Last Friday night I had 7 of my dearest friends from college over. We initially shared the bond of sorority sisters but that bond went beyond Greek lettered jerseys, spring breaks in Florida, and formals. The sweetness of our friendship has remained through the years, overseas, into careers and into new seasons of marriage and motherhood.
As we sat around the table, forks clanking against plates, laughter ever present, and the room humming with conversation, one of my friends asked what me what our plans were for starting a family.
We’re at that point, after being married for 3 years, escapading all over Asia for a year, and becoming recent homeowners, where people are asking, in one way or another, when kids are coming.
Some are direct in their questioning, they straight up ask ‘so when are you guys going to start trying to have kids?’ while others beat around the bush and in a round about way try to elicit information by saying something like ‘so now that y’all are back are are settled in, what’s next?’
When my friends asked that night around the table, I gave the same answer I give everyone these days but this time, the words felt different and surprising.
‘Honestly, I have no idea.’ I replied.
And it was true.
Truthfully, I have no idea.
When Justin and I talk about it together, we reach the same conclusion every time; we have no idea.
I’m a type A planner sort of person so my life was always pretty well planned out and I liked it that way. We dated since we were sixteen and married shortly after graduating from college. We both came from bigger families and loved our childhood with lots of brothers and sisters so we’d both always wanted a bigger family of our own with adoption as part of the story. We wanted our kids to be close in age, pop ‘em out, boom boom boom, and then be done.
The funny thing is that now, being closer then ever to the age where we will have a family of our own, I have less and less of an idea of what our family will look like.
Well, more like I have absolutely no clue and weirdly, I’m ok with it.
Not only am I ok with the not-knowing what our lives will hold but I’m coming to love our lives together more and more as they are ever evolving.
It’s bizarre but its true.
We love our lives more than ever right now and we know less of what they will hold.
Our ‘plan’ has slowly disintegrated and rather than leaving me an a full fledge panic, it’s comforting and it’s thrilling.
The less I try to stick with the script, the more I love the scenes that find their way into the story.
And the story of ours lives that is being written more and more each day is a far better story than anything I could ever plot out or plan.