I Don't Know How She Does It

The other week we rented "I Don't Know How She Does It" with Sarah Jessica Parker. I really wanted to see this movie & tried to see it in the theater but didn't have the time. Plus I just don't really feel like forking over $10.50 to watch a movie on the "BIG SCREEN".

I'm not the biggest fan of SJP especially because of her "Sex and the City" escapades but I do think she's fairly funny in the movies she's in. I do however, have a soft spot for Greg Kinnear who made me cry in "The Last Song."

Alright this is starting to sound like a movie review, it's not really, it sort of is but it's not. Trust me, just stay with me.

I really appreciated this movie from a couple different aspects. (Warning this will contain some spoilers so if you haven't seen it yet & want to then don't read until watching) In it there is the temptation for Kate (SJP's character) to have an affair with the businessman she is working very closely with. She chooses not to have an affair. Not only does she not have an affair but she doesn't let herself get to that place where she's sending inappropriate emails to him or putting herself in inappropriate situations with him. She loves her husband & her kids, a lot & even proves it when the businessman professes his love for her & how she makes him feel. She promptly informs him that she's glad he feels that way, because now he can feel that way with someone else, the same way she feels with her husband. Faithful wives-1 Lying Adulteresses-0

Kate has an assistant, Momo played by the delightfully sarcastic sometimes monotone Olivia Munn. Momo is a career driven robot who thinks kids ruin everything & seeing Kate be frazzled most of the time just backs her theory. Until, one day she's pregnant. She tells Kate & she says she's going to "take care of it". Kate goes into this wonderful slightly panicked monologue about the wonder & miracle of having children. She gets interrupted but we see later on in the movie that Momo decides to have the baby. I cannot express how grateful I am that for once, Hollywood chose not to have an abortion. In the end, Momo has the baby and she's crying and has messy hair but she's happy. She tells Kate "Why didn't you tell me how this felt?"Man, do I love this moment. Not only did Hollywood score major points by not having Momo get an abortion but they helped show how you don't understand the amazing miracle that it is to be a mom UNTIL you're a mom.

The main point of the movie is that Kate struggles with being full time employed but also trying and wanting to be a full time mom. She ends up most of the time disappointing her family to please her company and keep her job. This is the struggle for many working moms. While I didn't appreciate how they portrayed the stay at home mom, there is that feeling between working and stay at home moms that I wish wasn't there. We're all moms, we need to unite over our children throwing up on us in the middle of the night, not divide because one of us works out of the home and the other doesn't.

I understand part of Kate's struggle. I'm a stay at home mom but I have a part-time job which really with how much time it takes, it's a full time job for me. When I leave to cover a story or do an interview, my daughter pleads with me not to leave and I hate it. Man, do I hate it. Sometimes, she tells me I leave too much which I know isn't true but it's hard to hear. But then there's those times when I don't have interaction with taller people who don't ask me to do something for them every 2 minutes for a couple of days and I need to get out of the house and away from my child. And there are just times when I feel like I'm disappointing everyone around me.

But we don't have to feel that way. We don't have to have a division between working moms and stay at home moms. We don't have to feel like we're not good enough and disappointing everyone around us. Because God has already declared us good enough. We can have hope in Christ because He died for us! And our greatest calling, is taking care of our children in the best way that we can as moms. We can stop competing with each other, we have different styles of parenting and every kid is different. We need to bind together and encourage each other in this journey of motherhood. We can be each other's greatest friends or greatest enemies. Which would you rather have?

Personally, I'd rather have greatest friends in whom I can confide my deepest fears, my greatest triumphs, and my funniest laugh until you cry stories as a mom.