Choice

Sixty-two months have passed since I sat down to write my first blog post.

Holy Bananas. Sixty-two months.

It was January 17, 2007. We were about to make our first visit to the RE to hopefully get some help in adding to our family. I was excited, scared, and quite frankly angry that we were to the point of inviting doctors into a part of our lives that should have been private and sacred.

In closing, combining, and “sanitizing” my two blogs to start this one, I read back through each and every post I’d written over the years. Once I removed the identifying information, O also read through to double check that I’d taken out everything I’d meant to.

“Shell shocked.”

That is how I would best describe both of us after reliving the past five years.

For each sweet memory that my words evoked, there were so many more that were devastating to revisit. We could not believe how much we’d been through and sadly, how much of it we’d simply forgotten.

We have had so many children pass through the periphery of our lives – children we were approached about adopting either through foster care or privately. I thought about figuring out of the exact number as I read, but decided that it was probably best that I didn’t know. I’d guess that it was close to a hundred though, and for whatever reason none of the situations have lead to a forever child in our home.

Five years is a really long time. Five years can bring about a lot of change. And a lot of changes of heart.

As I said in a post a while back, I don't know if I want to be a mom. 

Perhaps it’s not so much the passage of time, but rather the fallout from the hell we lived through last year living with a violent child. I don’t really know.

I remember quite clearly retreating with O to our front porch so often last summer, holding hands and silently rocking, desperate to find just a moment of peace in our hearts and in our minds. We could not have felt more like prisoners if we’d been looking through the cell bars at the local county jail. It felt like a nightmare that we’d never wake up from.

If that's still impacting my views of what motherhood would be, I’m sure that time will bring more healing and my desire to be a parent will return.

But I’m starting to think that maybe it’s something bigger than that.

Heaven knows that we started this whole family-building adventure pretty late in life, relatively speaking. Tack on five years and I am now nearing my mid-40’s. I wonder if I have simply moved into another phase of my life, one where I’m just not certain that I'm still willing to give up all that we'd have to sacrifice in order to become parents. I love my husband madly. I love our little home and our pets who share it. I love spending time with friends and family. I love that we can travel when we want to. Simply put, I love that we come first. 

I have always appreciated this life we have created together because quite frankly, I never thought I’d have someone like O. But since the kids left nearly six months ago (to the day), I treasure it all the more. I revel in it. It feels like the most precious gift in the world to me and I am so very grateful for it, and for the return of peace to our lives. I have not forgotten what it was like to live in a war zone.

So I can’t quite put my finger on why I’m no longer in a super-motivated-must-make-it-happen frame of mind anymore when it comes to motherhood.

But I’m not.

And that leaves us with a choice.