The short version: My future was having a baby and moving to San Antonio this summer. Now my future is not having a baby and spending a year with my parents in Dallas while my husband works in Honduras.
I don't think I'm being overly dramatic by thinking that it's a big change.
Now, I strongly believe that in situations like this you don't get very far by asking why. Asking why seems to lead to more confusion, frustration, and even despair. Or superficial warm fuzzies, which I don't find very comforting.
But I can't help it! So I'm going to indulge in the practice of asking why for just a few moments, knowing it's not going to take me anywhere. (The alternative right now is joining my son for his twelve-thousandth viewing of Cars and stuffing Mary with Easter candy. I'll pass on that.)
Why did the future change? What caused that shift in the fabric of my universe?
Was it the miscarriage? Did we miss some favorable window of opportunity to bring a baby into our family? Did the window close, forcing us down an entirely new path? (Or did we start down this path even before the miscarriage, making a lost pregnancy a blessing in disguise?)
Was it, as some in my family have speculated, that God noticed that my parents aren't ready to be empty-nesters after all? Do they need a house full of energetic grandchildren? And, in a blast from the past, a mopey, short-tempered daughter in residence?
Did I change? Did I become even less capable of having another baby? Less capable of taking care of a home and children on my own for six months at a time? Am I regressing? Am I falling apart? (The other day I had a sudden, though momentary, urge to reread The Bell Jar. That's never a good sign.)
What about Greg? His interests and desires have changed. Did they change the future? (Or did they change to match the path appearing before us?)
Did a mid-level military official at the Pentagon suggest a policy that several years from now will make Air Force life simply unbearable for us? Has Secretary Gates's love of Air Force civil engineers grown too strong for my family's comfort? Does he want to rely on them too much? (Has my future been changed by Secretary Gates?! Whom I love and adore and whose picture I would put in my locker if I had one?)
Are we someone else's hidden blessing? Are we saving someone from being "non-volunteered" to Honduras? Someone whose wife is pregnant with their firstborn and is praying with her whole heart that military life won't prevent her husband from being there for the birth, for those first months of sleepless nights, for the first smiles and giggles and spoonfuls of strained peas?
Perhaps it's a combination of the above? Or something I can't imagine?
Or has this--a pause in procreation and Greg's year in Honduras and his path to a PhD--always been my future? The other was but an illusion? Just a test? (Abraham-n-Isaac style?) Does God create elaborate, predetermined, unchanging mazes of tests and trials? Does He regularly tell us to do things and then jump out and say, "Just kidding!"? (Oh, I hope not. That doesn't seem like a very nice thing to do.)
I am finished asking why. It was fun while it lasted. As expected, it didn't take me anywhere--because it means looking backwards. And what I need to do is trust the Lord and step forward on the path that lays before me. I don't know exactly how I got here, two and a half months from saying good-bye for a year to the father of my sweet children.
But I know I am in the right place.
[By the way, I still believe our futures are often more flexible than we can imagine. I love what my sister-in-law pointed out about finding her house soul mate.]
