Musings of an older Mom...

I started writing this post right after we came home from finalizing the adoption of our youngest son, who was seven months old...what a blessing he is in our lives!  We waited for a long time for this little guy, five years almost to the day.  To think we almost gave up, not because we didn't want to wait anymore although that may be just a smidgen of it but mostly because we are not young parents.  We started our married life and now our parenting life very late...

I am thankful for the opportunity to be a mom; better late than never they say; but there are many days I wish I was younger for many, many reasons...

One of them is that I feel like I am not on the same wave length as so many other moms and maybe it's all my own perception that is coloring the situation, but I feel very insecure around all these young moms and feel like we can't connect...maybe a feeling more like I am being judged, but is it really me judging me?  I will never really know the answer to this and is it really that important that I do?  Sometimes it is better to not know the truth!  My problem is that I also feel lonely in this endeavor...some of my friends are older than me and are done with kids...sure, they love their grandkids, but they are not in a place where they want our kids around or at least that is the feeling I get.  Again, is it just my feelings that I am reading into everything?  Then I feel guilty because I am the one that signed up for this adventure so why am I in a place of discontent?  It is so weird!  I wonder if there are other older moms that find themselves sitting with these conflicted feelings as a result of not feeling like they fit anywhere or maybe this is just a holdover of how I have always struggled to fit in...

Also, I never knew that with mothering comes all this other stuff that I didn't really know I was signing up for...like dealing with all the other mothers and their opinions and having to be a part of this larger community for the sake of my sons.  Sometimes I just want to go back into being a hermit and not dealing with all the drama, judgment and silliness that goes with this territory.

God knows.  God knows that this is what I would be facing and that I would need to call out to Him for help because I can't run away from it all as my son wants relationship with these other kids whose moms are twenty years my junior...right now he thinks we are pretty cool, but that may change when he sees how old we are compared to his friends mom's.

This is way more than I bargained for.  Lord help  me in my weakness and insecurity!

Some days...

Some days feel like they are never going to end...screaming kids, cranky husband, irritable self complete with lack of connection; a middle of January sort of day in the northwest...gray and all you want to do is zone or sleep.  But, sleep is not to come for these weary eyes until much, much later.

I'm sure I am not the first to call out, "When is this day going to end"?  "That's it, I'm done!"  But done we are not and this day will end before we know it.  Sometimes just hanging on by our fingernails is all we can do, though painful, it will end at some point.  God is the keeper of our days and our years...and He is good even when life gets hard because of our brokenness and the brokenness of others as well as the sinful world in which we live. 

I was pondering that thought the other day...how us sinful and broken parents are trying to raise up Godly, respectful children who are also broken from birth and how that brings great challenge right from the get go.  It is so easy to worry about the future sometimes, hoping and praying that our boys will love Jesus with all their hearts and not turn away from His ways; but they will fail.  To think that in God's perfectness his first two children, Adam and Eve who were born into a world without sin, sinned not too long after they were created when presented with a choice...not too encouraging!  They chose to listen to the evil serpent putting doubts into their heads and were led down a path of doubting their good Father and as a result rushed headlong into great destruction not only for themselves but for us all. 

Although not a very happy thought, God is a Father who loves and redemption is what He is in the business of doing!  So...I will do what I can do, mostly pray and try to listen to the Holy Spirit and blunder my way through parenthood, and He will do what He will do with the hearts of my boys...drawing and wooing them as only He can in and through their failures and mine!

You Look Like....

What would he/she would've looked like?  Would she look like me?  Would he be like me? Questions that all came to my mind the other morning while making our bed for some reason, right out of the blue.  We have two beautiful adopted sons and we are grateful for the chance to be parents although being older parents sometimes poses unique challenges that one doesn't think about until there.  I don't think too much about the what if's, probably an exercise in futility, but it was an interesting as well as a sort of haunting thought.  I think I thought of this because I had been looking at pictures of one of our sons siblings and birth mother and was trying to figure out who he resembled.  Might we have had a girl I already know what her name was going to be..."Bella Faith", and that makes me sad.  My grandmother's name was Bella and I always wanted to honor her and my mom for her loss and my loss of not having her in my life.  But that is not the plan God had for me.  I wistfully think of that often actually and grieve over the loss of what apparently can never be...

One of our sons looks a lot like us, people often tell us that and no one would know that he was adopted.  The other son is another ethnicity so there are never comments about how he looks so much like us.  It may seem like a small thing, but it is a thing nonetheless.  I don't think about that part very much at all, but there are fleeting moments when it crosses my mind and I am sure as they get older it will cross their minds as well.

God knows what He is up to and it is up to  me to trust that His plans are good and there is where I will leave this lingering thought....