Never Say Never

I hated them with a deep and powerful hatred. How could a teenager feel such a deep emotion at such a tender age? But I did. I was disgusted by them, the way they looked, the sheer size of them. I would never. never. ever. drive a conversion van. I swore up and down that they were the most nastiest of all vehicles. Ironically I said this as I drove around town in an old orange Chevette.

And here I am. I'm sure my parents chuckled inside when Nate and I purchased the Beast. The biggest of vans, red and towering. I know my adolescent words probably still ring in their ears whenever I pull up with a bus load of kids in my 1998 conversion van. You can't miss it. It's a moving landmark. Sometimes I forget how visible it is since I'm the one sitting in the driver's seat. That is until I'm coming out of a store. While other shoppers rack their brains to remember where they parked this time, I just peer above all of the cars and like a mountain, there is my Beast.

I have eaten my own words in so many other areas, it's almost like a buffet.

"I'm not going to have kids."

Let's just let that one sink in for a bit.

As the oldest of six, I was surrounded by toddlers for most of my young life. While I loved them all, and even played mommy to my littlest sister, I was ready to move on to adult type things with adult type people. Here I am now and seven of my favorite people in the whole wide world are among the diaper clad, the not-yet-shaving crowd, the elementary crew. There is no way I could ever have known the depth of love that a mother has for her child. I can't even fully understand it now. They have changed me. Deeply.

The list goes on.

"My kids will never have runny, crusty noses and ratty unbrushed hair."

I think I just choked on my coffee.

I remember being a mommy of a not quite two year old and working in the church nursery. There was a brother and sister tag team, maybe two and four, that often came to play. Oh boy, they could fight. The sister once had a bite mark on her cheek from the brother and the brother had scrapes and bruises from roughhousing with his sister. Judgmental doesn't even begin to describe me. Did I have opinions about those two and their mommy! Good gracious, what was she thinking!

Gulp.

At least four of my seven children have had to be removed from the nursery for biting. We have had countless bruises and scrapes. "He kicked me", "She hit me", "He's looking at me". I have apologized to that mother a hundred times in my head. I wonder where she is now.

Dreaming and longing for glamor and prestige, I wanted to marry rich. I wanted to attend black tie parties weekly and wear fabulous gowns with fabulous shoes. Life was going to be fancy. I'm chuckling to myself as I sit here in my pajamas and bed head. Nothing is fancier than doing load after load of laundry. Well, except maybe scrubbing a toilet.

I was a cheerleader. I laughed at the cross country team. Why would you want to run unless someone or something was chasing you? Yet here I sit, logging miles in hopes of running the mother of all races. The 26.2.

I could go on and on.

It scares me now when I start to think a thought about what I will never do. Too many times that very thing is what I end up living. And loving. It's a good thing I'm not sitting in the driver's seat. I could if I wanted to, but I've learned along the way that I'm not the best of navigators and I may think I know what I want, but He has something much better planned for me. God's plan for my life was so far above what I could have handled, that He only gave me enough light to see the next step. If he would have shined a floodlight on the road up ahead, I think I would have turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, despite my hatred for running. You see, He was slowing changing my heart. The person I was at seventeen could never have handled the responsibility and beauty that I can fourteen years later. I know that today He isn't showing me much more than tomorrow because who I am today isn't ready for what I will take on ten years from now. Thank goodness He is patient.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:9