Sometimes things align, coming together in a very clear way, and other times they don't. For years, I have worked towards a life that aligns with motherhood, and it's been very unclear if it will happen. Recently though, I suddenly realized moments throughout my last year have clearly been aligning, and it was time to let it happen.
With a lot more time on my hands in these pandemic days to think, and so many less distractions and busyness that detract from certain thoughts, one thought in particular has kept coming back to me that I've had to wrestle with. I wrestled with it because I did not want this to be a 'me' decision, so I finally talked it through with my husband and God the other day, and feel a conclusion has been reached that has brought alignment between all three of us.
We have made the decision that we are no longer desiring to have our own biological children. We have always been united in wanting our own children, not felt led to adopt or foster, so this is the end of our chapter of trying to expand our family. We still feel God still has something in store that will use our parenting nature, and maybe even my love for babies somehow, but it will not be having kids that we raise as a mom & dad.
I know this doesn't change my identity, yet it still feels that way a little. This is who I have always been, who I was always supposed to become, and there should be more joy in getting to walk more fully in that now. And there is a glimpse of that.
But.
I am also confused about who I have been to this point, my misguided clinging to the label mother. It's harder than I thought, embracing the 'meant to be'. I've always longed for those 'meant to be', 'ah-ha' moments. Not so much this one. Every day of my life I saw myself as a biological mother, and have spent a life time trying to create a life that aligns with that identity. It was a life defined by waiting, by being in the in-between. In between, knowing I could never go back to a place of effortless fertility, but hoping that I would one day still move forward into the fruitfulness of family.
This book I have been reading the past year describes this precarious place of in-between as a tight rope, behind us a ledge we can't ever go back to and ahead a place that is not ready for us or we are not ready for. I wasn't sure until now what the other side of the tight rope held for me, and now that I know it's not my own children, I am still OK stepping off onto that new ground, I really don't want to go backwards. Yet, I am still mourning the idea of what I thought would be waiting for me on the other side.
For now, I'm just allowing myself to feel. It's a little grief mixed with uncertainty mixed with resolution. There is peace and an eagerness for what this means for what's next. I am once again impatient to fill this new void...or really what just feels like a new void, this space has been here for forever. I have spent the better part of ten years trying to release filling this void myself, and give it to God fully. And now I have reached the end of the rope, and I did it, I let go.
Yet, as I say that, I hear God whisper, "nothing is wasted, I am using those years you now feel were misguided and they are actually what is guiding you to the time, place, space you were always meant to be, right here in April 2020."
Yet, as I say that, I hear God whisper, "nothing is wasted, I am using those years you now feel were misguided and they are actually what is guiding you to the time, place, space you were always meant to be, right here in April 2020."
I am right where I was always meant to be.
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