An honor

One incredibly important lesson my first daughter, Angelica, taught me was that our children are never really, totally ours. I have reflected a lot on the different ways that children come to their parents and the concept of having one's own children and how really deceptive that idea is. Sure, children who inherit our genes may have Daddy's nose and Mommy's curly hair, but ultimately, they really belong to God. We are just entrusted with these precious lives to take care of here on earth.

This has helped me to look at motherhood in a whole different way- as I was praying one morning thanking God again for the chance to be a mother and for another day with this baby, I found myself thanking Him for the honor of being able to care for His children. In this way, parents, people without children (married or single), priests, and the religious are really not so different. We all have a calling to care for His children- wherever they may appear in our lives.

And, in my case, recognizing that my children are not really my own will help me to be a better parent, I think. If children were like my own work, my own design, I would have a tendency to want to control them, shape them, make them the way I want them to be. My children are in my care, but they are not mine to control. They are mine to teach and influence, but they are not mine to make into what they will ultimately become.

We all probably dream of the "perfect" children we'll raise someday but we will all come to the sometimes harsh realization someday (if we are privileged enough to be given the blessing of children in our lives), that so much of who children are has more to do with God's intentions and design than our own.

I'm excited to see the ways our baby will act or look like Juan Carlos or me, but I am even more excited to see the ways this child will be made in God's image and show me a side of God, a picture of God, I haven't seen before. I am excited to have a child to teach and to care for, but I am even more excited to have a small soul to learn from and be fascinated by...

I am starting to get pretty nervous about an ultrasound we have coming up next week. I think I may have felt the baby kick but I'm not totally sure and I'm not sure if it's as much as it should be and I know there are so many things that could still go wrong (and right...) Whatever God's plan is for us, I pray for the grace to accept it with peace and courage and I am and always will be eternally grateful for the time and the blessings He's already given us.