Open to Life on Whose Terms?

So what does "being open to life" really mean?  Does it mean someone's open to having a baby...really?  We all seem to think we're going to get the perfect baby, the gender we want, the personality we want, the perfect birthing experience (whatever that is for each person),  and all on our time...when we want.

After staying home with my first son for the first four years, I found myself back in the classroom due to financial constraints.  I taught middle school three more years, but this time I got to teach my first love - which was math.  The most ironic thing about that first year back, was the inordinate amount of similarity between this class and my very first class. I was thankful I didn't teach them most of the subjects like my first job...this time it was only math.  I did, however, see this as a second chance.  The cast of characters was so similar, but I was older, a little wiser now from being a mother, and I knew God was presenting this situation to me a second time for a reason.

I loved my students and I loved what I was teaching, but I was longing for a second child of my own.  In January of my third year there, I suffered a miscarriage.  I was devastated and blamed it on the stress of the job.  In March, I put in my resignation and had no intentions of ever going back.  I took off the entire next year just to be home with my son and to try to get pregnant.  I couldn't get pregnant.  Not only did I feel like a failure, but I felt like God had abandoned me.  Why was it that I had such a strong notion that God had more children for me, but that He was holding out?  Why wouldn't He send me the rest of my children???  I was angry, and I felt desperate.  The end of the school year was approaching,  I had no pregnancy to show for it, and I wondered if the baby I had lost would be the last baby I would ever carry in my womb.

My doctor advised fertility pills.  I remember feeling excited that medicine was coming to the rescue.  Surely fertility pills would do the trick.  Why wouldn't they?  I had been pregnant before.  My husband wasn't so keen on the idea; he felt it should be in God's hands - not ours.  That sounded like a cop out to me.  Why wouldn't I try if medicine was telling me I could?  I begged him to let us try.  We tried for three months and the only thing the pills got me was a major mood enhancer in the wrong direction - my hormones were on overdrive and I let just about everybody "have it".  Difficult would be a major understatement to describe me during those three months!

It didn't work.  I was trying very hard to accept God's plan for us as parents of an only child.  I had always wanted a large family...this didn't make sense to me and I was sad to my core.  I decided to go back to teaching to get my mind off of it.  We continued to try with no luck.  I wondered if there was something in me or my relationship with my husband that was holding us back.  I had always wanted a girl, but could my feelings of specifying the gender and not simply allowing God's plan to unfold be the cause of my apparent infertility.  What if the timing just wasn't right?  Did God really need me in that teaching position and I would just have to wait?  Or would that day never come?

One night, while laying in bed, I began praying...but praying like I never had before.  I was exhausted.  I didn't want to think about babies anymore.  I was brought to my knees and I completely gave up.  I told God that whatever his plan was for me, I was okay with that - even if it meant I would be the mother of one child.  I had gone through so much, and had hit the bottom, and I really was okay with God's plan for us as a family.  I was relieved.  I felt like I had been finally freed.  Maybe there was something to what my husband had told me before I tried the fertility pills.  Maybe there was more wisdom than I knew in the Catholic teachings.

A couple weeks later my son awoke in the middle of the night from an apparent nightmare.  Only it wasn't a nightmare that scared him, but something he saw in his dream.  He dreamed an angel came down through the ceiling of our house and brought with him four children.  He said he was so happy finally playing with other children in his own house and they all got along.  He said they all liked the "same stuff".  What scared him was that at the end of the dream, the angel turned to leave and take the children with him, and he could see the wings in his back.  He said they were large and it scared him.   I assured him that night that an angel would never want to scare him.  He fell back asleep happy, and I wondered...did it mean something?

Little did I know, I was one week pregnant with my second son.