The Bed

We've been in our new place for several months now and we've had plans for our second bedroom here for much longer. I was so anxious to move here. I didn't sleep for days. I knew that the moment we moved we would make the call and start things rolling. I had the names and numbers for everyone we needed to talk to, I had websites marked, and I had furniture lined up. We moved on Thanksgiving weekend. The weekend came and went, then Christmas. I thought maybe once the holidays were over I would call. Then I thought maybe once spring arrives I will call, then summer. It didn't feel right though. Friends asked us constantly how things were going, did we need any help, did we have an eta? I had to be honest and tell them I wasn't ready yet. It had nothing to do with money or Hubby or technical hiccups. It was me. I felt so sill. After all of the years, I had finally gotten what I wanted. I've wanted to adopt since I was a little girl. Lots of my friends growing up were foster children, so I had a very compassionate soft spot for adoption early on. Yet, here I was, our dreams sitting just outside the front door after so many years of disappointment. Our lives had been on hold for this very moment for years and I was the one that wasn't ready. Something strange had happened to me in all of those years though. I realized that not only did I have a dream of motherhood, but I had other dreams too. The knowledge that at any moment I could put into motion our plans to have a child, plans that would no doubt be successful this time since my body had nothing to do with the equation, was so empowering. Knowing that the dream would come true whenever I wanted it to allowed me to consider other dreams too. I want my children to know they can reach for their dreams. Our children will most likely come from a long life of disappointments and I need to show them that even adults have dreams and that it's okay to go out and get them. I wouldn't feel like an honest mother if I didn't reach for my own dreams. The ghosts of "what if" wait patiently on the sidelines. The room is an office for now. The decorations are tucked carefully into the closet in that room. We had a bed picked out. It was a white brass day bed that my sister and I had as children. We had that bed picked out long before we signed the lease here. It was a perfect little girl's bed. It would be a great reading spot for me as it had been for so many years until we were ready to put a little person in it. This weekend at a benefit for Baby Noah, I found a bed. I wasn't even looking for one. We had one. This one is a maple colored wooden day bed. It is incredibly well built and heavy. It is very simple and it needs a good sanding or a coat of paint, but it's beautiful. It was unsold so technically we could have it for free, but we paid the $25 price tag happily. It even comes with a mattress. When I saw it, I just knew we were supposed to have it. I argued for a long while in my head. We already had a bed. It needed some love too, a coat of paint, and a few extra nuts and bolts, but nothing that wasn't easily found and fixed. I mention this because I couldn't shake the pull this bed had on me. The feeling truly caught me off guard. I felt perfectly fine putting this bed into our room long before a child would sleep on it. Still, there was no doubt a child would someday be there. More than anything it shocked me that even when our plan was one of the lower things on our list of priorities, things could still fall in place to remind me that the dream would come true someday. It was as if God had sent me a gentle reminder that He had not forgotten us. That He remembered all of our plans, even the far off plans. He was telling me that He was there with us, and that His timing is perfect. Even though I had put those dreams away for a while, God still remembered that they were some of my deepest desires and He would help me reach my dreams someday. *** I have done everything I can over several days to get this post to leave spaces and paragraphs in it, but apparently it just isn't gonna work. My apologies.