It Ain’t Out There

I remember a post that Jen wrote once (I would link to it, but something odd seems to be happening over there today and I can’t get to the page), (I found it — success!) where she talked about reaching the conclusion, that “whatever you think is out there ain’t out there”.

What does this have to do with anything?

Maybe it’s just the cycle day 1 bloat talking, but man do I feel like I’m missing the boat sometimes.

Yeah. Sort of like that.

Like maybe instead of spending the 1.5 years of marriage when I wasn’t pregnant or a mom pining for a baby, we should have been doing more things together just the two of us.

Because after taking one long weekend car trip with a four month old, I learned a few things:

However long your car trip is, add 2-3 hours to that time.

The baby will poop just after you’ve gotten back on the road from a rest stop, or just when you’ve all sat down to dinner.

If you’re anal like me, and it’s spring in the midwest, you will pack just about every item of clothing your child owns “just in case”. Your child’s stuff will take up twice as much space as yours will.

We were traveling with one baby, just one child, and it was stressful. We only had a five hour (it took 7) drive.

When I sit here and think about how hard it is to travel with one baby, and how it must be 50 times harder to travel with one toddler, let alone a toddler and a baby, I think to myself, “Oh man, why didn’t we go to California, Martha’s Vineyard, Paris, Florence, and all the other places we talked about going?”

Oh yeah, that’s right, because I was a depressed fool for about a year after we lost out first baby and didn’t get pregnant again right away. I was a woman obsessed. Like always.

When I think I should have something, and I don’t have it, I fixate and obsess. It took me about a year after losing Michael to realize that there wasn’t really much I could do except keep trying and trust God. Then I started to think, “Hey, my husband is pretty awesome, and if it’s just the two of us for another year or so, that wouldn’t be too bad. We could do some more traveling.”

The next week, I found out I was pregnant. I’m not saying I wasn’t thrilled, because I was. Completely and totally over the moon.

That picture has nothing to do with this post, but come one, how stupid do you have to be to think an elephant is bigger than the moon? Apparently stupid enough to be on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”.

Anyway, the point of all this is that, usually I am too busy moving on to the next thing, or thinking I am entitled to the next thing, or thinking that happiness lay on just the other side of the next thing, that I don’t learn to love where I am until I’m not there anymore.

Now that I have a baby, I look back on the days before Maggie and realize how much I squandered them on pining for a baby, when a baby was not God’s will for me at that time. Now I wish I had let go more, and enjoyed my husband more when it was just the two of us. I wish we had traveled more.

I do this all the time.

I keep thinking, maybe when I have more children, or more time, or more of something, then my writing will take off. Then it will happen. So I pine for it. And when I feel that I’m being overlooked, I get upset and make myself into a martyr.

But the truth is, if my writing ever really does take off, I’ll look back on this time and think, “Gosh, wasn’t it nice to not have to worry so much about each post, and how it will be received. Wasn’t it nice to be able to write just for me?”

Please tell me I am not the only one like this.

So to tie it all up, there’s this:

Whatever I think, fear, expect, wish, was out there, on the other side of *right now*, it ain’t out there. Because “there” is only reached when, we hope by the grace of God, we are welcomed into the arms of Love Himself after this life is over. All there is right now are the ones entrusted to me:

Thank God for that.