{"id":5901,"date":"2017-10-03T00:02:03","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T06:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=5901"},"modified":"2017-10-03T00:02:03","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T06:02:03","slug":"permission-to-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/permission-to-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Permission to Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, it was the longing that had no name, the longing that I wouldn\u2019t allow myself to name. Denied, it took on ugly shapes. She must be exhausted<\/em>, I would think when I saw a woman with three or more children. Thank goodness we stopped at two! <\/em>As I watched older siblings lovingly dote on baby brothers and sisters, my heart leapt but my mind resolved to not take a step toward it. Are you crazy? Don\u2019t you remember how giving birth feels? <\/em>It screamed. What is wrong with these people? Aren\u2019t they concerned about overpopulation? <\/em>(I told you it got ugly).<\/p>\n

I remember one evening at church when I held a fussing baby for two hours. When I handed him back to his mother, my arms hurt and I made some joke about my occasional yen for another baby being \u201ccured\u201d by babysitting! See? <\/em>My brain muttered smugly. Babies are a pain and an inconvenience. Babies hurt. Aren\u2019t you glad you\u2019re done with babies? <\/em><\/p>\n

But as I walked home, tears rolled down my cheeks. My heart was sick and tired of being trampled by cynicism masquerading as practicality. Yes, babies hurt<\/em>, I thought. But they\u2019re magical and delightful and worth all the hurt. I want another one so badly that my womb aches. I want another precious little soul to love, another set of sweet kissable cheeks and rolls upon rolls and downy skin. I even want the oceanic pain of birth and its afterglow of sheer bewilderment, when you feel like you\u2019ve been destroyed and reassembled and everything is new. But most of all, I want this perfect, fresh little creature in my arms. I want it ALL! <\/em><\/p>\n

I thought two was a reasonable place to stop. My husband did, too. We couldn\u2019t afford any more, and besides, two was plenty. Arrow, our daughter, blindsided us. I was just emerging from the haze of caring for a newborn and a toddler when I dropped my husband off at his vasectomy appointment. Even that became a joke – he was practically sprinting to the urologist! Oh, we are SO done! <\/em>I emphatically responded to any inquiries as to whether we were having more children.<\/p>\n

Yet, my heart wasn\u2019t buying it, but I refused to give myself permission to dream. Dreaming would bring nothing but heartache.<\/p>\n

And it did, for two long years. When I told my husband one tearful night that I wanted more children, he was mortified. For the next two years, I cajoled and pleaded, and when that failed, I pestered and prodded and threw tantrums. I pounced on any millimeter of yielding with such violence that I only hardened his resolve. Finally, one night when he stated again that he didn\u2019t want more children, it felt final. I wept until I had nothing left, and I knew Jesus was there. I struggled to trust that he would renew me, in time.<\/p>\n

I became silent on the topic of babies, so much so that my husband started asking, \u201cAren\u2019t you going to say something about babies?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNope,\u201d I replied each time, perhaps a bit too curtly. Then one day, my husband sat me down to tell me that he felt called to get his vasectomy reversed. I shrieked with joy and threw my arms around him and marveled at the miraculous: hope glittering from the grave of gutted dreams.<\/p>\n

I thought I\u2019d get pregnant immediately like I had before, but four cycles went by and it didn\u2019t happen. I poured out my woes to a wise friend and mentor, who gently shared the lessons God had taught her through her unsuccessful tubal ligation reversal. He had reshaped her longing and fulfilled it elsewhere, she said.<\/p>\n

Yes, I nodded begrudgingly, I will learn contentment. There will be so many rich, faith-enhancing lessons I\u2019ll learn if I don\u2019t get another baby, I thought, with my fists and jaw clenched. I was fooling nearly everyone with my forced holiness, including myself. But not God.<\/p>\n

I was driving two days later when the welling that had started deep down in my belly erupted in my throat. I pulled over on a gravel road and wept violently, gasping and heaving like my son after he takes a hard fall. I tried to breathe deeply and stop crying; even forging ahead on the road, thinking my composure would follow, before pulling over again and giving myself permission to weep. And there, on that quiet country road, as I cried and pounded on the steering wheel, the truth came out. \u201cI don\u2019t want to learn any more lessons!\u201d I yelled. \u201cI just want a baby!\u201d Instantly, I felt relieved. Lighter. And God smiled, because I wasn\u2019t pretending anymore.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to forget that before God, we have permission to be real. It\u2019s even more than permission \u2013 it\u2019s a requirement for true relationship. God doesn\u2019t want a gritted-teeth resolution to be good, which is destined to fail anyway.<\/p>\n

Here I am, not yet pregnant. And so I wait, and give myself permission to hope and dream wildly. I give myself permission to cry out to God and I continue to ask for what I want instead of pretending to be OK with not getting it. Will he make me OK, no matter what, even if it doesn\u2019t feel like it right now? Yes.<\/p>\n

But I still want a baby.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Ashley Lande is mama to Israel (6) and Arrow (4), as well as one big dog, one little dog and a small flock of chickens. She feels most safe in a library and is an astoundingly good dancer. Her artwork is at <\/em>ashleylande.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, it was the longing that had no name, the longing that I wouldn\u2019t allow myself to name. Denied, it took on ugly shapes. She must be exhausted, I would think when I saw a woman with three or more children. Thank goodness we stopped at two! As I watched older siblings lovingly dote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":5904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,117],"tags":[522,546,1272,639,256,54,55,56,830,1250,984],"class_list":["post-5901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-wellness","tag-babies","tag-baby","tag-contentment","tag-god","tag-honestly","tag-mama","tag-mom","tag-motherhood","tag-patience","tag-permission","tag-waiting"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}