I think another big part of this new peace is also just an answer to prayer. The thing that I have prayed for the most, as I have told you blog readers repeatedly, is peace. Not being able to have children causes me fear. This fear is mostly due to the fact that I have never wanted to be anything but a wife and a mom. I don't have any career aspirations. If I don't have children, what the heck would I do with the next twenty years of my life?
I fear spending the rest of my life avoiding places that are painful. The mall, the zoo, church, baptisms, holidays ... it doesn't end. What will it be like when all of our brothers and sisters have children and we don't? How will I manage? How do I deal with being completely left behind?
However, over the last few days, I have realized that this fear is due to the fact that I feel that there is no other calling on my life. That my whole life is designed to be a mother. If I realize that my life is bigger and that the Lord has bigger plans, that fear begins to dissipate. The Lord has plans for me! And as my cousin Sarah told me, those plans don't have to be completely wrapped up in motherhood. My identity is bigger than that.
I don't know what the Lord has planned for JB and me, but we are definitely getting a clearer picture with every passing day and are praying and open to His calling. Whatever those plans, we know that they have our best interest in mind and the interest of His kingdom. I have told the Lord man times that I will follow that plan willingly, if he gives me the peace to do it. This week, after a few days in the pits, I feel that He is helping me to find that peace by realizing that the bigger picture is a lot bigger than motherhood.
That doesn't mean, of course, that I don't want to be a mother. I would love to have a child, obviously. We both feel peace with proceeding with this next IVF cycle, but I pray that these feelings of peace carry into the next few months.
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Please keep our friends Tim and Jenny in prayer as they wait to find out on Tuesday their blood results. My friend Stephanie just had her retrieval today. They had four eggs and so now they wait to hear how those eggs are doing and go back in three days from now for a transfer. In addition, please keep my Grama in prayer as she has not been feeling well.
2 comments:
Wen, thank you for sharing this. It seems part of the answer God is giving you to your other blog where you said you wanted to let go and let God but how to do that is the question. When I read both i thought of what Oom said to me the other day as he is experiencing so much loss in his life -his dreams not coming true, re: health, many things. He said, I told the Lord, "whatever it is you are doing, i want it". I was so touched by that.
love tante
and it reminds me that our life too and his plan is bigger than our own dreams and hopes and health. that doesn't take the true loss away but it does remind me that it is true that God "is able to do exceedingly abundantantly above all we can ask or imagine" -and it gives me hope and anticipation because He is good.
Tante
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