I always knew I wanted children. When I was a little girl I played with baby dolls and nursed puny, infant animals to health and vigor. As I grew older my parents had more children, [and] I was the perfect, built-in babysitter, and had a natural, easy way with little ones. But wanting babies one day and actually finding the right person to have them with are two different things. Sometimes finding the right formula (perfect time + intense desire x the correct baby daddy) can be difficult. So you find yourself like I was. Thirty years old, divorced, sitting in my parent’s spare bedroom alone with my cat, wondering what happened to my life.
Thankfully I did find love again, and it met all the right calculations. And even though we weren’t even kinda close to ready, we certainly became ready when the flame got turned up on high in the way of a positive pregnancy test and the baby that followed. We were madly in love with parenthood, and before we knew it we added a couple more ladies to our passel of girls. Fast forward ten years and the joy keeps growing each day.
This morning as I drove to work I thought about how happy I was with life, and as minds tend to do I pondered on the possibility of how things could have gone differently. What if I had married my college sweetheart (who’s my husband now) at [19] when he first proposed, and then we had started our family straight away? I mean, I’m certain we would be extremely blessed and happy like we are today, but I’m not sure it would have been quite as sweet. Let me explain.
One thing that brought these thoughts to my mind this morning was the echoing words from my father-in-law. My in-laws had traveled into town to visit with us all week, and as we said our goodbyes last night he had taken my head in his hands, kissed my cheek, then looked intently in my eyes and said, “Trust the Lord, and He will steer you in the right direction.”
I had smiled at his words, so true and full of love. Since his son and I had dedicated ourselves to following Jesus, life had taken on a fullness and even simplicity that it had never held before.
I responded to him, “It took us a while to get our heads screwed on straight, but I think we’re headed in the right direction now!”
Then he replied, “Well, y’all certainly got it figured out sooner than it took us!”
