Chasing Superwoman

by Susan DiMickele

  I used to think, “Don’t they get tired of telling these old stories? Do they really think anyone is listening?”

  Now I understand why.

  Lady Lawyer, of course, doesn’t have time during the week to prepare for Sunday school. It would cut into her billable hours. Yet sometimes Spiritual Mommy convinces her to help gather Sunday school materials, particularly if it involves Internet shopping. I looked all over the Internet for that picture of Christ knocking and finally found one that is similar to my own childhood memories. I ordered it immediately—the shipping and handling cost more than the poster, but I willingly gave over my credit card number. It was worth every penny.

  The Unveiling of the Mona Lisa

  When the Jesus picture arrived, Nick and Anna were bursting with curiosity. How many of my online purchases arrive in a long tube the size of Texas? Lady Lawyer had outdone herself. A new toy? A treasure map? The possibilities were endless. Unfortunately, the kids always raid the mail before I get home from work. I should have had the picture sent to my office, like I do with Christmas gifts. Last Christmas I bought Doug a new office chair online and sent it straight to my office. The only problem I hadn’t considered was getting it home. The box was too heavy for me to carry from my office tower to the parking garage, so I had to beg a few guys in my office to help. That cost Lady Lawyer a few favors. But a poster? I could have carried that myself.

  Nick and Anna desperately wanted to open it, but I told them they would have to wait for Sunday school. It was going to be like the unveiling of the Mona Lisa. I could hardly wait myself. At minimum, I needed a sneak preview. After all, what if they had sent the wrong picture? It might be a poster of Daniel in the lion’s den, the last temptation of Christ, or worse yet, what if they had mistakenly sent some trash from a pornographic site? I couldn’t take that risk with the spiritual future of fifteen preschoolers resting on my shoulders. So after the kids went to bed, I pulled out the poster. I gazed at the picture longingly, relieved to see Jesus knocking in the familiar scene. For the next fifteen minutes, I couldn’t stop staring. Could faith be this simple? Maybe when I was five years old, but not now. Not in my world.

  For most people, seeing is believing. “Show me the money.” “Do you have the goods?” “The proof is in the pudding.” I get tired of living by these rules all week. Preschoolers are different. Their hearts have not yet been hardened by the cold reality of the real world. Most of them haven’t been sued yet.

  Maybe if I just brought the picture of Christ knocking and put it in my office, in place of my diploma, things at work would be more spiritual. I know that Jesus is there, even when I can’t see Him, but I frankly forget about Him when I step into my office. Spiritual Mommy thought it was an excellent idea to bring the poster to work. That way, when Lady Lawyer gets out of line, she can just look at Jesus knocking and be reminded of her deep faith. I’ve been told my office really needs to be redecorated.

  Lady Lawyer quickly squashed that idea. People would think I had completely cracked. Besides, lots of people would be offended. What would happen if the six o’clock news came to get a headshot of me at my desk and the picture of Christ knocking was hanging in the background? The audience would think my law firm was some kind of religious cult, and I’d never hear the end of it.

  So I left the picture of Christ knocking at home. One of these days when Lady Lawyer is shopping on the Net, I’m going to make her order a frame. We’ll hang the framed picture right next to the TV. That way, when Doug and Nick are watching The Bad News Bears or some other trashy show and I’m not there to turn it off, Jesus will gently remind them that TV is evil.

  Better yet, we’ll hang it in place of the TV.

  One of the Sunday school parents asked me if I was a teacher. I laughed out loud. When I told her I was a lawyer, she looked surprised. Spiritual Mommy had successfully kept Lady Lawyer muzzled, which isn’t easy to do. I took her surprise as a compliment, and said thank you. I explained to her that the reason I enjoy teaching Sunday school so much is that it is so dramatically different from my everyday life. After dealing all week with grown-up problems, complex legal issues, and the politics of a large law firm, I welcome Silly Putty and puppet shows.

  I’ve gotten good at checking my lawyer cape at the door when it comes to church. No suit, no high heels, not too much lipstick, no cell phone or BlackBerry, no dirty looks, no potty mouth, and lots of confession and forgiveness. I wear my hair down with comfortable shoes and suburban clothes, smiling pleasantly while I’m holding Abby in one arm and my Sunday school bag in the other. Let’s face it—most parents don’t have high expectations of a Sunday school teacher. They just want an hour of peace.

  But teaching Sunday school has its low points too. Even Devoted Mommy gets tired of cutting out crafts late on Saturday nights and waking up early on Sunday mornings to get three kids out the door. Sometimes I wake up on Sunday morning and I’m sick and I can’t find a substitute, or my kids are sick and I want to stay home and take care of them, but I can’t. Sometimes my class is rambunctious, and I don’t have a helper and they all have to go to the bathroom at the same time, or one of the kids freaks out, or I just feel like being with my own kids instead of spreading myself so thin. Sometimes I think it’s not fair to leave Abby in the nursery for another hour and I miss her and wish she could join us in Sunday school, but the few times I have brought her I have been completely unable to give the rest of the class any attention.

