Blah and Missing

So. Yesterday I was sick - still am - but we had to go to Waldemart for butt paper. So, I'm drudging through the store and we pass the "baby" section. And I feel myself listlessly submit myself to that section and all it entails. And then, as quickly as that happened, I found myself wondering what the crap just happened. Ultimately, I determined that I was run down by this stupid sickness and that it was an indifferent sort of acceptance, a tired acknowledgement.

And yet. . .

And yet, there are moments that skulk up on me - like it did today - when I have a sneaking suspicion that we are missing out on the amazing sublimity that comes with being parents. I can't quite put words on it. It's the sense that we're living an incomplete life. We're perfectly, if ignorantly, happy. We feel complete. But there's this missing element. The elephant in the room everyone else has already seemed to acknowledge, give a name, and make the honorary family pet.

Somedays we can't imagine our life with kids. The mundanity, stress, and demand of it scares us. REALLY scares us. That whole going from a couple to a family thing is a little unnerving. Like leaving your best friend to go study abroad. Or leaving for a mission. You'll come back to normal life eventually, but it will never ever be the same. No matter how much you hope. And in the meantime, you will miss it. Even as you eventually leave it all behind. And ultimately forget about it. After all, what else is nostalgia for?

I worry that we'll either hate it or love it. I'm betting on the love it one, which worries me almost as much as the "hate it" option, because I tend to second-guess myself - and if I love it I know I'll wonder why we waited so long. And then, I'll have to remind myself - like I have with SO many other things in my life - that I made this important decision a matter of prayer. That I prayed about it. That it wasn't just me. That this Big Decision involves the agency and choice of at least two other human beings - my husband and an imagined child.

Realizing this will help me have peace. That we did it when we believed it was best for us. And when we were supposed to.

~Nichole