Reminder: I'm not in charge of my life (phew!)

Been pondering some huge things lately. Like, who runs my life? And if it's not me, is that OK?

As a single person it's fairly easy to think it's me. Myself and I, we're good, we have plans. (and God laughs?); married, it gets a little more complicated because every decision affects us, not just me. Now, with a new person growing inside me, I'm definitely starting to lose the blinders and see that I'm not actually in charge of my life. And the relief is beautiful.

If I was in charge, I'd have to not only make the decisions but face the consequences as well. When I make most of my decisions, I have to do it without knowing 100% of all the facts and possible influencing factors... so a decision made to the best of my knowledge at the time may turn out to be horribly wrong.

Just little me again, looking puzzled.

Those are some lofty and nebulous ideas, so let's bring this home to make clear where I'm coming from with this...

I (emphatically) never wanted to have children. Then I met my Mr. and he wasn't put off by that! He was ambivalent about them; happy to have them if they came along, happy to live the rest of his life as a non-dad. I asked him once if he would feel as if he'd missed out on something if he found himself 70 years old and childless. He said no, not at all. This gave me enough peace of mind to marry the man - had he told me he wanted to start a family within the year, I'd have run a mile!

That said, however, I didn't marry Mr. with a firm intention to have no children. [I did know he'd been married before and there had been no kids; but, the reasons for that I didn't know. So there was a real possibility that we couldn't have any children, and we were both fine with that.] I went into this marriage trusting that God had designs for it, and if children were to be part of that, he would also provide everything we needed. So we never tried to avoid conception, and neither did we particularly try to conceive. We just got on with enjoying married life!

If I had tried to finally and firmly make up my mind, think everything through, and come to a decision as to whether or not I wanted children, I would have tied myself in knots and still not been certain by the time the menopause arrived. So, glad I'm not the one in charge of my life, I left it in God's capable hands.

And he orchestrated this beautifully! About a year after we met, we married; about a year after that, we are now expecting our first child. I couldn't have planned it better if I had tried.

I think our God has a very fine sense for irony.