  Sometimes the whole class is staring into space and I don’t think anyone is listening to the lesson, but I still know I am planting seeds.

  My Sunday school class is filled with your typical upper-middle-class children, and while most of them are from loving homes, some of them are beginning to struggle with things that no one can adequately explain. Terminal illness of a loved one. Divorce. Even death. One little boy in my class, we’ll call him Charlie, lost his daddy last year. When I pulled out the picture of Jesus knocking, Charlie’s eyes locked mine, and I knew that he needed to know that Jesus would always be there and would never leave him, so I looked into Charlie’s eyes and said, “Once Jesus comes into your heart, He will never leave.”

  The next week, Charlie’s grandma stopped me after class and told me that Charlie had asked Jesus to come into his heart. I gave her a big hug and we both fought back the tears. Charlie doesn’t come to class as much as he used to, and I know it’s hard for his grandma to bring him on the weekends, but I still had the privilege of planting a few seeds.

  I like planting seeds. It beats billable hours. Lady Lawyer can’t say, “Sorry I didn’t get the agreement done, but I planted a few seeds.” Or, “I know we lost the case, but I laid some groundwork for next time. Give it a few years and you’ll see some results.” Her clients would fire her.

  Sunday school teachers don’t have to worry about getting fired. Why? Because we teach Sunday school for free. It’s not like there’s a long line of volunteers waiting to take over. If you pass the criminal background and reference check and like kids, you’re in.

  The second we start paying Sunday school teachers, I’m done. Who wants the pressure of another billable hour? Not me. Some things money can’t buy. Besides, even Lady Lawyer needs to hang up her cape on the weekends.

  Can Superwoman really live in two worlds? What is really behind the cape, and am I ever going to figure out my true identity? And what does it mean to live out my “God-created identity”?1 I know there aren’t easy answers, but that still doesn’t stop me from asking the questions. Sometimes I wonder, Who am I really chasing anyway?

  TWO

  Superwoman Has a Day Job

  Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.

  Colossians 3:23

  Nick always asks me why I work while other moms stay home. There’s no simple answer. The easy answer is that I work for money. B
ut that’s not the only reason I work. This isn’t the answer I gave him.

  What working mother hasn’t had her children ask her why she works? It’s a fair question with a host of possible answers. Money, of course, is the easiest concept for kids to understand. Some of my friends tell their children, “Mommy works so that we can pay for our house,” or, “If I don’t go to work today, we might not be able to go on vacation this year.” While I often resort to these easy answers, I also try to explain to Nick that God gives us all gifts and talents, and I’m simply trying to do my best at my job. I go on to explain that, while I would rather not go to work some days, I believe it is the right thing to do, even though it can be hard. Nick understands that it’s important to do your best, but he also understands that a job provides money, which isn’t a bad lesson in and of itself, but I never want him to think that work is only about money. Work is about so much more.

  Some working mothers set out to pursue a career with determination and never even consider staying at home full time to raise children. Others don’t have a road map or master plan, and while we constantly feel the tug between home and work, most days we are thankful for our jobs. Still other working mothers would rather not work at all, but we simply need the income to provide for our families. I’m a mix. While I can’t imagine life without my lawyer cape, sometimes the life of Lady Lawyer is a handful to juggle with small children.

  Sometimes I envy my friends who work out of their homes, like Self-Employed Stefanie, my best friend from college. Stefanie and I never missed a party or a social gathering in college, and unlike me she wanted nothing more than to start a family in her twenties and be a full-time mom. But life doesn’t always turn out as planned. When her husband was without an income and they had a young child to support, she started a part-time home business that became successful (she’s more driven than she likes to admit), and now she and her husband work together, out of their home, in a family business. So in between client calls she bakes casseroles, and she takes breaks during the day for carpool duty—but that just means her workday lasts longer and starts earlier than most.

  There’s no easy path for a working mother. In fact, Self-Employed Stefanie will tell you that working out of your home with small children can make life more complicated, not less. At least Lady Lawyer gets to sit at her desk and drink coffee without the distractions of screaming children and dirty laundry. So even though I spend more hours away from home than Self-Employed Stefanie, neither of us can claim the other has an easier day.

  My best friend from law school, Sassy Shelly, also works out of her home to be with her four kids, three dogs, and five cats. I don’t know how she gets any work done, but she never studied in law school and always seemed to get by just fine. Unlike most of my classmates, she wasn’t uptight or intimidated. While everyone else was fighting over the library carrels and the study guides, Sassy Shelly and I shunned the library and regularly met at the coffee shop to study. Instead of studying, however, we always ended up debating religion or politics. Sassy Shelly would always take the opposite position of mine, and she would argue that religion was for the illiterate masses, uneducated, and weak. The great thing about Sassy Shelly is she has an opinion about everything, and she knows something about everything, which makes her one of the best conversationalists on the planet. Studying could wait. World problems needed to first be solved, and I cherished those times together, even if we never got any studying done.

