What's the Plan?...by Liimu

"Would I plant your feet on an unsecured ladder? Its supports may be hidden,
but if I have asked you to step up, then surely I have secured the ladder."

That was sent to me by a friend of mine, excerpted from Messages from God. It's such an important idea - that when God (or whatever you believe in) makes a path available to you, why would you doubt that it's the right path?

When I found out I was pregnant, I told a friend of mine and she was so worried for me. "You've only recently gotten your finances under control," she said, "and you have a hard time managing with the three you have." Not sure what she expected me to do - I was married with three kids who had been begging for a baby brother for years. What am I, gonna go to Planned Parenthood and "take care of it?" Let's not even talk about the fact that my husband had been saying for months that he had a feeling someone was missing from our family and that maybe we should have one more.

I didn't say any of that to her. I told her, "We weren't doing fertility drugs, charting ovulation or even really paying attention to when we were having sex. Clearly this is God's plan and in my experience, God doesn't come up with half a plan. He doesn't drop something like this in your lap and then go, 'Oh, but good luck with affording it - that's on you.' I'm not saying that doesn't happen to people, but it doesn't usually happen to me. Usually, when God throws a curve ball it's because He has a much better plan than the plan I came up with and if I just go with it, He takes care of whatever pieces of the plan I can't handle. That's just my experience. If God felt we were to be blessed with another baby, I'm quite sure he's going to help us figure out how to manage and pay for raising him."

And sure enough, my consulting business is now booming, and I'm experiencing my best year ever. I'm having fun doing what I love to do, and I'm making more than enough money to afford this new addition to our family. Fortunate, because my husband just got laid off.

I know what you may be thinking - oh CRAP, and you just had a baby! No, no, no - don't feel sorry for us. This is a BLESSING! Before I got pregnant, I had told my husband this was HIS year. My business is in its fourth successful year. I can confidently say it is a successful venture. Now it's his turn. He has been in a job he hated for 14 years - time for him to live his dream of owning his own music studio and arranging and producing our music, as well as the music of other up and coming artists.

A couple weeks before he got laid off, we ran into a friend of my husband's (best man at our wedding, in fact) whom he had not talked to for nearly two years. We were playing tennis and he just happened to live right behind the courts. As it turns out, he need someone to help him run his sound company - perfect opportunity. Then, the day before he got the news of his layoff, he landed his first client - a woman from Buffalo commissioned him to write 3 songs for her. The funny thing is, I think God knew that even with all that Universal affirmation, Glen might get cold feet about pulling the plug on his day job. So, the layoff was the nudge he might have needed to run his music company full time. That's what I like to think, anyway.

I have a friend who's having a baby today. Like me, she's a scheduled C-section, underline "SCHEDULED." I got to the hospital at 12:00 pm and she was still waiting. When she was finally ushered back at 2:30 (her C-section was originally scheduled for 1 pm), we had spent two and a half hours chatting, laughing, generally relaxing her and getting her excited to meet her daughter. The first thing I said when I saw her was, "We make plans, God laughs." The only thing we can do is laugh right along with Him.

Have you laughed today?

I Could Have Been a Grandma... by Maureen Eich Vanwalleghan

Lately on Facebook, I have “friended” or been “friended” by folks I knew in high school. I usually go and check out pictures and get a moment to see the happy smiling faces of these “friends” with their families. In most cases the pictures have lots of young kids and babies too. The funny thing is the babies and very young children are their grandkids. These “friends” I haven’t seen in ten years and in many cases longer than that, have had whole lives of being mothers.

It makes me think about my choices. I could have had grandkids myself if I had made some different choices. Before I started college I got pregnant with my then boyfriend. He was and is a great guy. He thought we could get married. I thought we would ruin three peoples lives and said as much. He was incredibly supportive. We went to the doctor together and confirmed the pregnancy and made an appointment for the abortion. In the intervening week I ended up having a miscarriage. A path not taken.

When I was in college and I got pregnant again. At the time there was another pregnant woman at my incredibly small college of 100 students. I felt an overwhelming sense of shame about my situation and observed what I felt was the “tut, tut, isn’t that too bad” attitude about her very visible condition. At the time, I couldn’t solve the puzzle of how I could actually have a baby and finish college. Looking back I see how I didn’t really talk with anyone about my choice except for a mentor who had a baby on her own when she was my age. Ironically, she was the person who went with me to the abortion clinic. I had one more miscarriage when I was in my early 30’s.

When I had my daughter, I had been teaching in a rural high school. When she was born, three of my high school students were also pregnant and most of the women I knew, who were my age, were grandmothers. In such a small town, I was very much a fish out of water in having a baby “so late in life.” The phenomenon of later motherhood is very much an urban one. Here in Prescott, there is one other mother I know who is my age and whose twin daughters are my daughter’s age. Most everyone else is ten years younger. I don’t know that my mommy peers realize how old I am. I don’t know if they notice. But, in the store I am often struck by how much I look like the grandma next to me in the Walmart line with her grandkid. In this mostly retirement community there are a fair number of grandparents who are raising their grandkids.

I don’t have regrets, more musing about what my life might have looked like if I had been a single mother when I was younger. In my youth, I was clear that I needed more time to create a great career or find the perfect man. Now I am not so sure since I am still working on that great career (this time as a filmmaker and writer) and my husband is not the perfect man. He’s a really good man and I am glad to be married to him. We just celebrated our six year anniversary. But, he is not the fantasy man I imagined I might marry nor is my marriage the blissful romantic stuff of light romantic comedies I gorged myself on through my thirties. In fact, the whole family scene turned out to be a lot more intense, messy and overwhelming than I imagined.

Since I was not in a long-term relationship with my fertility at issue, my perspective about my choices is one that is quite malleable depending on the day. With my own daughter I hope I can send a different message than my mom did. Her message: do “it” before you get married and have kids, propelled me forward through so much of my life. Considering her age it was pretty progressive thinking, but it did have unintended consequences.

Women come with uteruses. My message for my daughter is: life is messy, if you get pregnant, go for it anyway...it’ll be hard, but you’ll figure it out. As my daughter sometimes reminds me when I am struggling with her: it’s hard being a mom. The truth is, it’s hard being a mom no matter when you do it.