Hope Deferred?

Remember the TLC reality show A Baby Story? I guess it's still being broadcast, but I haven't seen it since the late 1990s. I had to stop watching it because it turned me into an emotional mess. Every. Time.

Like many young women, I dreamed of husband and family. Maybe a Disney version, but I told myself it didn't have to be. Just so long as it was ever after. I collected baby names like some people collect postcards. I envied mothers as they held infants in their arms. I cried myself to sleep. I shook my fist at God because he was taking too long. God, too.

Twenty-something hit the dreaded three-oh. Thirty melted into thirty-five. Thirty-five stumbled blindly into forty. Now here I am, forty-one and still unmarried and without children.

Somewhere along the way, and relatively recently in the Grand Scheme, my heart changed. Today I watched a birth story video, and though I did cry at the beauty of it, I didn't turn into an emotional mess, envy her, or shake my fist at God.

There's no need.

My life is not what I planned, but where did God ask for my input in the first place? I may be disappointed, but not because God's plans have been. His plans are perfect and irrefutable. They cannot be thwarted. God's plan still stands.

To know Him and make Him known.

My arms are empty so I can cling to Him. They're empty so I can hug others in need of encouragement and love. My days are not filled with picking up toys and kissing boo-boos so that my days can be filled with service, in whatever limited capacity my broken body allows at this point. I'm not woken with crying in the night, but when I am awake in the small hours, I can turn to prayer.

To know God and make Him know.

A perfect plan that will not be thwarted.

May God bless the little ones with long life in full pursuit of Him.