Great Expectations

The first time I saw Andrew, I exclaimed, "why he is not at all what I expected!"
I then said, "I don't know what I expected, but this is not it."
(This was said very kindly, it looks a little harsh in the written translation :))
I think I was at the moment thinking only of his looks. He is a beautiful baby with round cheeks and red hair. I think I was expecting Jeffrey or Blake or even Brantley, but certainly not Andrew.
My words turned out to be prophetic.

What do any of us expect when we become mothers? I think we all had or have dreams of the blissful mother/child picture. Ha, I am laughing out loud here, because I can almost guarantee that whatever your original expectation of motherhood was is not its reality.

After experiencing infertility, motherhood became a far away dream, the unatainable, the holy greil, so to speak. But still, I did have expectations.

I actually looked up the word, and it means :AWAIT, STAY, SUPPOSE, THINK, to anticipate or look forward to the coming of, to look forward.

I looked forward to getting pregnant, being pregnant. I dreamed of how I would tell Jeff, tell my parents. I dreamed of having babies when my sister-in-laws did, when my friends did, and basically when I wanted to. I expected that we would be the all American couple with the all American kids. But, God had another path for me, and I had to adjust my expectation. What I thought, what I supposed would happen, well, basically, it did not turn out that way. As Jeff poked me with shots, as I had surgery to have my eggs retrieved, as we waited to find out if we were pregnant, I can hear myself saying the same words, "I don't know what I expected, but this is not it."

Then pregnancy came, then motherhood. You clean up barf and deal with kid sicknesses. You don't sleep, and life starts to throw you major curve balls. How are you going to handle your baby? How are you going to go back to work? How do you deal with your husband, with being a parent. I can hear myself again, "I don't know what I expected, but this is not it."

I have decided that everyone must feel this way. (If you don't, please do not tell me, it would make me feel bad.) If you think about it, changing expectations is a constant in life. We get married and expect our husbands to behave like our dads. We expect that we can get pregnant. We have children and expect them to be like the neighbor kids or their cousins. We go to work and expect to gain a feeling of fulfillment. The list can really go on and on.

When Andrew was in the hospital with jaundice, my pediatrician came to talk to me - about Andrew's present condition, but also about being Downs. One thing that he said really stuck with me - "You need to grieve your original expectation of what you wanted for Andrew." Wow. This, my friends, is a long process. Some of the grief was immediate, some ongoing, and some yet to come.

Yet, I see the hand of God. You see, grieving original expectations is not new to us. We did it with infertility, and what a grief process that was. We did the whole bit - anger, denial, questioning, acceptance, etc. But here is the amazing part, God's plan for our lives through infertility was so much better than my original expectation, and, seven years later, I can see that clearly - so very clearly. Without infertilty, I would not have Jeffrey, Blake and Brantley. Without infertility, I would not be intimately knitted at the soul with Jeff because of the trials we endured together. Without infertility, I would not have had the friends I do today. Without infertilty, I would not be able to have the specific area of ministry that I do today. But most importantly, without infertility, I would not trust and believe God like I do today.

So, as I work through and grieve whatever my original expectation was for Andrew, I know with assurance that one day I will be able to say, "without Andrew, I would not..."

No, he is not all what I expected, he is so much more.