Puzzling

Have you ever put together a puzzle? You have all these pieces of various shapes and you are trying to make them fit together to make one glorious picture. And the bragging rights that come with having the patience to see it through until the end.

My husband and I have recently started attending church on a regular basis again.

I know, I know. This is something that we should have been doing anyway, but sometimes, we needed the rest more often than we needed to get up early on a Sunday morning. Selfish - absolutely. Did we miss going? More than you can imagine.

Apparently going to church is good blogging material. *Note to self - go to church more = less writer's block.

Got it!

Yet, sometimes church is a painful reminder of what is missing in our life. They talked yesterday, often of raising children. And as I squirmed in my seat and looked around the room, I wondered if there was someone else in the room who could relate. Or if we were the only ones there. I imagined their discomfort. I watched the young, unmarried guy sitting to our left, and the young unmarried girl sitting next to me, and I wondered, as they both set there listening intently if they had any idea how life could be so cruel. You could see them both mentally making notes about their future children. And all I could think about was "if you only knew".

Neither one of them have any guarantees that they will have a child. One of them might just find themselves in our boat.

See we are that one piece of the puzzle that you are sure fits right "there", and you turn it and turn it and try to make it fit, but nothing lines up like it should, there are gaps, there are pegs where holes are supposed to be. We can't relate, and instead of actually listening to everything that our pastor said this morning, I only half way paid attention. Because all I could think about what how I would never fit.

We can't won't go to Sunday School, because the college class is too old for both of us, the newly married - well, we will be married 12 years this year, so I'm pretty sure we are past that stage. Well, the next stage - young families. Then parents of students. Then the golden oldies. They discuss parenting and raising children. It's hard enough to walk into Tar.get and see the tiny Halloween costumes and not remember what I'm missing out on, let alone sit through and participate in a class that I can't relate too.

So all the while I'm sitting there, thinking about what great parents we would make, and how I wish that the pastor would understand that not every single person in his congregation can relate. Some of us will never have to raise a child to obey Jesus. Some will never have that opportunity.

The bad thing is that, me, being me, wants to fit. I want the puzzle piece to just magically fall into place. I want to be able to not sit there and think about how I can't relate and how much that sucks. I want to be able to follow through and look into adoption. I want to have a child of my own. I don't want to be that one piece of the puzzle that feels like an "outsider" or that I'm some how flawed.

Yes, I realize that I'm not "flawed", that it's just all part of the grand scheme of things, but at the same time, it would be nice to not feel like an outsider, because I can't relate. I realize that it's not intentional, it's just a fact of life.

Thankfully, at some point, my attention focused back in on what the pastor was saying. If my husband wasn't "busy" with something else that the pastor was doing, I probably would have walked out. Because it's a profound thought. He was using an analogy about how we have lower expectations for ourselves, for our children and he questioned whether or not we had the same issue with God.

Have I lowered my expectations of God?



Read tomorrow's post for that answer. Bring tissues. It's a tear jerker.