The Life Waiting for You

Here I am, still alive :-)  I find myself with a rare moment of quiet this morning, and I have a lot of things on my mind that I want to share.

About a year ago, I decided to put my dreams on the back burner for awhile.  It was clear to me that God's plans were very different from the dreams I had been picturing.  All I wanted was to be a mom.  I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, a homeschooling mom, someone who worked in ministry at church with other moms, etc.  This dream completely defined me.  And when God said "no" to that dream, it almost broke me.

I tentatively decided about a year ago to go back to school for something that had always been intriguing to me.  It meant that I was probably going to be postponing motherhood even further.  That I would probably never be a stay-at-home mom or a homeschooling mom.  God was telling me to give all of that up.  At least for now.

I found that as I let go of those things, I was changed.  First of all, I felt like I could just be.  I didn't have to be worrying or controlling things.  I found so much more joy in everyday life.  And I became passionate about a new dream: helping others communicate.

A year later, I can begin to see the reason for God's "no."  First of all, we now have the opportunity to move to the first floor apartment of our house.  This meant doing a lot of renovations (which we are almost done with!!  We will be mostly moved in a week from today if all goes as planned!)  As I have spent the majority of the last month working on renovations, I realize this would have been almost impossible with a baby.  I also realize that I couldn't have helped much if I had been pregnant.  But as it is now, I was able to do all kinds of work, turning that apartment into our home.  And I know it's going to be a HUGE blessing once we move in.

I also realized that if I would have had a baby back when I wanted to (about a year ago) I would have had to spend the last year lugging a baby and all kinds of baby gear up and down 20 + steps every time I left the house.  It doesn't sound like a big deal, but I'm sure it would have been such a pain!  Now we're placed in a perfectly convenient spot on the first floor.

Also, in our upstairs apartment, we had a room set aside that was going to be the nursery if we ever needed it.  But for some reason I could never picture it is a nursery.  Maybe that's because it wasn't meant to be a nursery?  However, in the new apartment, there is a little bedroom which will be the office for now.  But every time I go in there, all I can see is a nursery.

And then there's school.  I had always said that if I didn't homeschool my kids, I wanted to go back to school myself when they were school-aged to get my SLP degree.  I now realize just how difficult that would have been, and I'm so glad to get the opportunity to do it NOW, before things get totally CRAZY.

I'm going to come back now to the fact that I know God can use me to change lives as an SLP.  It is my mission (if I get into the grad program, that is!) to love and serve people through speech therapy.  It is such a special phenomenon to me that you can take a completely nonverbal child, teach him to use a communication device, and bam...you have just unlocked the gift of communication for this child!  When I think about it, I become so  passionate about it, and I can't wait to get out there and start practicing!!  Yes, I believe God wants part of my mission to be a mom, and maybe an adoptive mom, but a big chunk of it is speech therapy as well (at least I think it is.  I guess this post is a little premature since again, I don't know if I've been accepted to the program yet or not).

Speaking of adopting, I've always felt a call to adopt.  I'm still waiting for Luke to receive that call, but for the sake of this post, let's pretend he's going to get it :-)  If God does bless me, and I do become an SLP, we will have the financial means to adopt.

I'm beginning to see a small glimpse of God's plan, and the reason He didn't give me what I wanted, right when I wanted it.  He was telling me to wait, because He had better things coming!  It was so painful, and sometimes still is.  But I pray that God would  never give me what I want if it forfeits what He has planned!

I saw this quote on Pinterest awhile ago, and I've made it my motto:

 "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."  


 Things are never going to be just exactly the way we want them to be.  And that is probably the biggest blessing of all.