Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice

I, like many other little girls, grew of with a fantasy of one day becoming a mommy myself.  That fantasy played out with my dolls who were all, without fail, girls.  I had a sister, and on one side of my family only female cousins.  I envisioned my future of daughters and tea parties and party dresses.

Then along came Son #1 whom I was positive was a girl until he was about 6 minutes old and the doctor told me AGAIN that he was a boy.  A BOY?  How had I ever had a boy?  But I had and he was perfectly amazing. Apparently I would have a son.

A few months later we started the adoption process.  Our homestudy said we were open to any gender, but secretly I believed that if we were adopting two children at once, chances were at least ONE of them would be a girl.  And 18 months later Greg and Eric, two definite boys joined our family.  And they were perfectly amazing.  Apparently I would have 3 sons.

9 months later I discovered I was pregnant.  "God knew how much I always dreamed of a daughter" I thought, "and THIS is how she will arrive".   37 weeks after conception, son #4, our precious Caden arrived. 

I was the mother of 4 sons.  And we were DONE.  Well Shel was D-O-N-E and I figured I couldn't sneak more kids past him. 

I loved being a mother of sons.  I loved how they played together and loved how they all fell in love with their mommy.  I loved the wrestling and the noise and the hockey practices and even the dirt and farts and all the rough and tumble  that goes with a house full of boys.  I loved it more than I had even dreamed possible. 

But that secret part of my heart missed that little girl.  And I begged God to take away my desire for a daughter because it hurt too much.  I knew we were done.  I dared dream when Jazzy was in our family, but in the end losing her hurt even more because I had dared to dream of tea parties and weddings and playing with make up and a future with a little girl, and then one day she was just gone and I was again daughterless.

I did not WANT to want a daughter.  I did not want to feel that ache and that absence.  I prayed, I cried, I tried desperately to "get over it".  We weren't adopting again.  We weren't fostering again.  We most certainly not having another biological baby again.  I was the very proud mother of four sons, and had been the "for a while" mom of a daughter that was gone.  I wanted, desperately, for that to be enough.

And along came the girls who became my daughters.  Unexpected. Unplanned.  And a far greater blessing than I had ever even dared to dream of.  TWO daughters.  Two.

Raising babies is raising babies.  Girls pee and poop and need clean clothes and want breakfast and supper just like boys do.  They play and are noisy and break my things and throw up in the car and spill their milk just like boys do. 

And there are moments that take my breath away that are possibly more precious now than I would have ever known if my heart's desire had been granted back when I thought it should be.  Like putting a ribbon in a pony tail on a Sunday Morning.  Smoothing lip gloss on pursed upturned lips who want to be just like mommy.  Painting toe nails and lacy tights.  The little things that add up to a full heart.

And then there are the big things.  The dreams I never dared speak out loud because to hear them fall on deaf ears would hurt more than having never spoken them.  I was married in a (circa 1994) wedding dress.  Large, fluffy, long and to me, at that moment, the fulfillment of all my little girl, teenage obsessed wedding fantasies. 

After my honeymoon as I wrapped the dress up to put away I knew that one day I would turn my wedding dress into Baptismal dresses for my future soon-to-be daughters.  And it never happened.  The dress was sent away to be locked into a basement closet at my father's house.  Once every few years I would peek at it and touch the tulle and satin and remember that dream.  And then I would pack it away and the dream with it.

In a few weeks we will stand as a family before God,  friends and family and we will acknowledge our responsibility to raise the girls to the best of our ability.  And I will remember the cries of my heart and rejoice. 

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” 1 John 5:14

I do not believe that the girls, or their family of birth, or our family, went through the losses we all did in order to become a family because I had a desire for daughters that God intended to fill, but I do believe that out of the ashes of addiction and loss and pain and suffering, great joy has come.  And I will celebrate that joy without reservation.