny and Jennifer have proven, being a working mom can be a perfectly good choice for everyone in the family.

So - what sacrifices would you make (or have you made) for the financial strength of your family? Were they good choices?