  Now that Shelly is married with four young children, we don’t hang out in coffee shops and debate politics nearly enough. She’s one tough lawyer, and like me, she’s trying to juggle it all. So when I call her from work and hear her kids and the dogs in the background, I’m reminded that the peace and quiet of my office isn’t so bad after all. She and Self-Employed Stefanie remind me to be careful what I wish for when I complain about spending too much time at the office.

  Sassy Shelly and I always complain that we don’t have jobs that actually help people. Why didn’t we become nurses who save lives, or teachers who impact the lives of sweet little children? Instead, Shelly is busy helping her company ship more jobs overseas, and I’m busy working at one of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the world. We represent business. Big business. Sometimes I wonder how that fits into my faith or into motherhood.

  My Lawyer Cape

  When I started practicing law, my other college roommate, Built Becky—an Olympic cyclist who looks more like a body builder—framed a verse for me that I still hang in my office: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”1 I’ll confess, I haven’t looked at that verse in a while, and I hardly see myself working for God these days. What, if anything, about my workday is spiritual? Can I seriously claim that I’m working for the Lord? My clients call me when they get sued, get in legal trouble, or want to fire someone. No one calls me up to say, “Hey, I was hoping you could help me do some work for God today.”

  Instead, Lady Lawyer has become an expert at firing people. I wonder sometimes, did Jesus ever fire anyone? If so, He certainly didn’t make money off of the deal. I also can’t find any evidence that He billed by the hour.

  Lady Lawyer also has to skip the Bible passages that say “blessed are the peacemakers.” She’s always in the middle of a fight. The better advocate I am, the better result for my client. If clients wanted to throw the towel in and make peace, they wouldn’t hire me in the first place. And if you think I’m tough you should see Sassy Shelly or Jock Jill in action. Jock Jill—my best friend at the firm and one of the toughest lawyers you will ever meet—can take down a room of lawyers with one swing, and Sassy Shelly can outwit (and outtalk) even the best of the best with her silver tongue. It’s nothing personal. Just business.

  I was having lunch with my friend Bleeding-Heart Brian and our pastor, Eric. Bleeding-Heart Brian is another friend from law school (he was in the group that was in the library carrels while Sassy Shelly and I were at the coffee shop), and he was trying to explain the daily battles and utter spiritual void in the practice of law.

  “You enter a battle every day. It’s like jumping from an airplane into enemy territory without backup. You have to have all of your gear, and you can’t let your guard down for a second. You are trying to be as much of a jerk as you can, because your client expects it and you are trying to get the best deal possible for your client. The attorney on the other side is trying to do the exact same thing. It’s all-out war. There’s no room to turn the other cheek or play nice guy. The biggest jerk usually wins.”

  It’s hard for me to refute Bleeding-Heart Brian’s rendition of the legal world these days, although not all lawyers fit this stereotype. I’ve encountered several types of lawyers. Lazy Lawyer. Snake Lawyer. Liar Lawyer. Smart Lawyer. Workaholic Lawyer. Ethical Lawyer. Jerk Lawyer. Most lawyers are some combination.

  My least favorite lawyer to deal with on the other side of the table is the Lazy-Snake Combo. He makes my life miserable on a daily basis because I’m always doing his work for him, and he’s always misrepresenting the truth and picking a fight, which means I have to work twice as hard and charge my client twice as much to document every conversation and respond to lots of nasty letters. I’ve gotten good at responding to nasty letters. I just make sure I lace them with lots of kind words, including “Thank you in anticipation of your cooperation.” Contrary to public opinion, smart, hard-working lawyers usually don’t have to be jerks.

  We pride ourselves at the firm in having the highest ethics and in outworking and outsmarting the other side. Like anyone in a new job, I remember feeling unprepared and even insecure as a summer intern. I had met my match. The good news? It humbled me, which was long overdue. And it gave me a passion for excellence and a work ethic that I never would have developed on my own. I’m blessed to work with people who are smarter than I, which usually makes me look good to my clients.

  The
bad news? Making partner was like climbing Mount Everest. I look at the young lawyers at the bottom of the climb and I don’t envy them.

  The road to partnership was like being on a treadmill that keeps getting faster and faster. Even though Devoted Mommy was in the midst of bearing children, I didn’t have time to second-guess myself. Instead, I kept my lawyer cape on and convinced myself, “Just run one more mile.” I’d finish the mile and Lady Lawyer would say, “Just run two more miles, then it will be over.” Some people just quit. But how could I quit when I’d come all that way? If I stopped, I’d lose my spot in the race and have to start over. So I kept running, even though Devoted Mommy was exasperated.

  Even if you’ve never been on the partnership track at a large law firm, you can probably relate to applying for a new position, reaching for a promotion, or even getting your degree or job training while you’re trying to simultaneously raise a family and be the best mother you can. Something has to give, but the Superwoman within defies reason and your adrenaline just keeps going and going. I’d put the average working mom up against the Energizer Bunny any day. Who needs batteries? Something inside of us won’t give up, because the thought of starting over is all the more exhausting. So while some days we want to throw in the towel and wrap ourselves in our mommy capes and take a long nap in a fetal position, instead we keep pressing on.