The Greatest Author of It All

It wasn’t a particularly chilly night, but the way we were snuggled together on the bench next under the moonlight, one summer’s night, someone certainly would have assumed we were cold.  We were just young and in love.  We were huddled close making plans and dreaming of all that we were sure was going to someday be.

“How many kids should we have?” he asked me.

“4 or 6.  I don’t like uneven numbers.  Someone always gets left out.  But if we can, I really hope we have 6,” I said.

“Me too!  I always wanted 4 or 6 too, but I hope we have 6.”

“6 kids.  That will make us a family of 8.  We definitely will need a big car!” I exclaimed.

“We can have whatever kind of car you want,” he whispered.

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I have thought of that night so many times over the last 10 years.  I have wondered and asked God if this could ever really be true.  My circumstances, my reality told me often that the answer may in fact be no.  We barely have enough money to support the 3 we already have.  We lead a large ministry that consumes a lot of our time and energy, leaving us little for our crew at home.  Pregnancy is hard on my body, and my age tells me that it would probably only get harder if we had more.  Adoption is definitely in our hearts (I have already dreamed on many different occasions of a sweet little 1 year old girl that I believe someday is going to be ours), but the reality of the law means that as directors of a ministry like ours we are unable to adopt. 

The reasons are many. 

But the fact of the matter is, for a long time I was real frustrated with God about this.  I felt that he was ignoring our dreams…ignoring our prayers and pleas.  And the day of reckoning finally arrive a couple of months ago.  I kind of just “had it out with God” so to speak.  I let Him have it.  I cried (literally and figuratively) out to Him to give me an answer…to show me why?  Hadn’t I already given up enough dreams on this journey?  Hadn’t He already asked enough of me?  Couldn’t He just do this one thing for me?  Was that really so much to ask?

I didn’t hear God audibly that morning.  Like so many other moments similar to this one, I eventually just got back up off of my knees, washed my face, and carried on with the rest of my day.  I didn’t have an answer, but I did feel better having said it. 

Something happened, though, after that day. 

For starters, I realized that God already gave me 6 kids.  And I am ashamed to say I didn’t see that before.  “My girls” as I called them…my beautiful young adult girls, while I called them “daughters of the heart,” deep down I knew they really belonged to someone else.  Eventually they would leave me.  While not perfect circumstances or families, they still had aunts or uncles or cousins or brothers or sisters that were theirs.  I didn’t want to hang on too tight because the day might come that they weren’t going to need me or even want me to play such an active part in their lives anymore.  I could call them daughters but maybe they weren’t really wanting or even needing a mom.  My home may not be what they really considered deep in their hearts to be their “home.”

But then I started to really see them…not just glance at them or just take notice of their presence.  No, I really started to see them.  And, what I saw was that they not only still needed me to be their Mama, they wanted me to be too.  I didn’t just dream of someday being Mama to 6, I already WAS one.  No, it may not be how I had imagined.  It wasn’t how I had planned.  I didn’t get the privilege of carrying them in my womb or rocking them to sleep as babies.  I didn’t see their first steps or hear their first words.  I don’t have baby books filled with all their firsts. 

What I do have, though, is the gift of having been able to watch them grow from young girls into beautiful young women.  I know their stories.  I have wiped their tears.  I have laughed until I cried with them.  We have cooked together, we have exercised together, we have watched movies together, we have pigged out on Taco Bell together, and we have played soccer together.  They have cooked Mother’s Day breakfast for me.  They have surprised me with my favorite treats.  They have stepped in to help me when I thought I couldn’t go on.  They have left encouraging notes on days that I was sad.  They have seen me and loved me just as I am, and I have seen them and loved them just as they are. 

How could I have ever asked for more?  How could I have been so blind not to see? 

Sometimes God’s gifts don’t look exactly like we pictured.  Sometimes our lives have gone a path that is so far from the one we originally thought that we would take that it is hard to know if we are even on the right one.  Sometimes the dreams we spent so many hours planning and imagining aren’t the dreams God has for us. 

I imagined Christmas cards being sent out each year with my husband and I surrounded by 6 beautiful children in matching outfits.  I imagined rooms with bunk beds as siblings shared secrets and toys and dreams.  I imagined someday being a grandma of so many grandkids that we needed 3 “kids tables” to accommodate them all.  I imagined holidays with my brood coming home to visit with their spouses and children and my house being filled with so much fun and laughter as we were all stuffed into rooms and living rooms. 

But this life I am living right now, even though it isn’t anything like I pictured, and sometimes its so hard I wonder why God ever thought I was up to the challenge of it all…even besides all those things, I don’t think I could ever trade it. 

My house is always full of laughter and food and fun.  The door is quite literally almost always open.  There are so many people running and in and out of it most days that I am certain I am going to lose my marbles.  My OCD tendency to want to have everything clean and orderly has had to go through some serious shock therapy. 

Life isn’t always neat and tidy.  Dreams don’t always come true.  Marriage is way harder than in the movies.  Parenting can often leave one feeling like a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Ministry isn’t for the weary.  We don’t always get that perfect job.  Money may always be tight.  Our house may never look like those on HGTV and our food may never taste like the Pioneer Woman cooked it.

And that really is okay. 

It’s okay. 

Once we are able to just mourn what could have been and look towards what is, we often find that what we DO have is pretty amazing all by itself.  Sure we may still keep dreaming.  There is nothing wrong with that.  I still long to believe that the beautiful brown-skinned, brown-eyed, black haired darling girl that has filled my dreams so many nights, is still going to call me Mama one day. 

And if it does happen, that just means God far-exceeded what even Hubs and I planned and dreamed all those moons ago.

I read this today from one of the most beautiful books I have read in a long time called Unseen by Sara Hagerty.  She writes,

“In all these experiences, it was if God were the parent in my dream, the one slowly shaping my life from orphan to daughter.  ‘You don’t see it all like I do.  I know what’s best ---- I know you best.  The story you want, though not bad, isn’t the story I have for you.  Will you let me write your story?’ This is the invitation God offers in the winters of my soul.  An invitation to trust that my story is His story….”

Are we willing to let God write our story?  Are we willing to trust that even when things look so different than what we planned that it doesn’t mean the story isn’t good?  Are we finally going to surrender one of things we treasure most of all: our dreams? 

If we truly believe God is Master and Creator of it all, then we also have to believe that He is the greatest Author of all too.  We have to believe that His pen is much more powerful than ours.  We have to trust that what He imagines and dreams doesn’t just stay in the “What Could Be, “ it becomes the “What Is.”

And it is good.  It is so very, very good.