I Always Thought We’d Have Eight

I almost brought home a puppy yesterday. She was little and warm and cute, and a baby, and in the past few weeks I’ve been struggling with the fact that our current baby is three. You see, I always thought we’d have eight.

I never really said that magic number out loud to anyone. I buried it deep inside like a guilt pleasure of a secret, but that was always my assumption. As far back as my pregnancy with Ella, which was 11 years ago, whenever people would ask if we were going to have more children, my lips would smile and say, “we’re leaving that up to God,” while in my heart would beat, “We’re going to have 8!!!!” It was a certainty that I simply took on faith.

My gut instinct was “confirmed” for me when we asked a friend to be the guardian of our children (this was back when we had five), and she saucily acted with, “I’ll take the first eight! After that we’ll have to renegotiate.” It was silly, but I knew we’d picked the right girl because she’d known the pass code of my “secret number.”
Fast forward to today, age and health issues are making the notion that our final tally might be our own “Magnificent Seven” rather than my own Expected Eight. Which is how I found myself sighing over a pair of big brown eyes and the warm wriggly mess they belong to. I don’t know how to live without a cuddly warm baby to love on, I’ve never done it in the entire 19 years of our marriage. For a brief moment, that sweet puppy filled my lap and my empty arms.

With one of our seven already grown and out of the house and my current baby a fiercely independent three, I’m finally having to live the painful other side of being open to God’s plan when it comes to being Open to Life – that sometimes there isn’t a new baby on the way. Sometimes God says ‘No.’ And being Open to Life doesn’t just mean welcoming the ‘Yes’, it also means learning to embrace the ‘No’.

Living in faith isn’t a skill we learn once and then have mastered. It’s a skill we have to continually re-learn throughout our lives. Some days it’s saying yes to the big scary things, and other days it’s going dandelion picking with my three-year-old and trying to remember it all, because she’s growing up and there won’t always be someone to go “blowing on wishing flowers” with me.

Good golly,  now I really want to go back and get that puppy, if she showed up here tomorrow, I definitely wouldn’t say no. (Dear husband – hint, hint)

Photo Credit: The puppy pic comes from the breeder who would be thrilled to send her or her siblings home to one of you nice people.

The other picture is my own. Don’t use it without asking.