What If…
Dear Reader –
Welcome back.
I heard from a few of you, and you mentioned that I left you hanging in that last post. Let’s see if I cannot leave you hanging this time.
As I thought about what to write this time around, I figured I would write about what it looked like for both Jim and me once we got to the point of discussing what children looked like for us.
Jim and I dated for three years and some change before we tied the knot, and we got engaged in year two of dating. I don’t know what took him so long, he’ll have to explain that one for himself. I know we had discussed wanting kids, but when I say discussed, I really mean it sounded something like this:
Z – “So, I’d like to have kids someday, how about you?”
J – “Yes, maybe a couple”
Z – “Oh good, yeah, a couple sounds great.”
Z – “When do you think you’d like to start having kids?”
J – “Maybe about a couple of years after we get married.”
Z – No immediate response, because in my head it went like this, “DUDE, A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER WE GET MARRIED, MAYBE, – ARE YOU KIDDING ME, I’M TWO YEARS INTO THIS THING AND IT WILL BE THREE YEARS WHEN WE GET MARRIED – WE’VE GOT TO GET THE SHOW ON THE ROAD?!?!”
Z – “Hmmm, ok, we can discuss that later.”
The church that we were attending at that time had been offering a premarital counseling class one time throughout the year. I knew as soon as they advertised it that we needed to be a part of it. Now I’m going to get on my soap box here for a split second.
Marriage is no joke, it is not to be taken lightly, ever! There is more to marriage than the dress, the venue, the cake, the party and all the glitz and glamour. Marriage is a covenant, it is a promise, and it’s not something you can just throw away and act like it never happened. It affects more than just you and your fiancé. There will be many posts about this in the future, but for now, I will say this as a preface. Divorce statistics are not a laughing matter. So much of one’s family dynamics can impact future generation’s marriages. Society can impact marriage too. Now please don’t stop reading just because this might start to sound uncomfortable; I’m going somewhere with this.
Both Jim and I knew that we were not just committing to each other until the times got hard, but to each other through the hard times. Because of family dynamics, we needed more than just a day course on premarital counseling. We knew that if we wanted to take marriage to another level in our lives, we needed to really invest in it before we started, hence the counseling class through our church. The program was called, “Before You Say I-Do.” We went through 13 weeks of weekly meetings with our Pastor and if I remember correctly about 10 other couples. It was so cool, fun, and beyond rewarding; it was an investment. Before I turn this into a marriage post, I’m going to leave this here, and loop back around on this topic sometime in the future.
All that to say, one of the topics we had in the course was about starting a family beyond the two of us, and what that looked like for us. Now remember, we had discussed this already, correct, so it should be a no-brainer. We would just show up to class and act like we have this already figured out, and then just maybe, there would be some divine intervention and then Jim would change his mind on WAITING A COUPLE OF YEARS and want to start trying immediately after the wedding.
As we are sitting there listening to, engaging with, and laughing at all the discussions on what we all thought starting a family looks like; the expectations, the hopes, the dreams, and more, our Pastor stops us and then drops the bomb of all bombs. He asks, “What if” and then pauses. What if, what, I think to myself. Then he finishes with “What if you can’t have kids? What if you can’t have any children of your own, have you discussed that?”
(Insert a record screeching to a spine-tingling stop and total silence in the room.)
All of this then rushed through my head:
What do you mean, “what if we can’t have any children of our own?”
That’s not how the fairytale goes.
Didn’t I mention, I’m Mexican, I’m supposed to have a minimum of 5 kids-heck, I should just be able to look at a pregnant woman and get pregnant.
Is that really a thing? No one has prepared me for what if that happens.
That won’t happen to us, once again, I’m Mexican, and I don’t know anyone that hasn’t been able to have children of their own – so we’re good.
Whew ~
Oh, but it didn’t stop there…
Our Pastor, the wise man he was, then dropped another bomb. “Have you thought about what adopting or fostering looks like for you?”
(Insert nails scratching a chalkboard and more total silence in the room.)
Part 2 of what went rushing through my head:
Oh, you mean animals…yeah, dogs are fun, cats not so much, but right now we are fish people, barely.
Oh, you mean children – adopting children, fostering.
No, but once again, I’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be popping out kids before you know it.
Somebody, anybody, please break the silence, it’s getting hot in here, air please.
After a quieter rest of the counseling session, we all, including Jim and me, had some new topics to discuss. The point of taking this class had set in; have the tough conversations before you say I Do, so that when the going gets tough and you must have those discussions again, you are semi-prepared, and the shock factor is less on the Richter scale. We now had some tough stuff to discuss before the next class, and before we said I Do. In the end, it wouldn’t be a make or break it type of situation for us, but we were optimistically hopeful as always. We had the discussion on more than one occasion and then put it to rest.
The plan, at this time adopting and fostering wasn’t what God was calling us to, but we’d re-visit it if we had to. We would definitely have one child, hope for two, and probably never have any pets.
So, we thought.
~ Love, Zila