Fears Revisited

The first thought that I might not have children came when I was 14.  I was daughter number three of four and the only one left not yet showing signs of  a developing body. “Flaquindé” was what they called me. It was a Dominican word for skinny and I was in fact, skin and bone.  My limbs looked so long, everyone thought I would tower above my sisters.  If you saw my 5’3” frame now, you might wonder what we were thinking.  It seems my fast metabolism and active lifestyle caused me to be a late bloomer.  I was convinced the day would never come and every morning was met with disappointment.  Eventually, the thought crept in, “if this hasn’t happened yet, it’s never going to happen.  There must be something wrong with me.  All my friends have started.  I’m never going to be a mother.”  You’d think 14 is young to have this kind of concern, but I privately grieved at the thought that I would never have a baby.  The day finally came when lanky arms and legs blossomed into full womanhood—okay not quite “full.”  The irony?  It was not a welcomed ‘friend.’  But you could have predicted that. Life moved on and I gave little thought to the days of longing for that sign that I was finally fully woman.  I came away from that time with the simplistic reality that things work out the way they’re meant to. Why simplistic? Because I had no inkling then of the layers of truth that lay there. It was a simple faith that would later be tried and tried again. When one day that age-old fear became reality, “I will never have a baby,” would I still believe that God would work things out the way they were meant to?  Yes and yes and yes.  Did it come easily?  No, no, no.  But God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20a).  He is so good!