Life With The Shirleys: God knows what He is doing

I've mentioned this before, but I really did start praying for my future husband when I went into high school. I prayed that he would be a Christian, have the same values as me and that one day I would be able to stay at home with our future babies. I prayed this prayer every single night until I was married. And then I continued to pray for our future children. God made good on this prayer. I am married to a wonderful man and stay at home with our children.

It took us 5 years to conceive The Mayor. I could never understand why it was so difficult for us to get pregnant. I knew I was put on this Earth to be a mother, so why wasn't it happening? We went through years of frustration, fertility testing and eventually a little fertility assistance. And the first month after being on Clomid, we conceived The Mayor. If I had known it was going to be so easy on Clomid, I would have done it years ago! But it happened when it was supposed to. And thank God it did because if I were to have gotten pregnant when we first started trying, I wouldn't have been able to stay at home. Again, God answered my prayer...

Thankfully, we conceived Love Bug after only one month of trying and now our beautiful family is complete.

After D and I were married and the discussion of children came up, I told him I had to have a daughter. That I needed to have that mother/daughter relationship that I had missed out on since my mother passed away. I longed for it, almost was desperate for it. So at my 20 week ultrasound appointment with The Mayor I was regretfully a little disappointed when they told me I was going to have a boy. Didn't God hear my prayers? Didn't he know my heart? And then The Mayor was born...and that sweet little boy taught me what true unconditional love was. You just don't know love like that until you have a child. And The Mayor completed me. I realized it wasn't the mother/daughter relationship that I longed so deeply for, it was the mother/child relationship that I needed. And The Mayor fulfilled it. God heard my prayers and knew my heart, He just knew what I needed better than I did. And it has made me a better mother. If The Mayor had been a girl, I know myself, I would have ended up being such an over-bearing mother. I would have tried too hard...pushed the relationship too hard to fulfill something within myself, I would have made the relationship about me. And now I am blessed with both a son and a daughter. And the fact that I was blessed with a daughter, and my daughter being my 2nd child, it will allow me to truly and freely love her without any pressure on our mother/daughter relationship. Having The Mayor first taught me it is the child itself that I needed in my life, not the specific gender of the child.

God knows what He is doing...and knows me better than I know myself.