Time

"And it's time, time, time that you love,

And it's time, time, time..."

- Tom Waits

During the twenty minutes I managed to organize my thoughts into complete sentences before I fell asleep last night, Jason and I discussed the timing of our daughter's birth.  It certainly wasn't my preference to have our first child at thirty years of age, but now I can look back at the past decade and see God's fingerprints all over the face of my biological clock.

 If I had gotten my way, things would have been much more difficult because of my impatience to start a family once we were married five years ago.  Granted, I've had more than a handful of parents advise us that there is no so-called perfect or convenient time to have children, but as we wade through the days after Ava's birth in the isolation and uncertainty of the NICU, I'm thankful to have a spouse who was insistent upon establishing a comforting level of security before Ava made her wide-eyed appearance into the world.  We've HAD to wait upon the Father's providence of a sturdy house, better established financial resources, cars that wouldn't leave us on the shoulder of the interstate, and the unfailing support of more "family" than we ever before dreamed of.  I even consider my gestational diabetes a blessing for teaching me how to budget my dietary intake so much differently - it's given me so much more stamina and mental clarity.

I consider the life I lived - which I lived for myself and therefore made a disaster of - in the years before I met Jason and reconsidered my need for faith in something greater than my own determination.  I think of the ways that I embarrassed myself with the reckless, self-centered decisions that I made.  I'm often tempted to blame them on my long term struggle with depression instead of recognizing that my selfish refusal to see past the tip of my own nose just might've been the gravity pulsing at the center of that black hole.  Now, two years after emerging from a weeklong hospitalization with the tools to help tune into contentment, I've learned the importance of being satisfied with my circumstances and to gently move ever toward the goals that I believe my Heavenly Father has placed in my heart.

I've always been a slave to accomplishment, even if all my spirit craved was to fulfill seemingly humble dreams - aspirations which might seem merely peripheral to a modern, have-it-all kind of woman.  I would push myself to attain a status...a title...recognition...even beyond what was due my true abilities.  I can be honest with myself now and pinpoint the cause of that strain and strife: I thought my worth to my loved ones was primarily founded upon those definitives.  

I felt guilty for wanting nothing more complicated than to spend my life building up a home for a family. I think I even went as far as to build relationships based on superficial projections instead of honesty about who I truly am.  I'm a nester.  A bit of a recluse.  I love establishing routine centered around my home and family, and then I love shaking up that routine and doing something unusual.  I love physical affection, and I'm happiest when I'm within arm's reach of my husband or child.  I could entertain myself without the television or radio all day long.  I like being a stranger in a crowd.  I don't tend to communicate exactly the way I intend to without writing what I mean.  And I don't intend on making apologies for these attributes anymore.  

What I can or can't do well doesn't change my value as a human being.  I spent so long trying to be recognized and applauded, but now that I'm holding someone who doesn't define me that way, I can see how much of a tail-chasing mongrel that mindset has made of me.  It truly helps to also have the understanding of a husband who's always been vocally proud of however I choose to define myself.

In light of all this, I wasn't the least bit surprised that we would be blessed with a daughter who was diagnosed at birth with Down's Syndrome.  I understand that it's usually a shock to most parents when they receive such a diagnosis - truly a What's-the-chances, How-could-this-happen moment.  
To me, there is divine logic in her arrival here, now, with us.  I know that she will allow me to fulfill the calling to motherhood that I've longed to answer for what seemed like achingly too long.  I know that she will need all of the skills of perception, domesticity, and creative teaching that I've acquired on the path to her, as well as she will need our marriage to support those pursuits.  She will need me to be willing to shadow my maddening ambitions in favor of supporting her. 

I think she was sent to rescue me.