“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Daily Prompt – Baby

I always believed I was going to be a Mom.

I loved babysitting and was good at it. From the time I was 12 to 15, I cornered the market in our neighborhood. Of course, my friends were all out on weekends having fun, but I was raking in the bucks! However, it really wasn’t the money. I just loved to be around babies and kids younger than me.

I still looked after friends’ children from church, my condo complex, and eventually, I got a part-time nanny position with first one family and then two, each with a wonderful little boy. The first family did not need me after the second child was born but then hired me again when the wife went back to work, only to be expecting No. 3 shortly after! I stayed with the second family until they had a second boy. This turned out to be my dear friend Dee. While she found a daycare when she went back to work the second time, I helped out with after school times or picking up from daycare, sick days, whenever she needed me.

When I was married the first time, we wanted children but I knew very early on that it would not be good to bring a child into that relationship. So, even though I longed for a child, I knew in my heart that my health, my husband, and my age were against it happening.

A very dear friend of mine called me up one day and said that she had been praying for me to have a child of my own because of my mother’s heart. She told me that the Lord put something very important on her heart – if I had a child of my own, it would take me away from all of His other children who needed me to show them the love that is in my heart.

I cried. I believed this to be the Truth, and I felt honored that the Lord loved me so much He would give me His lost children to care for. But I was also still angry that He didn’t think I could handle a child of my own and His other children. Through some prayer of my own (and the realization that my first marriage was a horrible mistake), I soon accepted the Lord’s blessing.

By the time I married my current wonderful hubby, I was in my early 40’s and going through some tough things emotionally and physically. My arthritis and fibromyalgia were taking over my life. I finally submitted to the fact that I never would have my own baby.

Then the “kids” I was connecting with were getting married and having babies of their own. All of a sudden I was being treated like a “grandma” and loving every bit of it.

I guess the moral of this story is “We can’t always get what we want… sometimes we get more!”*

Lydia!

*With apologies to the Rolling Stones!