family of four.

All around me friends are swelling with pregnant bellies, going into labor, and anxiously waiting adoption placements.  Some of my friends are welcoming their third baby, some their fourth, and some are just embarking on this grand adventure of parenthood.

I loved taking a “family walk” this morning with one of my best friends in the world and our kiddos, trying to speed up her contractions for this baby girl we’re all dying to meet.

I love Instagram photos of brand-new-to-the-world babies with their crumpled faces and tiny fingers and gauzy swaddled blankets.

I love baby showers and talking about cloth diapers and I started crying in the middle of Southeastern Salvage on Saturday morning when we got the phone call from our friends who are meeting their adopted baby this week.

I love babies!

And all of this has got me thinking that I fully expected we’d be looking towards our next baby right now.

Amidst all the dashed dreams from our South Asia story, this was a quiet aching one.  The dream of adopting children from the country we lived in.  We prayed for it, we planned for it.  While living there we tried twice to start our adoption process and both times the door was firmly closed.

Looking back of course I see it was God’s providence.  There was no way our family could have pursued an adoption with my health like it was.  And He knew all along we’d be leaving way sooner than we ever dreamed.

But it’s strange, you know?

It’s strange to realize that Amelie’s nearly four and all of my dreams for our family including having another child on the way by now.  I’ve always said, “I don’t want our kids to be too far apart.  I want them to all be best buddies.”

We’ve wanted to adopt children ever since we got married.  We’ve talked about it, prayed about it. We’ve been so certain that it’s in our future that we made the decision that if God gave us biological children, we’d have just two and then we’d grow our family by adoption.  I always pictured us with a big family–with at least four kids.

But here we are settling down into the next season of our life with two preschoolers and no more kids on our horizon.

This knowledge has involved grief.  Especially when we first got home last year–though I guess back then, everything involved grief.

I’ve kept a sort of hodge-podge hoard of baby things over the years, ever since our kids were born.  Well, as much as it’s possible to do that when you’ve lived in six houses since your son’s birth.  Most of it had to be purged, but I kept a big plastic bin of Amie’s infant clothes, some toys, all our cloth diapers.  I boxed and stored the kids’ hand-me-downs in South Asia.

And last June, the week we were getting ready to get on a plane, I suddenly knew that I wanted to give all their too-small clothes away.  I laid them out on our bed during one afternoon that was filled with bright light and traffic noises and a warm breeze.  I cried while I set the clothes out by sizes, all the little shoes and tiny backpacks and toys because it felt like the death of a dream.  Of many dreams.  And then I invited our house helper, Priya, to come pick out clothes for her son and her friends’ kids.

I wish I could describe the sheer delight as she walked into that bedroom.  Only 18 months worth of kids’ clothes–a modest amount by any American’s standards.  But she oohed and ahhed and squealed over flowered dresses and sandals and swimsuits and a Thomas the Tank Engine backpack.  She kept asking, “Are you sure I’m not taking too much, madam?”  No, no Priya, please take anything you want!

The leftovers we gave to a pastor to distribute them among his congregation.

It felt so sad to me and also so beautiful, to share with people who needed it, to release my dreams to my Father.  So we came back and over the months I began giving away the rest, piece by piece.  All of Amie’s newborn clothes, boxes of cloth diapers, the double stroller and our toddler carseat.

And while a part of me hurt, I found, surprisingly, that doing all of this brought freedom and a sense of deep peace.

It’s made me stop thinking obsessively about my picture of our future family and instead think about our “now family.”  It’s made me slow down and really watch my kiddos who are getting so very big so fast. It’s made me want to hold on to these precious moments when Judah cuddles up next to me, book in hand, and Amie and I fall asleep, arms intertwined, at naptime.

It’s made me so very grateful God saw fit to give us two indescribably precious children.

It’s made me realize that I have my dream–a husband who’s my best friend, and a little boy and a little girl who are best buddies.  I love our little family of four.

I don’t know what our future holds. But I don’t really feel the need to think about it or plan it anymore.  I feel certain that if God wants to bring more children into our home, He’ll make it clear.  I don’t need to sit around waiting.

These days I’m so very thankful for what I already have.