Children - Adult or Otherwise

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. Elizabeth Stone

I never wanted to have children. Then I reached the age of 24 and, having lost my second child ante nativitatis, suddenly wanted nothing else than to hold my baby.

I was given that gift the following year, at the age of 25, and again at the age of 29. There was not a thing I would do differently, there is nothing I would exchange for the two beautiful daughters that I was most blessed to have in my life. Do I regret missing out on knowing those unborn children and wonder how life would have been different had they lived? Of course I do. But I would not change anything if it meant not having the profound privilege and pleasure of Those Two. 

My daughters are not perfect. But they are clever and brave, intelligent and determined. They are in many ways the same and many ways different from me, and so very their own selves. It dazzles me - and makes my heart ache. 

Having a child is indeed like having your heart walk around outside your body. You can protect them, nurture them, encourage them, teach them... they will undoubtedly have some of your features and quirks, but they will be themselves. And therein lies the rub. 

Just as I did in my turn, so have my daughters done in theirs. No matter the generation, we will inevitably see things differently; we will react to ideas and ideals differently, because we have our different paradigms through which we view life. As one of them so honestly told me once: "I can't learn from your mistakes, I have to make my own."

Somehow, I had the notion that having children would mean that you would always have someone to share dreams and adventures and goals with. And that does indeed happen, at least for a few years. When they come into their own, however, their dreams and adventures and goals will, of necessity, not always include you. That's called "Adulting." Pray that they have paid attention and have learned to do it well, because you will no longer have a say in the direction they take.

But above all, PRAY. When the hour is dark and you feel you have been abandoned or at the very least, rejected, PRAY that the Truth will find them and your mistakes will not have so hardened their hearts that they cannot find their way Home.

- for now, three things last —
trust, hope, love;
and the greatest of these is love.

Just love them.