Is It Giving Up?

A friend of mine will be having a little boy at the end of the summer and I find myself thinking that I should box up some (or most) of the clothes from the doodle from his first year and pass them along to her. And at the back of my mind is the niggling question: Does that mean I've given up on a second child?

In many ways, no. My instant response is that even if we get another placement, there's no guarantee that it'll be a boy. Couple that with the fact that, at least right now, we're in a much better financial situation than my friend and thus well able to replace anything that needs replacing and, well, passing things along seems like the right thing to do.

But on the other hand? I think maybe some of the answer is, honestly, yes. We'll have been waiting for a placement for two years come August, with only one nibble. And while in the overall scheme of things, that's not all that long, it does mean there's only one more year on our homestudy (and yes, the mental gymnastics of whether or not we should renew it when it's expired have already started whirling in my brain) and none of us are getting any younger. I don't really want there to be six years between the kiddo and his sibling. Nor do I want to be a 42 year old mother of a newborn. I know that many people do it and do it well - but the thought of being in my 60s when my child graduates from college is hard to fathom.

At the end of the day, what I'm striving for is to rest in the knowledge that God is sovereign. And so if He chooses to give us another child, He will, in His time. And if that means that the kiddo is six and I'm older than I wanted to be, then He'll show me how to roll with it. And we can buy new onesies if that's what we need to do. In the mean time, my friend could use the clothes.