As we continue the story from last week, let me do a quick recap…
- Our family of six moves back to Texas after an overseas assignment in Singapore
- It’s a vortex of transition
- We bunk up with my sister and her family of 8 for a few months until we find a house
- It’s an overstuffed clown car of people and activity
- One day my sister asks if I might be pregnant… she has a sixth sense about these things
- It’s a complete blur… the last few months
- Still the possibility of getting pregnant was not even on my radar. We were done.
- I had mentally checked that box off of existence so I told my sister it must be jet-lag.
Well, my sister was not at all buying it. And proceeded to get all up in my business and ask me when my last period was. Huh? Long pause. Remember that whole blur of an international move thang? I couldn’t even remember having periods. Like when was my last cycle? Was it a month ago? Two? Three? I tried to recount all of the significant moments of the last section of my life to maybe trigger a memory of menstruation somewhere along the way. Nothing. I mean who keeps track of little details like that when you’re moving country? If you’re a mom of littles, you get it? In the midst of major transition, you are trying to keep everyone fed, somewhat dry, and coming out alive with minimal emotional scarring. Shoot, that’s just a normal Monday in motherhood even without a major transition. Therefore, that part of my female life was on a back shelf somewhere.
Finally, I conceded. I let my little sister’s prodding sink in and considered that maybe I actually was late. Then, my sister, sporting a huge grin, suggests I take a pregnancy test. Right then and there! Naturally I brush her off like any big sister, worth her weight in domination. I mean its not like I had a test just hanging out in my back pocket. Plus ignorance is bliss right? She then disappears for a nanosecond and returns with a brand, spanking new, still in the box, pregnancy test. Because after all, she told me, she keeps a stash of these suckers in her bathroom. Why, of course she does! She’s been pregnant every other year for over a decade!
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that brand spanking new pregnancy test was positive! I would like to say that I was equally positive but, that would be so untrue. I was more like Rapunzel in Tangled when she leaves home for the first time and becomes completely irrational. She’s elated then scared. She’s excited then conflicted. That was me. I was trying to process the current transition at hand of moving home from an overseas assignment and now I was mentally trying to overlay this news into the swirling vortex. My mama heart was thrilled and at the same time my waist was like, wait, what are you doing, didn’t we just start wearing belts again! Of course this was not my first rodeo but it had been five years since my last one and well I wasn’t sure if my gestational gusto was still alive and kickin’. I mean I was peeking around the corner at the big four O.
Eventually, all the rooms stopped swirling and I was able to have rational thoughts again. My sister had her day in the “I KNEW it” spotlight. Then my husband and I decided to let the kids in on the news. I was still internally wrestling y’all, but God managed to calm my soul enough so that we could deliver the news to the rest of our baby gang. I will never forget my husband and I sitting on those twin beds that had become our bedroom for the last two months, and witnessing the joy and excitement oozing from our little brood, crosslegged on the floor, as we told them there would be a baby brother or sister joining them.
Y’all, God does not mess. He is unswervingly good and perfect and for us! So much so that he will allow our “perfect plan for our lives” to be abruptly interrupted in order to give us His best. My control game is strong sisters and this woman writing to you has an annoyingly determined soul. Therefore, I’m in need of a mighty God who is loving enough to hijack my own agenda in order to loose my grip and make way to receive His good and perfect will for my life. This pregnancy, at a later than ideal stage of womanhood, amidst a major life transition, and a clown car full of babies, was His divine welcome home gift. God’s good and perfect gift. You see, if we are left to orchestrating our own perfectly planned lives, that is a burdensome load to bear and we end up exhausted and burned way out and missing God’s best for us.
Nine months later, not only did we have a new precious baby girl, but we had a new perspective. A new view of God and His best. Much of the time, this tightly gripping control mama can’t see past her own limited lens. In my skewed view I could never have imagined the joy that would flow from God’s perfect plan. The joy of watching my older children love on a baby, become increasingly aware of others needs, and grow in responsibility and maturity at the hands of a darling baby sister.
God’s best also brought immense hope and restoration through the unexpected. God brought forth healing and newness to an area of my marriage that was still raw and tender from a personal crisis that we had walked through just months before leaving Singapore. And once again, God reminded me that my life is not limited to me, myself and I. It’s much bigger and grander than my own timeline, circumstances or struggles.
Life’s greatest accomplishments live on in the lives of others we choose to invest in. Though those lives may, at times, look like crazy clowns, running amok and wreaking havoc in the circus ring of our daily plans. They are lives in the hand of our God, and entrusted to us, to mold and shape and train into a beautiful display of his grace and goodness.
XOXO,
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